Tribal Law

I knew this from before, but it did not get to the foreground of my brain until today.

We are now almost 8 years into the 21st century and tribal law is still applied in matters related to accidental killings.

Yes, if someone ran over someone's child and killed him by accident and even if there were witness to testify to this, the driver in question would still have to go through the archaic process of "Atewh" and paying the "Dyeh" as compensation. And this process can almost destroy the life of the driver in question, because sometimes, the family of the deceased might decide to secure their retirement from the "Dyeh" money. Not to mention that the guy could rot in jail until the family of deceased decides that they have no problem with letting him out.

This process makes no sense what so ever. What even does not make any sense is that the government has no problem with it. Maybe modernizing only applies to certain things, but not to others.

I am not sure how this process can be replaced. But we need not look very far; many countries have never had any tribal laws and are doing just fine and have rather successful civil laws in place.