The Gacaca Court System

The Gacaca 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 800,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered.

Traditional Gacaca
Gacaca, which literally means a grassy space, is commonly associated with the activities that used to take place in any open-air, grassy areas, such as the discussion and resolution of problems within the community. In the event of a conflict within the community, the parties involved in the conflict would be heard and judged by an assembly of inyangamugayo. These were individuals whose status of inyangamugayo was acquired by virtue of their probity, old age, erudition, wisdom in decision-making, altruism or political or economic influence within the community Sentences were assigned according to the nature of the act committed by the guilty party and always involved reparations to the damaged party. Sentences were assigned according to the nature of the act committed by the guilty party and always involved reparations to the damaged party. The responsibility for a wrong committed was shared by all members of the clan or family to which the individual belonged. If both parties agreed to the terms of reparation, they would share a drink as a symbolic gesture of agreement. When the crime was judged to be too serious for reparation to be an adequate sentence, the judgment could call for ostracism of the members of the particular clan or family associated with the wrongdoer or defendant. As the Gacaca rules were never written, they were passed down orally from generation to generation as part of the social education of all Rwandans.

Traditional Gacaca (cont.)

Conflicts within the community were not fragmented, but approached holistically, which was seen to facilitate reconciliation. For example, the offending partys responsibility for repairing his wrong was also borne by his family members, thus creating a distributive characteristic which extended individual misconduct to the offender's family or clan, causing blame and guilt to be associated with or shared by those connected to the primary offender. Thus, the responsibility for correcting and repairing relationships became a collective undertaking.

Modern Gacaca
The modern-day Gacaca is still a collective effort, and indeed, even more so than its traditional predecessor. It depends) on the will of the current government to adhere to the principles enshrined in the actual mandate of the Gacaca Law, which is to prosecute both crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity. The idea is to let the village courts resolve these issues and hopefully provide some reconciliation. The trials are meant to promote reconciliation and justice. 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. 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 Gacaca Court Structure

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. (Intrude., National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions) There are 8,140 Gacaca courts located throughout the country. In 2002, 746 courts were experimentally established as an attempt to speed up procedures, which is currently in a state of stagnation due to lack of support and constant threats to members of the court.

The Gacaca Court Structure (cont.)

There are three levels of jurisdiction for the Gacaca Courts: 1. The Cell's Gacaca Courts, 2. The Sector's Gacaca Court, 3. The Sector's Gacaca Courts for Appeal.
These are then organized into 3 parts: A general assembly, which collects facts and establishes the lists of victims and perpetrators, among other things; The Bureau of the Gacaca jurisdiction, which is made of 19 members elected by the General Assembly; And the co-ordination committee, which is designed to coordinate the Gacaca Court's activities.

The Gacaca Court Structure (cont.)

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. Each Gacaca court has nine judges and has the power to sentence criminals up to life imprisonment, but not the death penalty.

Gacaca Court Processes

The Gacaca courts are meant to provide smaller courts to relieve the burden of the larger courts. Criminals are charged with acts against humanity, such as murder and serious assault. These courts are not allowed to try accused rapists, however. The defendant is accused and brought to trial. The trial is held in public, where survivors and the victims' families can confront the accused. The accused confess to their crimes or maintain their innocence. The villagers can either speak for or against the defendant. Since only 5% of the 120,000 imprisoned suspects had been tried as of 2005, the government is hoping the Gacaca courts can both find the guilty and provide reconciliation for those accused.

Gacaca Court Processes

The first judgment of the operational phase took place on March 11, 2005 The acquittal rate has been around 20%, questioning whether the accusations are valid. 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.

Gacaca Court Processes (cont.)

The Gacaca courts activities are organized into 3 steps: 1. Collection of information relating to the genocide 2. Categorization of persons prosecuted for having committed genocide or having played a role in different genocidal crimes. 3. Trial of cases falling under their competence (or jurisdiction).

Criticisms
Human rights groups worry about the fairness since trials are held without lawyers which means that there is less protection for defendants than in conventional courts Conventional trials have seen false accusations and intimidation of witnesses on both sides; issues of revenge have been raised as a concern. The acquittal rate has been 20 percent which suggests a large number of trials were not well-founded. Also because the trials are based on witnesses testimonies, the length of time between the crime and trial heightens the risk that the witnesses' memories will be unreliable. It has to be noted that with time, some suspects have made enemies during their spell in prisons who they have come out to later accuse not necessarily because they committed crimes but because the accusing parties see them as enemies worth serving longer or similar sentences. Obtaining evidence on this aspect is not easy as witness reports take precedence in most cases.

Quote- Alison Des Forges (Senior Human Rights Watch advisor)

"The authorities' view is that this is a quasicustomary kind of procedure, and there never used to be lawyers, so there's no need for lawyers now. The problem with that is that little is the same except for the name. In this system, there is considerable weight given to the official side. The office of the prosecutor provides considerable assistance to the bench [of judges] in terms of making its determination, so you no longer have a level playing field."

Quote (cont.)
"Obviously the problem of delivering justice after the genocide is an overwhelming problem. Gacaca may not be ideal but there is at this point no alternative.... The official explanation I think is that people did not speak openly until the Gacaca process and now many more accusations are surfacing. Also, the concession programme, which requires the naming of all those who participated along with the accused [in return for a lighter sentence], has led to a multiplication of names. "How many of these are wellfounded, what is the credibility of the evidence, these are very serious concerns."

Schabas
As Jeremy Sarkin has explained, [t]he name [gacaca] is derived from the word for lawn, referring to the fact that members of the gacaca sit on the grass when listening to and considering matters before them(p. 13). Rather than resolve the outstanding cases, and end the blight of mass, detentions under appalling conditions, the initial gacaca hearings appear to have opened a Pandoras box (p. 3).

Schabas (cont.)
Historically, it dealt mainly with disputes concerning property matters, such as inheritance and family law issues, although there is apparently some evidence of the system being used in a criminal law context. The system fell into some obscurity when European justice models were imported. Gacaca may have enjoyed some resurgence following independence, and it continued to function as a mechanism to resolve disputes on the local level, subject to review by the formal courts. Following the genocide, in 1994, the Minister of Justice proposed that gacaca be revived in order to relieve the struggling judicial system of the burden of minor cases.51

Schabas (cont.)
The categories of offender are redefined yet again. Category 1, which is excluded from the gacaca jurisdiction, has been slightly expanded to include crimes of torture, indignity to a dead body and a somewhat broader range of crimes of sexual violence. Categories 2 and 3 are merged.