The Gacaca Courts
A Way Forward for Truth and Reconciliation
In 1994 in Rwanda, Aline Umutoni was a five year old only child when she heard her father, a respected doctor, being murdered while she remained where he had hidden her, alone under a bed (Umutoni, Aline. Interview. Conducted by Emelia O’Neill. 27 June 2021). How did what she learned later from proceedings at a Rwandan gacaca community-based court, act as a “breakthrough” for her healing?
Twenty seven years ago the country of Rwanda experienced one of the deadliest genocides the world has ever seen. The Genocide Against the Tutsi was swift, personal, and brutally low tech in its execution. It is estimated that approximately one million people were horrifically murdered in the span of only three months from April to June of 1994. The vast majority of the victims were minority Tutsis, while those executing the genocide were from the Hutu majority. The Rwandan government was able to incite mass civilian participation in the genocide so much so that it has been estimated that approximately one million people participated in the genocide ,“with an estimated 200,000 doing the actual killing.” (Miller, Kenneth. "Are They Forgivable? In a national act of redemption, Rwanda aims to embrace 30,000 perpetrators of mass ethnic slaughter now returning home." Edited by Pam Weintraub. aeon.com, 7 Dec. 2015, aeon.com. Accessed 18 Nov. 2019).
Tragically, Tutsis were targeted for killing and murdered by their own work colleagues, neighbors, friends, and even Hutu members of their own family. The weapons of choice were often machetes and nail studded clubs; and the killings were deeply personal and cruel. Oftentimes, the places that Tutsis fled to for protection, such as churches and United Nations camps, not only did not offer protection but served to facilitate more murders as Tutsis were all gathered in one locale. Rape of women was also used as weapon of the genocide. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Tutsi women were raped during the genocide, and that 70% of rape survivors were found to have contracted HIV. (Kolluri, Katya. “The Rwandan Genocide: Rape and HIV Used as Weapons of War” Global Justice Center. July 18, 2018. globaljusticecenter.net/blog/937-the-rwandan-genocide-rape-and-hiv-used-as-weapons-of-war).
In the aftermath of the genocide, the new Rwandan government vowed that there would be justice for the victims, yet the judicial system was completely overwhelmed. There is no country in the world that would be equipped to properly administer justice for such large scale, mass violence, committed by so many people in such a short period of time; and Rwanda was no exception. In response, though, Rwanda did undertake to implement a vast array of interventions to attempt to achieve justice as well as promote reconciliation, rehabilitation, restoration, and positive community relations.
One transitional justice approach was the use of the traditional gacaca courts. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame referred to this unique approach as an “African solution to an African problem.” Gacaca literally means “justice on the grass” and was a traditional Rwandan mechanism for conflict resolution (Ingelaere, Bert. Inside Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts: Seeking Justice After Genocide. University of Wisconsin Press. 2016). The gacaca court system, involving gatherings of the local community, consisted of “12,000 community based courts” - that tried over 1.2 million cases. (https://www.hrw.org/report/2011/05/31/justice-compromised/legacy-rwandas-community-based-gacaca-courts#).
There were five recognized “goals” of the gacaca court system. Specifically, the gacaca court system sought to: “(1) establish the truth about what happened; (2) accelerate the legal proceedings for those accused of genocide crimes; (3) eradicate a culture of impunity; (4) reconcile Rwandans and reinforce their unity; and (5) use the capacities of Rwandan society to administer justice based on Rwandan custom” (Ingelaere, 4-5). In practice, Rwanda’s use of gacaca courts, involving both punishment and restorative measures, had mixed results.
The gacaca system was criticized by many on a number of grounds. Some argued that it lacked adequate due process protections for the accused (Justice Compromised The Legacy of Rwanda’s Community-Based Gacaca Courts. 2007 National University of Rwanda-Centre for Geographic Information System & RemoteSensing,www.hrw.org/report/2011/05/31/justice-compromised/legacy-rwandas-community-based-gacaca-courts). Others criticized it as a disingenuous process in terms of true reconciliation as some apologies may have been insincerely offered in exchange for a reduced sentence. Similarly, others argued that some victims were pressured to accept apologies for economic or social reasons. Despite its limitations, the gacaca system nevertheless illustrates an approach to justice which not only blended punitive measures with local conflict resolution traditions, but also prioritized the importance of victims’ rights, reconciliation, and rehabilitation.
Moreover, despite the limitations of the gacaca system, many genocide survivors remarked on the value that the gacaca proceedings personally provided to them. In many cases, genocide survivors were able to gain valuable information as to how their loved one was killed or where a loved one’s body was located. Several genocide survivors highlighted the benefits that stem from a justice system that prioritizes truth, engagement, and understanding the harm.
As Aline Umutoni was only five years old at the time of her father’s murder, she had limited information as to the truth of his murder (Umutoni). The testimony later revealed during gacaca court trials of some of her father’s murderers, however, provided her with not only valuable factual information, but it was transformational psychologically as well. Ms. Umutoni recounted how: “Gacaca was a breakthrough” as she was able to learn some of the facts of her father’s murder, when before she had only her memories of what she was able to overhear as a young child hiding from the murderers (Umutoni). Learning of the testimony in the gacaca proceedings allowed her to heal from her feelings of abandonment as, years later: “I was still that little five year old kid under the bed wondering “Why did they have to take my dad away?’. . . So gacaca was a breakthrough. . . I understood that my dad didn’t abandon me . . He was taken and killed.”
Consolee Nishimwe was fourteen years old at the time of the genocide in Rwanda. She survived along with her mother and sister, yet her beloved father and three brothers were brutally murdered. She stressed how important the traditional gacaca system of restorative justice was to Rwandan society.
“Gacaca was really important to our society. We had so many perpetrators. Our justice system was not meant to try a genocide.” Therefore, Rwanda used the gacaca system, “a traditional justice system that was used before to reconcile families. People come together in the community to reconcile” (Nishimwe).
Ms. Nishimwe stressed that in the case of her family, she believed that the apologies were sincere. Although it was traumatic for them to hear the testimony given during the gacaca trials about the deaths of their loved ones, they gained valuable information from the perpetrators. (Nishimwe). Most notably, they learned the location of the bodies of her brothers. Years after her brothers were murdered, they were able to retrieve their bodies and provide them with a proper burial. Ms. Nishimwe opined that gacaca was a “very necessary” process: “It [was] traumatizing, but at the same time, it helped with survivors finding remains of loved ones” (Nishimwe).
Although the gacaca system is generally regarded as having achieved mixed results and was not without its shortcomings, it nevertheless constituted a unique approach to transitional and restorative justice. Its innovative focus on victims’ rights, forgiveness, and reconciliation represented a restorative approach to justice and healing. For many victims, it was, as Ms. Umutoni said, a “breakthrough” for them personally. For others, like the family of Ms. Nishimwe, it provided them with valuable information to allow them to recover the bodies of their family members. President Kagame once called the gacaca system “the only way forward” and in many respects, it was just that. For many Rwandans, victims and perpetrators alike, gacaca provided a community based forum and “the only way forward” for Rwandans to unify and seek true reconciliation.
