Floating justice
The city of Macap\xe1 is in the middle of a river archipelago with around 50 villages and 14,000 inhabitants, where the Amazon meets the Atlantic Ocean. Some of these communities are almost impossible to reach, with dense mangroves and fluctuating water levels making the journey dangerous. For a long time, conflicts were resolved by local leaders, from theft, to land disputes, to rape. The machete was often the quickest recourse to justice. Judge Sueli Pini visited Macap\xe1 20 years ago. Seeing the problem, she founded a system that\u2019s unique in the world, the \u201cfloating court.\u201d