ABSTRACT
Decentralized mediation is a lens through which the judicial and administrative structures in the Rwandan context must be analyzed. For more than a decade, the Rwandan state has been experimenting with legal institutional designs. Some of these experiments were radically innovative, while others were crafted explicitly on the basis of customary legal formats. Consequently, recreations of hybrid judicial norms alongside administrative reforms characterize continuous forms of experimentations and adaptations in the Rwandan legal laboratory where the phenomenon and practice of mediation continues to play a significant role. What is more to experimenting with elements of restorative justice is a convolution of elementary forms of a range of justice repertoires. The question that comes up is whether restorative justice approaches should be integral to any or so called conventional legal processes – in a supplementary or substitutional way.
