Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-t6hkb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T03:05:17.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Ariel Meyerstein
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article recounts a clash between an establishment international nongovernmental organization (NGO), Amnesty International, and the government of Rwanda over the meaning of international human rights norms in a postconflict society. It offers a critical perspective on the mainstream human rights community's due process critique of Rwanda's gacaca—a system of over ten thousand local judicial bodies modeled on a precolonial communal dispute resolution the Rwandan government introduced to process the over one hundred twenty thousand suspects crowding its prisons following the 1994 genocide. This moment of norm contestation offers a lens to broader problems facing the human rights regime. It argues that Amnesty International's legalistic approach to the gacaca prevents it from appreciating its unique postcolonial hybrid form, and that other approaches, such as the one adopted by Penal Reform International, are perhaps better models for human rights praxis in the developing world.

Type
2006 Graduate Student Paper Competition: The Winning Essays
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , Spring 2007 , pp. 467 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2007 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Alston, Philip. 1991. Book Review: Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice, By Jack Donnelly. American Journal of International Law, 85:214–16.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Jose E. 1999. Crimes of State/Crimes of Hate: Lessons from Rwanda. Yale Journal of International Law 24:365–483.Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2002. Rwanda—Gacaca: A question of justice. http://web.amnesty. org/library/index/engafr470072002 (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2004a. Rwanda: The Enduring Legacy of the Genocide and War. http://web.amnesty. org/library/index/engafr470082004 (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2004b. Press Release: Rwanda Government Slams Door on Political Life and Civil Society. http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/rwanda/document.do?id=80256DD400782B8480256EAE004DBE42 (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Amnesty International. 2004c. Rwanda: Deeper into the Abyss—Waging War on Civil Society. http://www.amnestyusa. org/countries/rwanda/document.do?id=80256DD400782B8480256EC900405DD4 (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Anghie, Antony. 1999. Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law. Harvard International Law Journal 40:1–79.Google Scholar
An-Na'im, Abdullahi A. 2001. The Legal Protection of Human Rights in Africa, In Human Rights: Concepts, Contests, Contingencies, ed. Sarat, Austin and Kearns, Thomas. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Asiinwe, Arthur. 2005. 36,000 genocide suspects freed from Rwandan jails. The Independent (London), July 30 and 31.Google Scholar
Barnett, Michael. 2003. Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Joanne R., and Bell, Daniel A., ed. 1999. Introduction. In The East Asian Challenge For Human Rights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Boraine, Alex. 2000. The Language of Potential. In After the TRC: Reflections on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. James, Wilmot and Van De Vijver, Linda. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Borden, Anthony. 2002. Milosevic at the Bar. The Nation, April 2.Google Scholar
Borland, Rosilyne M. 2003. The Gacaca Tribunals and Rwanda After Genocide: Effective Restorative Community Justice or Further Abuse of Human Rights? Swords and Ploughshares, A Journal of International Affairs, Fall. http://www.american.edu/sis/students/sword/Current_Issue/essay1.pdf (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1987. The Force of Law. Hastings Law Journal 38:805–53.Google Scholar
Chakravarty, Anuradha. 2006. Gacaca Courts in Rwanda: Explaining Divisions within the Human Rights Community. Yale Journal of International Affairs (Winter/Spring 2006): 132–45.Google Scholar
Chanock, Martin. 1985. Law, Custom, and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chirwa, Danwood Mzikenge. 2002. Toward Revitalizing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in Africa: Social and Economic Rights Action Centre and the Center for Economic and Social Rights v. Nigeria, Human Rights Brief 10 (1): 14. http://www.wcl.american.edu/hrbrief/10/1africa.cfm (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Cobban, Helena. 2002a. The Legacies of Collective Violence. The Boston Review, April/May.Google Scholar
Cobban, Helena. 2002b. Helena Cobban Replies. Boston Review, Summer.Google Scholar
Cover, Robert M. 1983. Foreword: Nomos and Narrative. Harvard Law Review 97:4–68.Google Scholar
Danner, Allison Marston, and Martinez, Jenny S., 2005. Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility, and the Development of International Criminal Law. California Law Review 93:75–169.Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison. 1999. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Des Forges, Alison, and Longman, Timothy. 2004. Legal Responses to Genocide in Rwanda. In My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, ed. Stover, Eric and Weinstein, Harvey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Drumbl, Mark. 1998. Rule of Law Amid Lawlessness: Counseling the Accused in Rwanda's Domestic Genocide Trials. Columbia Human Rights Law Review 29:545–638.Google Scholar
Drumbl, Mark. 2000. Punishment, Postgenocide: From Guilt to Shame to Civis in Rwanda. New York University Law Review 75:1221–1326.Google Scholar
Drumbl, Mark. 2005. Collective Violence and Individual Punishment: The Criminality of Mass Atrocity. Northwestern University Law Review 99:539–610.Google Scholar
Du Toit, André. 2000. The Moral Foundations of the South African TRC—Truth as Acknowledgment, Justice as Reconciliation. In Truth v. Justice: the Morality of Truth Commissions, ed. Rotberg, Robert I. and Thompson, Dennis. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fanon, Frantz. 1965. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fletcher, Laurel E. 2005. From Indifference to Engagement: Bystanders and International Criminal Justice. Michigan Journal International Law 26:1013–1095.Google Scholar
Fourcade, Marion, and Savelsberg, Joachim J. 2006. Introduction: Global Processes, National Institutions, Local Bricolage: Shaping Law in an Era of Globalization. Law & Social Inquiry 31 (3): 513–19.Google Scholar
Garth, Bryant. 2006. Introduction: Taking New Legal Realism to Transnational Issues and Institutions. Law & Social Inquiry 31 (4): 939–45.Google Scholar
Gasiberege, Simon, and Babalola, Stella. 2001. Perceptions about the Gacaca Law in Rwanda. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University. http://www.jhuccp.org/pubs/sp/19/English/19.pdf (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Githae, Muturi. 2004. Gacaca courts undertaking to hasten trials. The New Times, October.Google Scholar
Goldstein-Bolocan, Maya. 2004. Rwandan Gacaca: An Experiment in Transitional Justice. Journal of Dispute Resolution, 355–400.Google Scholar
Hathaway, Oona A. 2002. Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference? Yale Law Journal 111:1935–2041.Google Scholar
Hayner, Priscilla. 2001. Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hirondelle News Agency. 2007a. Rwanda/Gacacas—2006: General Opening of the Semi-Traditional Tribunals, Hirondelle News Agency, January 1.Google Scholar
Hirondelle News Agency. 2007b. Rwanda/Gacaca—177 Genocide Survivors and Witnesses Murdered. Hirondelle News Agency, January 31.Google Scholar
Hirondelle News Agency. 2007c. Rwanda/Gacaca—Gacaca Results Presented to Cherie Blair, Hirondelle News Agency, February 22.Google Scholar
Hochschild, Adam. 1998. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Howard, Rhoda. 1983. The Full-Belly Thesis: Should Economic Rights Take Priority Over Civil and Political Rights? Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa. Human Rights Quarterly 5:467–90.Google Scholar
Human Rights Watch. 2006. Essential Background: Overview of Human Rights Issues in Rwanda, Dec. 31, 2005. New York: Human Rights Watch.Google Scholar
Human Rights Committee. 1984. ICCPR General Comment 13: Equality before the courts and the rights to a fair trial and public hearing by an independent court established by law (Art. 14).Google Scholar
Jaspers, Karl. 1961. The Question of German Guilt. Trans. Ashton, E.B. New York: Capricorn Books.Google Scholar
Karekezi, Urusaro Alice, Nshimiyimana, Alphonse, and Mutamba, Beth. 2004. Localizing Justice: gacaca courts. In My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, ed. Stover, Eric and Weinstein, Harvey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, David. 2001. The International Human Rights Movement: Part of the Problem? Harvard Human Rights Journal 15:99–125.Google Scholar
Kippenberg, Juliane. 2004. Rwanda Still in Our Human Rights Blindspot. The Observer, July 25.Google Scholar
Klug, Heinz. 2002. Hybrid(ity) Rules: Creating Local Law in a Globalized World. In Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation, and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy, ed. Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Kutz, Christopher C. 2000. Complicity: Ethics and Law for a Collective Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Longman, Timothy, Phuong, Pham, and Harvey, M. Weinstein. 2004. Connecting Justice to Human Experience: Attitudes Toward Accountability and Reconciliation in Rwanda. In My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity, ed. Stover, Eric and Weinstein, Harvey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001. When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Melvern, Linda. 2004. Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide and the International Community. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally. 1988. Legal Pluralism. Law & Society Review 22:869–96.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 2006. New Legal Realism and the Ethnography of Transnational Law. Law & Social Inquiry 31 (4): 939–95.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1974. Up the Anthropologist—Perspectives from Studying Up. In Reinventing Anthropology, ed. Hymes, Dell. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura. 1980. The Vertical Slice: Hierarchies and Children. In Hierarchy and society: Anthropological Perspectives on Bureaucracy, ed. Britan, G. M. and Cohen, R. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues.Google Scholar
Nader, Laura, and Todd, Henry, eds. 1978. Introduction. In The Disputing Process: Law in Ten Societies. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
National Service of Gacaca Jurisdictions. 2006. Gacaca jurisdictions: achievements, problems, and future prospects. http://www.inkikogacaca.gov.rw/En/EnIntroduction.htm (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Nino, Carlos. 1991. The Duty to Prosecute Past Abuses of Human Rights Put into Context, Yale Law Journal 100:2619–40.Google Scholar
Nisbitt, Nick, 2000. Negritude, The African Writers Index. http://www.geocities.com/africanwriters/origins.html#negritude (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
Oloka-Onyango, J. 2003. Reinforcing Marginalized Rights in an Age of Globalization: International Mechanisms, Non-State Actors, and the Struggle for Peoples’ Rights in Africa. American University International Law Review 18:851–913.Google Scholar
Orentlicher, Diane. 1991a. Settling Accounts: The Duty to Prosecute Human Rights Violations of a Prior Regime–Comment/reply. Yale Law Journal 100:2537–2615.Google Scholar
Orentlicher, Diane. 1991b. A Reply to Professor Nino. Yale Law Journal 100:2641–43.Google Scholar
Osiel, Mark, 2005. The Banality of Good: Aligning Incentives Against Mass Atrocity. Columbia Law Review 105:1751–1861.Google Scholar
Ouguergouz, Fatsah. 2003. The African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: A Comprehensive Agenda for Human Dignity and Sustainable Democracy in Africa. New York: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2002a. Gacaca juridictions and its preparations July–December 2001.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2002b. Report III: April–June 2002.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2003. Report IV: The guilty plea procedure, cornerstone of the Rwandan justice system, January.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2004a. Kibuye Report II: Gacaca and Reconciliation: Kibuye Case Study, May.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2004b. Research Report on the Gacaca Report VI: From Camp to Hill, the Reintegration of Prisoners, May.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2004c. Kibuye Report III: The Righteous: between oblivion and reconciliation? Example of the province of Kibuye, November.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2005. Report VII: Integrated Report on Gacaca Research and Monitoring Pilot Phase January 2002–December 2004, December.Google Scholar
Penal Reform International. 2006. Report VIII: Monitoring and Research Report on the Gacaca Information—Gathering during the National Phase, June.Google Scholar
Prunier, Gerard. 1995. The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Rajapool, Balakrishnan. 2003. International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip. 1990. LeGacaca ou la justice du Gazon au Rwanda. Politique Africaine 40:31–41.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip. 1992. The Dual Legal System in Belgian Central Africa (Zaire-Rwanda-Burundi). In European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th and 20th Century Africa and Asia, ed. Mommsen, W. J. and De Moor, J. A. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Reyntjens, Filip. 2004. Rwanda: From Genocide to Dictatorship. African Affairs 103:177–210.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 2000. The Network Inside Out. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 2006. Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage. American Anthropologist 108 (1): 52–65.Google Scholar
Roght-Ariaza, Naomi, and Gibson, Lauren. 1998. The Developing Jurisprudence on Amnesty. Human Rights Quarterly 20 (4): 843–85.Google Scholar
Roth, Kenneth, and Des Forges, Alison. 2002. Justice or Therapy? Boston Review, Summer.Google Scholar
Rouland, N. 1994. Legal Anthropology. Trans. Planel, Philippe G. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sachs, Albie. 2000. His Name Was Henry. In After the TRC: Reflection on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. James, Wilmot and Van de Vijver, Linda. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. 1978. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Kearns, Thomas R., eds. 2001. The Unsettled Status of Human Rights: An Introduction. In Human Rights: Concepts, Contests, Contingencies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Sarkin, Jeremy. 2001. The Tension Between Justice and Reconciliation in Rwanda: Politics, Human Rights Due Process and the Role of the Gacaca Courts in Dealing With the Genocide. Journal of African Law 45:143–72.Google Scholar
Sarkin, Jeremy. 2005. Genocide Trials and Gacaca Courts. Journal of International Criminal Justice 3:879–95.Google Scholar
Scharf, Michael C., 1996. Swapping Amnesty for Peace. Texas International Law Journal 31:1–41.Google Scholar
Shestack, Jerome J. 2000. Book Review and Note: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent, by Johannes Morsink. American Journal of International Law 94:600–03.Google Scholar
Supreme Court of Rwanda—Département des Jurisdictions Gacaca. 2003. Mise au point au sujet du rapport et différentes correspondances d'Amnesty International [Developments on the subject of the report and different correspondences of Amnesty International].Google Scholar
Teitel, Ruti G. 2003. Transitional Justice Genealogy. Harvard Human Rights Journal 16:69–94.Google Scholar
The New Times. 2006. Traditional Courts Jail over 800, acquits 700 over genocide, Aug. 6.Google Scholar
Tully, L. Danielle. 2003. Human Rights Compliance and the Gacaca Jurisdictions in Rwanda. Boston College International & Comparative Law Review 26:385–414.Google Scholar
Tyler, Tom R. 2004. Procedural Justice. In The Blackwell Companion to Law and Society, ed. Sarat, Austin. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
United Nations Integrated Regional Integrated Network. 2005. Genocide Convicts Begin Community Service, September 23. http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=49201&SelectRegion=Great_Lakes&SelectCountry=RWANDA (accessed January 27, 2007).Google Scholar
United Nations Integrated Regional Information Network. 2006. Thousands of Genocide Suspects to Be Sentenced to Community Service, Sept. 21.Google Scholar
Uvin, Peter. 2003. Case Study: The Gacaca Tribunals in Rwanda. In Reconciliation After Violent Conflict—A Handbook. International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.Google Scholar
Uvin, Peter. 2004. Human Rights and Development. Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press.Google Scholar
Uvin, Peter, and Mironko, Charles. 2003. Western and Local Approaches to Justice in Rwanda. Global Governance 9:219–31.Google Scholar
Van Zyl Slabbert, Fredrik, 2001. Truth without Reconciliation, Reconciliation without Truth. In After the TRC: Reflection on Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa, ed. James, Wilmot and Van de Vijver, Linda. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Van Zyl, Paul 1999. Dilemmas of Transitional Justice: The Case of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Journal of International Affairs 52:647–68.Google Scholar
Waldorf, Lars. 2006. Mass Justice for Mass Atrocity: Rethinking Local Justice as Transitional Justice. Temple Law Review 79:1–87.Google Scholar
Wa Mutua, Makua. Savages, Victims, and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights. Harvard International Law Journal 42:201–45.Google Scholar
Wierzynska, Aneta. 2004. Note: Consolidating Democracy Through Transitional Justice: Rwanda's Gacaca Courts. New York University Law Review 79:1934–69.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard A., ed. 1997. Introduction. In Human Rights, Culture & Context: Anthropological Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, Richard A., ed. 2001. The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Zorbas, Eugema. 2004. Reconciliation in Post-genocide Rwanda. African Journal of Legal Studies 29:40–52.Google Scholar

Statutes Cited

Constitution of the Republic of Rwanda, adopted by Referendum of 26 May 2003, confirmed by the Supreme Court ruling No. 772/14.06/2003 of July 6, 2003.Google Scholar
Organic Law No. 08/9 of 30/8/1996 Establishing the Organization of Prosecutions for Offenses Constituing the Crime of Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity Committed Since October 1, 1990, in Journal Officiel, Sept. 1, 1996.Google Scholar
Organic Law No. 40/2000 Of 26/01/2001 Setting Up “Gacaca Jurisdictions” and Organizing Prosecutions for Offences Constituting the Crime of Genocide or Crimes Against Humanity Committed Between October 1, 1990 and December 31, 1994.Google Scholar
Organic Law No.16/2004 of 19/6/2004 Establishing The Organisation, Competence and Functioning of Gacaca Courts Charged with Prosecuting and Trying the Perpetrators of the Crime of Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity, Committed Between October 1, 1990, and December 31, 1994.Google Scholar
Presidential Order No. 12/01 of 26/6/2001 Establishing Modalities for Organizing Elections of Members of “Gacaca Jurisdictions” Organs.Google Scholar

Treaties Cited

African [Banjul] Charter on Human and People's Rights, June 27, 1981, art. 7, O.A.U. Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3 Rev. 5 [hereinafter Banjul Charter].Google Scholar
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N. GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 999 U.N.T.S. 171, entered into force Mar. 23, 1976.Google Scholar
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. G.A. Res. 2200A (XXI), 21 U.N.GAOR Supp. (No. 16) at 49, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966), 993 U.N.T.S. 3, entered into force Jan. 3, 1976.Google Scholar