Rwanda

Provides a listing of articles on restorative justice developments in Rwanda. Articles appear in the order in which they were added to the site with the most recent appearing first.

Learning from Rwanda

from the article by John H. Stanfield, II in Tikkun: ....How do you mend a country when intimates killed intimates in such tightly knitted communities? How do you do justice when thousands of people were perpetrators and where you only have so much prison space? How do you do it? Rwanda is doing it through a largely homegrown restorative justice methodology.

Reconciliation Village Hosts Victims, Perpetrators of Rwandan Genocide

From the article by Zack Baddorf on Voice of America News: It's been more than 16 years since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda that left about 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus dead. Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who was re-elected in August with 93 percent of the vote, says now there are no longer Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda, only Rwandans. As a test of how well the different ethnic groups can live together, victims and perpetrators of the genocide are living side-by-side in a small community known as the Reconciliation Village.

Truth and reconciliation at a price

from the article by Phil Clark on Radio Netherlands Worldwide: The societal impact of gacaca on post-genocide Rwanda has been highly variable. Gacaca’s volatility results from the enormous number of communities involved, which themselves vary greatly in terms of their experiences of the genocide and the nature of inter-ethnic relations today. Over the last nine years, gacaca has recorded two principal successes and confronted two main challenges. First, gacaca has proven remarkably successful at expediting the post-genocide justice process, delivering accountability for hundreds of thousands of génocidaires. In the process, it has commuted many convicted perpetrators’ sentences to overcome the problem of overcrowded prisons and facilitated the reintegration of most detainees into everyday society. Thus, the Rwandan government will soon have delivered on its promise of comprehensive prosecutions of those responsible for committing genocide crimes but without recreating the problem of overcrowded jails that necessitated gacaca in the first place....

Trauma care in April

from the Prison Fellowship Rwanda blog: The month of April is a very difficult time for most Rwandans. April 7, 2010 marks the sixteenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, where over one million Rwandans were killed in just under 100 days. Sixteen years after the genocide is not a long time, and memories of the pain and loss are still raw and fresh in the minds of thousands of Rwandans. Many Rwandan survivors suffer from trauma and traumatic episodes during the period of April as they remember the horrific crimes experienced against them.

A safe place to call home: Securing the right of Rwandan genocide survivors to resettlement outside Rwanda

from Noam Schimmel's article in The Journal Of Humanitarian Assistance: Genocide survivors in Rwanda have great difficulty receiving refugee status and right of asylum to allow them to settle outside of the country. The standard reply that they receive when making queries about the possibility of immigrating to Europe, Canada, or the United States is that there is no longer persecution on the basis of ethnicity in Rwanda, and thus there is no legal merit to their request. It is true that there is no government sanctioned persecution on the basis of ethnicity in Rwanda today. However, social persecution, discrimination, marginalization, threats, and intimidation towards survivors of the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi prevail on a popular level amongst many Rwandans. Genocide survivors are targeted for physical and psychological torture and have been attacked and killed in various parts of the country. Fifteen years after the genocide many lack physical and psychological security.

Restorative justice and the Rwandan genocide

from Lisa Rea's interview with Dan Van Ness in UNICRI's Freedom from Fear magazine: Do you see healing occurring in the victims? And in the offenders as well? How does the community respond? The healing process is a long and involved one. I think that Umuvumu Tree Project has helped in that process in several ways.

Forgiveness: Human or Divine?

from Josh Ruxin's entry on Huffington Post: Earlier this month the film As We Forgive, a documentary about Rwanda, was released on DVD (check out the trailer here). It does not chronicle the 1994 genocide, but what has come after: Rwanda's struggle to rebuild itself.

Interview with Pierre Allard on Rwanda and DRC

Following are three video segments of an interview with Pierre Allard on the television programme 100 Huntley Street. Pierre Allard was formerly Chaplain General and Assistant Commissioner of Corrections Canada. Since his retirement he and his wife Judy have been living and working in Rwanda and the eastern part of Democratic Republic of Congo.

Book Review: As We Forgive

 

How restorative is Rwanda's justice?

From Ben Buchwalter's entry on Mother Jones: With the help of $44 million from the US government, Rwanda decided last week to extend its multi-layered judicial system for another year. The system is comprised of an international criminal tribunal for the most heinous criminals associated with the 1994 genocide, and the semi-traditional gacaca courts, which practice restorative justice on the community level. The extension has been praised because it gives the government a chance to determine the innocence or guilt of many of the alleged criminals that remain untried. But Hutus claim that the Rwandan government is partial to the country's Tutsi minority—largely the victims of the 1994 genocide—and that the process is fueled by revenge, not justice. Is the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) government manipulating the courts for its own political and ethnic gain with US dollars?

PF Rwanda's Reconciliation Work

This 2003 video explores the reconciliation work of Prison Fellowship Rwanda.

Ridell, Jennifer. Addressing Crimes Against International Law: Rwanda’s Gacaca in Practice

Rwanda experienced horrific genocide in 1994. In its aftermath, national and international trials were established but these trials failed to deal expeditiously with the large numbers of suspects awaiting trial. To combat this, Rwanda introduced an innovative participative justice mechanism, Gacaca. Modern Gacaca is based on a traditional Rwandan restorative justice mechanism of the same name. Its rooting in Rwanda's history makes Gacaca a much more acceptable form of justice to the Rwandan people than international trials given the international community's abandonment of Rwanda during the genocide. While Gacaca falls short of many international fair trial standards it remains Rwanda’s best hope as a wholly Rwandan process. But, Gacaca is more than just a judicial instrument, it has restorative justice at its origin and seeks, as its ultimate aim, to reconcile Rwanda’s divided communities. To reach this aim, Gacaca has several other objectives including discovering the truth of what happened in 1994, ending impunity which has plagued Rwanda since independence and allowing the Rwandan population to participate in the search for justice at a local level. This thesis studies the importance of these aims to Gacaca and whether the Gacaca courts are meeting their optimistic objectives in order to evaluate whether Gacaca is succeeding in Rwanda. Research was conducted through interviews throughout Rwanda and much civil society research was studied as well as material discussing the objectives from a more conceptual perspective. Gacaca's potential is outstanding and its objectives all play a very important role which, if met, will secure a much more stable future for Rwanda. In practice, however, these objectives are not being met. The population is not actively participating in the trials thus the truth is not aired. Moreover, the perception of victor's justice hampers the ability of Gacaca to end impunity in Rwanda.

Thomson, Susan and Nagy, Rosemary. Law, power and justice: What legalism fails to address in the functioning of Rwanda's Gacaca courts.

In this article, we untangle the relationships among law, power and justice as they impact on the lives of ordinary Rwandans brought into contact with the state and local officials through the gacaca process. Drawing on 37 life-history interviews conducted in 2006, we find that gacaca reinforces a particular version of postgenocide justice that renders the average Rwandan citizen largely powerless over individual processes of reconciliation while serving to maintain a climate of fear and insecurity in their everyday lives. Locating the Rwandan case more broadly, we caution that a preoccupation with harmonizing traditional justice with international standards must look beyond forms of legality. While gacaca may be legally acceptable in a harmonized way, it is both a product and a producer of relations of state power that operate to impact negatively on conflict-affected individuals who bear the brunt of government-led initiatives to promote justice and reconciliation. (author's abstract)

Penal Reform International. Rapport de monitoring et de recherche sur la Gacaca: Les témoignages et la preuve devant les juridictions Gacaca

This latest report from the gacaca monitoring project deals with the issues surrounding testimony, evidence-giving and proof in the gacaca courts. In effect, the whole gacaca justice system relies on witness statements and oral accounts of events – accounts which can be distorted by the passing of time, corrupted by the desire for retribution or curtailed for the sake of expediency. This report looks in detail at the difficulties which have arisen in uncovering the ‘truth’ of the genocide and the effect the gacaca testimonies continue to have on those seeking justice and reconciliation. (publisher's abstract)

. Justice and reconciliation in Rwanda: What role for civil society?

Civil society was not really involved in the design of TJ mechanisms in Rwanda. NURC was already planned by the Arusha Agreement in 1993; it thus did not appear necessary to the government to discuss this issue with civil society. The creation of gacaca was not the result of an open dialogue either. Discussions were limited to a small committee of “wise men”. Civil society only became involved at the beginning of the functioning of the gacaca, either to reach out to the population or to protest against some aspects of the institution. It did, however, play an important part in the follow-up of gacaca trials, including through monitoring programs or advocacy, making sure of their fairness and efficiency. Greater attention has been given to gacaca now that its closing is imminent10. If the formula seems like a lesser evil given material constraints, it has been presented as an “emergency solution”11, which is sometimes qualified as an “insult to human rights”12. To many observers, the absence of real lawyers in the defense of the accused and the lack of competence and professionalism of the judges do not guarantee a fair trial. (excerpt)

Niyongabo, Adrien. Love Has Replaced Hatred: A Visit to Gitega, Burundi Prison

A group of people from the town of Mutaho, Burundi (a town that was effectively destroyed during the period of ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis), went to visit the men who had killed their families who were now imprisoned. For them it was an opportunity for reconciliation and a chance to build trust that transcends ethnic division.

. Social work with victims of genocide: The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) in Rwanda.

Reconciliation is a multi-dimensional process that has increased in importance in countries dealing with post-conflict situations, and as a result social workers have the opportunity to support reconciliation. This article looks at reconciliation and the intervention of the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), giving an example from Rwanda. (author's abstract)

Meyerstein, Ariel. Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality.

This article recounts a clash between an establishment international nongovernmental organization (NGO), Amnesty International, and the government of Rwanda over the meaning of international human rights norms in a postconflict society. It offers a critical perspective on the mainstream human rights community’s due process critique of Rwanda’s gacaca— a system of over ten thousand local judicial bodies modeled on a precolonial communal dispute resolution the Rwandan government introduced to process the over one hundred twenty thousand suspects crowding its prisons following the 1994 genocide. This moment of norm contestation offers a lens to broader problems facing the human rights regime. It argues that Amnesty International’s legalistic approach to the gacaca prevents it from appreciating its unique postcolonial hybrid form, and that other approaches, such as the one adopted by Penal Reform International, are perhaps better models for human rights praxis in the developing world. (author's abstract)

Feliciati, Clara Chapdelaine. Restorative Justice for the Girl Child in Post-conflict Rwanda.

The girl child suffers from both sexism and “childism” for she is at the intersection of women’s rights and children’s rights. The question of her fate in post-conflict Rwanda is particularly crucial for during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, she suffered egregious sexual violence based on gender regardless of her age. Not only were two-year old girls raped, but there was a clear intention to make women and girls suffer differently from men and boys: while the latter were killed rapidly with a single shot or machete stroke, girl children and women were mutilated, tortured and left to die slowly. However, to focus solely on the sexual abuse of girl children in conflict hinders other aspects of the discrimination they undergo in numerous areas of their daily lives. Our hypothesis is that the sexual violence suffered by girl children during the genocide can be seen as emblematic of a general pattern of sexual discrimination in Rwandan society which was unleashed by the exacerbation of the ethnic conflict. Based on this premise, Rwanda will be studied as a case in point by defining the girl child in that specific context and suggesting a restorative approach to her fate. First, this article will study the status of the girl child in international law. Second, it will examine her status in Rwanda before and during the genocide, as well as in the transitional or post-conflict society she dwells in today. Finally, this article will provide recommendations for her healing through a “childered” and gendered approach to recovery by establishing a restorative paradigm in terms of safety, remembrance, and reconnection. (excerpt)

Yeomans, Peter and Niyongabo, Adrien. "I Still Believe There is Good in All People": An Evaluation of the Alternatives to Violence Project in Rwanda

"The Alternative to Violence Project (AVP) began in 1975, when a group of inmates near New York city asked a local Quaker group to provide them with non-violence training. Highly experiential in nature, the workshop encourages participants to recognize that they can best find their own answers to the conflicts they encounter. A three-day workshop focuses on the following themes: Affirmation of ourselves and others, Co-operation, Community skills, Communication, and Conflict resolution....With my almost two years involvement in AVP as facilitator, I have been discovering, for myself how the program is capable of guiding one in his inner change especially in time of conflicts. Sitting beside and listening to those who shared during the interview, that fact brought more light and excitement to my commitment to AVP. The deep transformations that occurred in people's minds and hearts were revealed through out their ways of thinking, acting and believing as they expressed themselves. They were eager to testify to how many people have greatly benefited from a humble and simple program such as AVP, carried by dedicated facilitators. A few readers of the report may feel that some of the quotes were to please the interviewers but it should be known that there were many more emotions that can not be put on the paper but which further convinced me of the truthfulness of the stories." (excerpt)