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Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice
DOI link for Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice
Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice book
Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice
DOI link for Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice
Rwanda: some peace, no democracy, and the complex role of transitional justice book
ABSTRACT
Rwanda has a recent history of extraordinary collective political violence: ethnic massacres (1959), state-encouraged massacres (1963), civil war (1990-94), statesponsored genocide (1994), and post-genocide state-sponsored violence both within the country and across the border in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Transitional justice mechanisms (TJMs) have so far addressed only the 1994 genocide, in which at least half a million people perished, mostly ethnic Tutsi, or the equivalent of three-quarters of Rwanda’s minority Tutsi population at the time. 1
TJMs to deal with the genocide were established at the international level with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which had jurisdiction over the organisers and planners of the massacre. National courts (until 2001, specialised chambers) and local gacaca courts tried lower-level organisers, killers, and looters. The number of perpetrators of genocidal violence, like the number of victims, is disputed and highly politicised. A plausible estimate is around 200,000 perpetrators, by any measure a large number for a legal process to handle with appropriate speed and fairness. 2
The various TJMs have produced a significant output. There has been a large number of prosecutions, some 400,000 in the gacaca courts alone by the time the courts were terminated in June 2012. 3 The international tribunal in Arusha, in neighbouring Tanzania, had by mid-2014 completed 50 trials, with 11 in progress. What all this means in terms of social reconciliation, peace, and democracy, however, is difficult to assess.