To Repair the Irreparable: post-genocide Justice, Legal Pluralism and rule of Law

The Rwandan way to post-genocide justice has attracted the attention of scholars and international policy makers due to an unprecedented experiment based on legal pluralism: the revitalization of traditional customary courts, gacaca, adapted to the new context to cope with the legacy of the 1994 massacres. The establishment of gacaca courts (Inkiko gacaca in Kinyarwanda, to distinguish them from the traditional and informal gacaca) marked the shift from a purely retributive approach to post-genocide justice to a home-grown culture-sensitive approach. This has triggered a wide debate on the possible adoption of traditional and/or informal justice systems as an instrument of post-conflict justice. This chapter is aimed at sketching the key features of the post-genocide strategies adopted in Rwanda, while simultaneously providing insights in the debate surrounding the adoption of traditional and/or informal justice systems as transitional justice mechanism. The implications of the transitional justice policy enforced for the rule of law in Rwanda are also highlighted and assessed.status: accepte