Post Rwandan Genocide: Justice and Reconciliation
- Purpose of the process
- Justice, Truth and Reconciliation focuses on addressing past human rights violations, promoting healing, and fostering social cohesion in societies emerging from conflict or authoritarian rule.
- United Nations perspective
- Truth and reconciliation mechanisms help uncover violations through investigations, hearings, or public inquiries.
- These processes enable victims to be heard and perpetrators to be held accountable.
- The goal is to balance the pursuit of justice with the need for societal healing, often combining judicial and non-judicial measures.
- Impact of the 1994 genocide on Rwanda’s judiciary
- The genocide decimated the judicial system, leaving fewer than six judges and around ten lawyers.
- They faced an overwhelming caseload involving tens of thousands accused of genocide-related crimes.
- Pre-genocide Rwandan law included provisions against murder and crimes against humanity but lacked frameworks to address genocide on such a scale.
- New legal measures
- Post-genocide reforms included the 1996 “Organic Law” on genocide crimes, which explicitly criminalized genocide and related offenses.
- Local-level justice
- Denunciations began at the local level, with victims and witnesses filing complaints.
- Gacaca courts were later established to expedite justice through community-based trials.
Case study
The Gacaca Courts
- Origins and purpose
- The Gacaca courts were community-based traditional tribunals established in Rwanda in 2001 to expedite genocide-related trials, promote truth-telling, and foster reconciliation.
- They were adapted from a traditional Rwandan community justice system also called “Gacaca” (meaning “grass” in Kinyarwanda), where local members gathered on grass to publicly resolve conflicts, restore harmony, and reintegrate offenders.
- Response to the justice crisis
- The formal justice system was unable to cope with over 130,000 detainees accused of genocide.
- Gacaca provided a practical alternative to reduce the backlog of cases.
- Local operation
- Courts operated at the local level with elected community judges (inyangamugayo), respected for their integrity.
- The courts prioritized confession, apology, and reparations, offering reduced sentences in exchange for full disclosure of crimes.
- Public participation
- Trials were public and participatory, allowing neighbors to testify and fostering community involvement.
- Between 2001 and 2012, Gacaca courts tried nearly two million cases.
- Criticisms
- While Gacaca played a crucial role in delivering justice swiftly and promoting reconciliation, critics pointed to due process issues, witness intimidation, and inconsistent sentencing.
- Legacy
- Despite flaws, Gacaca is widely seen as a unique hybrid model of transitional justice, balancing retributive and restorative justice in a post-genocide context.
Post-Genocide Fragmentation
- Social and political divisions
• Rwanda was deeply fragmented among survivors, victims’ families, displaced populations, and the RPF-led minority.
• These divisions made immediate reconciliation difficult. - International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)
• Prompted by the RPF, the UN established the ICTR in late 1994.
• Its purpose was to prosecute top leaders and masterminds of the genocide, marking a key step in global justice (see next section).
Historiography
Was Justice and Reconciliation Achieved?
- Arguments in support
- Some scholars argue Rwanda’s efforts, particularly through the Gacaca courts, successfully promoted truth and reconciliation.
- According to Alison Des Forges (2007), the Gacaca system allowed communities to confront genocide crimes at a grassroots level, encouraging confessions, forgiveness, and social reintegration.
- Des Forges highlights how the courts fostered collective healing by involving victims, perpetrators, and witnesses in a communal justice process.
- This bottom-up approach contrasted with international tribunals’ slow pace, helping to reduce prison overcrowding while promoting societal rebuilding (Des Forges, Leave None to Tell the Story, 2007).
- Additionally, Rwanda’s National Unity and Reconciliation Commission has been praised for promoting national dialogue and fostering unity through education and remembrance programs (UN, 2010).
- These initiatives are viewed as laying the foundation for durable peace and reconciliation within Rwanda.
- Arguments against
- Other scholars contend that Rwanda’s truth and reconciliation process remains incomplete and contested.
- Mahmood Mamdani (2001) critiques the Gacaca courts for prioritizing retributive justice over genuine reconciliation, sometimes perpetuating divisions by pressuring confessions and creating an atmosphere of fear rather than forgiveness.
- Mamdani also argues that the political dominance of the RPF limited open dialogue, and that the judicial process was used more to consolidate power than to promote reconciliation (Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers, 2001).
- Bert Ingelaere (2016) shows how some survivors and accused persons felt coerced, with reconciliation narratives imposed top-down rather than emerging organically.
- This left underlying tensions unresolved (Ingelaere, Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, 2016).
