Gacaca court
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The Gacaca (pronounced "gachacha") court is part of a system of community justice inspired by tradition and established in 2001 in Rwanda, in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, when between 400,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered. After the Genocide, the new Rwandan Patriotic Front's government struggled with developing just means for the humane detention and prosecution of the more than 100,000 people accused of genocide, war crimes, and related crimes against humanity. By 2000, approximately 120,000 alleged genocidaires were crammed into Rwanda's prisons and communal jails (Reyntjens & Vandeginste 2005, 110). From December 1996 to December 2006, the courts managed to try about 10,000 suspects (Human Rights Watch 2004, 18): at that rate it would take another 110 years to prosecute all the prisoners.

To speed things up, some prisoners were released: In two rounds, in 2004 and 2005, about 50,000 prisoners were released. Just recently (January 2007) it has been decided to release another 8,000 prisoners.

However, the courts needed a more expeditious means of delivering justice. In response, Rwanda implemented the Gacaca court system, which has evolved from traditional cultural communal law enforcement procedures. However, the system has come under criticism from a number of sources, including the Survivors Fund, which represents survivors of the genocide, due to the danger that it poses to survivors. There has been a number of reports about survivors being targeted for giving evidence at the courts.^[1]

Official Objectives of the Gacaca Court System

The "mission" of this system is to achieve "truth, justice, [and] reconciliation." It aims to promote community healing by making the punishment of perpetrators faster and less expensive to the state.

According to the official Rwandan government website of the National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions, the "Gacaca Courts" system has the following objectives:

• The reconstruction of what happened during the genocide
• The speeding up of the legal proceedings by using as many courts as possible
• The reconciliation of all Rwandans and building their unity

The Supreme Court [of Rwanda] has been endowed with a 6th court called "Gacaca Courts Department" in order to co-ordinate and supervise the activities of the various courts without having to interfere with the decisions that they will have to make [and] in order to keep the national as well as the international community informed about the evolution of the Gacaca Courts' activities.

Since 2002, Gacaca Courts Department was replaced by the National Service of Gacaca Courts so as to coordinate the Gacaca Courts activities and speed up this process. (Introd., National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions)

Tradition of Gacaca

Originally, the Gacaca settled village or familial disputes. They were constituted as village assemblies, presided by the ancients, where each one could ask to speak. Gacaca (Kinyarwanda) translated roughly into English means "little grass" (derived from urucaca, a kind of grass) as grass is the gathering place. The Gacaca court is thus a system of grassroots legal bodies, "inspired by tradition" (Introd.).^{citations needed}

The current Rwandan Gacaca court system, as established in March 2001, involves both plaintiffs and witnesses in an interactive court proceeding against alleged criminals who took part in the genocide.^{citations needed}

Traditionally, village elders called Inyangamugayo (Kinyarwanda for "uncorrupted" — intègre in French; inyangamugayo literally means 'those who hate evil') would convene all parties to a crime and mediate a solution involving reparations or some act of contrition.^{citations needed}

The judges now qualified as Inyangamugayo, who also have basic judicial training, are among 250,000 individuals elected by Rwandans to serve in the Gacaca courts, which are in charge of judging two (of the three) categories of people accused of implication in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.^{citations needed}

The defendants do not have lawyers, but all village people can participate and intervene, either against or in favor of the defendant.

The first judgment of the operational phase took place on March 11, 2005.^{citations needed}

Classification of crimes into four categories

The Act on the Organization and Pursuits of Crimes of Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity of August 1996 created four categories of alleged criminals:

• planners, organizers and leaders of the Genocide, charges against those who have acted in positions of authority, presumed infamous assassins as well as those alleged to have committed sexual crimes involving torture or rape, and indignity to a dead body.
• perpetrators, co-perpetrators, or accomplices of voluntary homicide or violence with the intention to cause death or serious bodily harm leading to death
• perpetrators of serious bodily injury to others without intention to murder
• perpetrators of crimes resulting in property damage.^{citations needed}

By combining the second and third category, this has been brought back to three categories.

The first category of alleged criminals (those accused of planning or leading the Genocide and those accused of torture, rape or other sexual crimes) will be (and in some cases already are) prosecuted before State (national) criminal courts. The gacaca do not have jurisdiction over crimes of the first category. The Gacaca courts will adjudicate the two other remaining categories ("simple" murder, bodily injury, property damage), which has started early 2006. Capital punishment was abolished in Rwanda in the summer of 2007.^{citations needed}

See also

• Court of law
• Crime against humanity
• Ethnic cleansing
• Genocide
• History of Rwanda
• Politics of Rwanda
• Rwandan Genocide
• Survivors Fund

External links

• National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions Official Rwandan government website.
• Transitional Justice Penal Reform International's information on the Gacaca process.
• Survivors Fund Website of the organisation representing and supporting survivors of the Rwandan genocide.
• "Rwanda Starts Prisoner Releases." Online posting. BBC News 29 July 2005.
• In Rwanda we say . . . The family that does not speak dies and Gacaca: Living Together Again in Rwanda? Two films on gacaca and the legacy of genocide in Rwanda, written and dir. by Anne Aghion.
• In the Tall Grass Film exploring gacaca and the legacy of genocide in Rwanda, written and dir. by J. Coll Metcalfe.
• Gacaca Courts in Post-Genocide Rwanda Full report on the Gacaca Courts in Rwanda by Radha Webley of UC Berkeley War Crimes Study Center 2005.

References

Harrell, Peter E., Rwanda's Gamble: Gacaca and a New Model of Transitional Justice. New York: Writer's Advantage Press, 2003.

Human Rights Watch. 2004. Struggling to Survive: Barriers to Justice for Rape Victims in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch. Available: http://hrw.org/reports/2004/rwanda0904/rwanda0904.pdf.

Reyntjens, Filip and Stef Vandeginste. 2005. "Rwanda: An Atypical Transition." In Roads to Reconciliation, edited by Elin Skaar, et al. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

• Stover, Eric and Weinstein, Harvey (2004). My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-54264-2.

Literature

Susanne Buckley-Zistel (2006): 'The Truth Heals?' Gacaca Jurisdictions and the Consolidation of Peace in Rwanda. Die Friedens-Warte Heft 1-2, pp. 113-130.

Simon Gabisirege/Stella Babalola (2001): Perceptions about the Gacaca Law in Rwanda. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.