Gacaca Court

Gacaca Court

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. 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 prisoners were released. In January 2007, another 8,000 prisoners were scheduled for release.

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. The Gacaca courts are a method of transitional justice, designed to promote healing and moving on from the crisis. Rwanda has especially focused on criminal prosecutions in the Gacaca courts, putting justice partially into the hands of the victims. 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.