Gacaca court

The term 'gacaca' can be translated as 'short grass' referring to the public space where neighborhood male elders (abagabo) used to meet to solve local problems.

[3] Scholars have shown how the courts became a critical mechanism for establishing the government's official narrative on the genocide, recognizing only Tutsi as victims and Hutu as perpetrators.

[1] Natacha Nsabimana, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago describes how the Gacaca system reinforced a temporal and social framework she termed 'genocide-time,' where "genocidal violence in the past is recounted and made agentive in the present through social interactions and choices made by political subjects in their social-political landscape."

[4] Within 17th century Rwanda, prior to colonization, the extended lineage or family (umuryango), which encompassed several households (inzu), was the main unit of social organization within Rwandan society.

The family lineage controlled arranged marriages, ancestral traditions and ceremonies, the payment or retrieval of debts, and was the primary source of security for people.

The name Gacaca is derived from the Kinyarwanda word umucaca meaning “a plant so soft to sit on that people prefer to gather on it”.

[7] This new form of justice was bold, but not unprecedented: This becomes evident when one considers the emerging numbers of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) as, for example, that in South Africa.

The slogan of the South African TRC “Revealing is Healing” and its argument that truth-telling serves as a “therapeutic function” underlies this assumption.

[8] The TRC format was suggested to the Rwandan government, but ultimately they chose to pursue mass justice through Gacaca; a system where their country had roots and familiarity.

Since it opened in 1995, the Tribunal has indicted 93 individuals whom it considered responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in Rwanda in 1994.

Through these efforts, the ICTR will fulfil its mandate of bringing justice to the victims of the Genocide and, in the process, hopes to deter others from committing similar atrocities in the future.

Scholars have shown that it became a means of silencing alternative narratives amongst the Rwandan population and effectively worked as a form of "show trial".

Naturally this is a biased source, however it is important to note that it is those most affected by the Rwandan genocide who are offering praise, citing a sense of closure, acceptance, and forgiveness following Gacaca trials.

The Gacaca trials also served to promote reconciliation by providing a means for victims to learn the truth about the death of their family members and relatives.

[11] In addition to success on a more personal level, the enormity of the operation speaks measures: More than 12,000 community-based courts tried more than 1.2 million cases throughout the country.

Senior Human Rights Watch adviser Alison Des Forges said the lack of legal representation was a serious concern.

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."

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.

In addition conventional trials have seen false accusations and intimidation of witnesses on both sides; issues of revenge have been raised as a concern.

Soldiers of the RPF, which ended the genocide in July 1994 and went on to form the current government, killed tens of thousands of people between April and December 1994.

"By removing RPF crimes from their jurisdiction, the government limited the potential of the gacaca courts to foster long-term reconciliation in Rwanda.

[12] Though Gacaca was claimed to contribute to reconciliation by the Rwandan government it functioned fundamentally as a punitive[14] form of justice which many scholars have characterized as retributive in focus rather than reconciliatory in nature.

Punishments ranged from forced labor in public works projects (TIG) to life in prison without family visits ("special measures").