Post‐genocide justice: The Gacaca courts

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, the crippled formal judicial system failed to administer justice in a timely manner. A modified version of the traditional Gacaca courts was introduced to hear cases from the backlog of over 100,000 genocide suspects. We find that the Gacaca courts performed well relative to the formal justice system, given the constraints faced. The Gacaca courts generated valuable information about the genocide suspects and increased access to the justice system. The introduction of the Gacaca courts improved the performance of the formal justice system and facilitated post‐conflict recovery.

Traditional law in times of the nation state: why is it so prevalent?

“…In a third situation, a state might exist and its legislation might even be in line with the preferences of citizens, but reliance on external institutions might be too costly for potential users due to the monetary costs of using the law, the length of court proceedings, uncertainty about the interpretation of rules, judicial corruption, and so on. After the Genocide in Rwanda, for example, a modified traditional court system was introduced that increased access to justice services and reduced the backlog of the formal justice system (O'Reilly and Zhang, 2018). As in the previous situation, if the state and its government are very powerful, private law subjects can be forced to draw on external institutions even if they are costly to use.…”