The courts of genocide: politics and the rule of law in Rwanda and Arusha, by Nicholas A. Jones (original) (raw)

2011

Abstract

Rwanda’s 1994 genocide lasted only three months, yet a staggering number of citizens were murdered (estimates range between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people), mostly by machete. Much of this mass killing occurred in communities, with neighbor killing neighbor. Victims were killed in their homes, farms, and (quite commonly) their churches. After the genocide, Rwanda was faced with the Herculean task of holding trials for over 100,000 of its citizens. Clearly, this would not be possible using the regular judiciary system, which was incapable of trying so many cases and had lost approximately 75% of its judges in the genocide. Simply put, the country needed to dramatically revise the traditional methods for bringing such cases to trial. Because the mass murder in Rwanda took place in communities, the government chose to process most criminal cases using community-based courts. In The Courts of Genocide, Nicholas Jones reviews the process by which these courts were created, and other how other formalized courts (specifically, the Rwandan National Judiciary and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda or ICTR) were used to handle the most egregious of cases. Jones also discusses the process by which a legal system was created to handle the unique situation in Rwanda, as well as the method by which law was created with substantial input from the community rather than legislators. In short, Rwanda’s community came together to create the legal basis and the process for trying offenders. Rather than a simple review of Rwanda’s court system in the aftermath of the genocide, Dr. Jones interweaves two major themes throughout his discussion. First, it is apparent that the culture of Rwanda, with a heavy focus on community governance and civil responsibility, must dictate the types of legal systems used to try and punish offenders. This includes the importance of responsive regulation as a method of creating law and dictating punishments, and the degree to which a liberal-legalistic framework is adopted to try cases. Second, he incorporates a discussion of the “culture of impunity” that existed prior to the genocide, in which violence against ethnic minorities (mostly Tutsi) was allowed to continue without punishment. Jones spends a significant amount of time in his book tracing the creation of the gacaca courts. These community-based courts are relatively unique to Rwanda – “judges” are selected from the population based on their perceived wisdom and fairness. The use of these courts allowed for regional variations in justice, and they were also able to handle far more cases than the formal courts. The use of community-based courts serves to facilitate restorative justice as well as community service – an important part of Rwandan culture. Given the number of community members needed for the gacaca courts to operate, one can see how a focus on community service is necessary to implement a community-based solution on this scale.

Nicholas A. Jones hasn't uploaded this paper.

Let Nicholas A. know you want this paper to be uploaded.

Ask for this paper to be uploaded.