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Key Text The Introduction of a Modernized Gacaca for Judging Suspects of Participation in the Genocide and the Massacres of 1994 in Rwanda

Author: P S Uvin
Date: 2000
Size: 28 pages (293 KB)

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Summary

The formal justice system in Rwanda is failing to provide redress for the genocide and massacres of 1994, despite heavy investment by the Rwandan government and international donors. There is a need to speed up trials and improve their quality, empty the country's overcrowded prisons and involve the population in establishing the truth and promoting reconciliation. One solution may be offered by adapting gacaca, a traditional mechanism of conflict resolution. But even this alternative is fraught with contradictions. How can donors ensure that the system put into place maximises the positive potential of gacaca and minimises its negative implications?

This paper examines the reasons in favour of gacaca and highlights the obstacles to its efficient and equitable functioning. It warns donors that the decision to support gacaca is highly political and offers clear advice on how to manage the process.

Gacaca potentially respects key conditions of fair trial and due process in an original, locally appropriate form, and its limitations and constraints may be no less than the current judicial system. Although gacaca enjoys widespread public support, its legitimacy can be easily undermined and must therefore be clearly established to avoid interference by (local) power-holders. Uvin proposes that donors adopt a policy of 'critical support' with particular attention to fast, local, reliable and gacaca-specific monitoring and subsequent joint action.

Other conclusions from the paper are that:

Gacaca could lead to an increase rather than a decrease in prison populations; this might eventually require an amnesty once guilt was established.
Sensitisation to gacaca has so far been a top-down process; if reconciliation is to be achieved in the long term, both development and judicial NGOs should be involved in participatory work with the population.
A gender perspective is vital at all stages if women are to participate in the gacaca process.
There are particular concerns about urban jurisdictions, where the basic social conditions for efficient and effective functioning are not guaranteed.
The events of 1994 are not the only challenge for the justice system in Rwanda; other problems must also be addressed, including crimes committed by the FPR.

Donors must co-ordinate their administration and policies. Critical financial and political support for gacaca must be placed in a wider context and accompanied by ongoing support for other programmes in Rwanda. Policy implications of this paper are:

Central monitoring and management structures offer a means to deal with the basic uncertainties of the gacaca experiment and to combat local abuses.
Investment in social services and primary and secondary education could be an alternative to direct forms of compensation to genocide survivors as well as a way of improving the lives of all Rwandans.

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Source: Uvin, P. 2000, 'The Introduction of a Modernized Gacaca for Judging Suspects of Participation in the Genocide and the Massacres of 1994 in Rwanda', a discussion paper prepared for the Belgian Secretary of State for Development Cooperation
Author: The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, http://www.fletcher.tufts.edu/