President Kagame Discusses Gacaca Courts

In my public international law class today I taught the material from the Dunoff, Ratner and Wippman book on the Rwandan genocide and recourse to the gacaca courts. The readings focus on Amnesty International’s criticism of the gacaca system as failing to meet international minimum standards of due process for criminal defendants. Unfortunately, the book does not attempt to explain the gacaca system from the Rwandan perspective.

I thought it was therefore interesting to note that Rwandan President Paul Kagame recently had a short discussion with Pastor Rick Warren on the use of gacaca courts at a Saddleback Civil Forum held on September 25, 2009. If you go to the 47th minute you can pick up the discussion, which is well worth ten or fifteen minutes of your time. In particular, Kagame explains (1) the role of truth-telling in the gacaca system (49th minute); (2) the nexus between reconciliation and justice and the history of gacaca courts (51st minute and 1:20 minute); (3) the process of how gacaca courts function (54th minute); (4) the problems with attempting to use traditional domestic courts (56th minute); (5) the method of punishment in gacaca courts (58th minute); and (6) the role of government in promoting reconciliation; (1:00 minute).

Today in class my students read the Amnesty International excerpt from the book, then listened to Kagame’s discussion on You Tube, and then we opened up the class for discussion, which was quite lively and interesting. In light of the Amnesty report and Kagame’s discussion, several students remained strongly opposed to the gacaca system, while most appeared to think that it made good sense to utilize this approach in the Rwandan context.