Academic literature on the topic 'Social justice – Rwanda'

For the past twenty years, the overriding story of Rwanda has been centred around the events and consequences of the genocide. In Rwanda, public expressions of that story have occurred in the gacaca courts, where survivors and perpetrators testified about their experiences and actions, during ongoing annual remembrance and mourning commemorations, and in memorial sites across the country that act as physical reminders of the genocide. While important as mechanisms for justice, testimony, and commemoration, on their own such events and installations also have the potential to re-traumatise. Accordingly, Rwandan agencies have encouraged a focus on the future as the overarching theme of recent national commemorations. Yet, opportunities for Rwandans to recount and disseminate positive, future-oriented stories of survival and healing remain sparse. Creation and awareness of positive stories have the potential to assist in recovery by increasing feelings of hope and efficacy; and recent research has demonstrated the value of hopefulness, well-being, and social support for vulnerable people. The Messages of Hope program seeks to leverage those ideas into a framework for generating positive messages by Rwandan survivors, providing an opportunity for everyday Rwandans to record and transmit their own positive stories of survival to demonstrate recovery and growth after the genocide, and to reinforce connectedness by sharing their challenges and aspirations. We describe the development and early implementation of this initiative and its potential longer-term application in other contexts of vulnerability.

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that the praise of legal and political analysts who perceive Rwanda'sgacacacourts as a model of locally grounded and culturally relevant transitional justice is unfounded without consideration of the broader power dynamics in which justice is delivered. Drawing on life history interviews with 37 Rwandan peasants resident in the south-west of the country, I argue that the claims of the Rwandan government that itsgacacacourts are promoting peace and reconciliation must also assess the impact of local justice mechanisms on those subject to its demands, namely ordinary people. In the case of Rwanda'sgacacacourts, local-level analysis illuminates a darker and largely unexamined aspect of transitional justice – the playing out of local power dynamics and the social and political inequalities masked by the pursuit of justice and reconciliation. My study cautions against a wholesale endorsement of thegacacacourts as an effective and legitimate form of transitional justice. Instead, it is a mechanism of state power than works to reinforce the political power of the ruling RPF and to ply international audiences with the idea that Rwanda is ‘a nation rehabilitated’ from ‘the scourge of genocide’.

Since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the current government has arrested approximately 130,000 civilians who were suspected of criminal responsibility. An estimated 2,000 were women, a cohort that remains rarely researched through an ethnographic lens. This article begins to address this oversight by analyzing ethnographic encounters with 8 confessed or convicted female génocidaires from around Rwanda. These encounters reveal that female génocidaires believe they endure gender-based discrimination for having violated taboos that determine appropriate conduct for Rwandan women. However, only female génocidaires with minimal education, wealth, and social capital referenced this gender-based discrimination to minimize their crimes and assert claims of victimization. Conversely, female elites who helped incite the genocide framed their victimization in terms of political betrayal and victor’s justice. This difference is likely informed by the female elites’ participation in the political processes that made the genocide possible, as well as historical precedence for leniency where female elites are concerned.

The article examines how reconciliation is perceived at the individual level. This particular case study analyses what types of reconciliation practices exist in Musha village and whether or not the inhabitants see it as effective ones. In an attempt to investigate the reconciliation definition from the local people’s perspective and to observe their community-level experiences, ethnographic fieldwork in Rwanda has been conducted. This study reveals that locals understand reconciliation in the same way as the government authorities proclaim. Data gathered during this field trip indicate the significance of reconciliation as controlled by the national government. As a consequence, the people are not able, and at the same time, are not really concerned about rethinking reconciliation in other possible ways. Furthermore, this concludes the fact that the central authorities have become able to peacefully construct the narrative of forced reconciliation, while social exclusion in the country still robustly prevails.

The purpose of this research was to study the interviewees’ experience of their reconciliation process and the influence of the Amataba Workshops on their healing process. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with five pairs ( N = 10) of Tutsi survivors of the Rwandan genocide and their perpetrators, members of the Hutu majority; they had all participated in an intervention to promote reconciliation. The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) method was chosen to study the transcripts. Analysis resulted in nine main relevant categories that should be taken into account while designing a reconciliation-oriented intervention, including truth, listening to each other, justice, repairing the damage, and collaboration on joint projects. The results of this research show how these processes can occur when reconciliation-oriented interventions are facilitated. For some interviewees, these workshops have become a crucial turning point and helped them set aside the hatred and pain.

Since 1994, the Rwandan government has attempted to remove the division of the population into the ‘ethnic’ identities Hutu, Tutsi and Twa and instead make the shared Rwandan identity salient. This paper explores how leaders justify the single recategorization model, based on nine in-depth semi-structured interviews with Rwandan national leaders (politicians and bureaucrats tasked with leading unity implementation) conducted in Rwanda over three months in 2011/2012. Thematic analysis revealed this was done through a meta-narrative focusing on the shared Rwandan identity. Three frames were found in use to “sell” this narrative where ethnic identities are presented as a) an alien construction; b) which was used to the disadvantage of the people; and c) non-essential social constructs. The material demonstrates the identity entrepreneurship behind the single recategorization approach: the definition of the category boundaries, the category content, and the strategies for controlling and overcoming alternative narratives. Rwandan identity is presented as essential and legitimate, and as offering a potential way for people to escape spoilt subordinate identities. The interviewed leaders insist Rwandans are all one, and that the single recategorization is the right path for Rwanda, but this approach has been criticised for increasing rather than decreasing intergroup conflict due to social identity threat. The Rwandan case offers a rare opportunity to explore leaders’ own narratives and framing of these ‘ethnic’ identities to justify the single recategorization approach.

Every person is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in international human rights instruments without distinction of any kind: this includes race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. In particular, every person is entitled to access justice to vindicate his or her rights. Although age is not expressly mentioned as one of the prohibited grounds of discrimination, particular provisions provide for special legal protection for minors. In addition, other particular instruments have been adopted to protect the rights of minors. The right to an effective judicial remedy for acts violating fundamental rights is guaranteed to minors by human rights instruments. The notion of ‘access to justice’ is used here in reference to an individual’s opportunity to enjoy equal access to legal services necessary for the protection of one’s rights and interests regardless of one’s means. It also implies the mechanism by which an individual may seek legal assistance including, among other things, drafting formal documents (wills, contracts), In reality,the effective enjoyment of rights is not possible when the holders of the rights have limited access to justice, i.e. access to judicial remedies in cases where their rights have been violated.<br>Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2011.<br>http://www.chr.up.ac.za/<br>nf2012<br>Centre for Human Rights<br>LLM

Rushing waters pour down the bills like waterfalls and cleave massive ruts into the red clay surface of the road to Gishamvu during the rainy season. In the dry season, the scarred surface hardens, and a layer of dust rises from tires and wind in a murky red mist. The narrow road, eut aggressively up the mountain, is precarious. A bridge over a small stream is littered with broken logs used to patch gaping holes that trap the tires of passing trucks. The bridge barely holds its banks. At a crossroads, up a steep slope, sits a monument to the Virgin Mary. Colorfully dressed women walk slowly up the scorched hill, heavy loads on their heads, sorne with a baby or a small child wrapped tightly against their backs. Men with farm implements kick the dust on their way to Gishamvu.<br>fr

"Rwanda was largely destroyed in 1994. Among an endless host of problems, highly complex questions and dilemmas of justice, unity, and reconciliation haunt Rwanda to this day. A basic question confronting Rwanda is how to deal with the legacy of the conflict that culminated in the genocide of the Tutsi and in the massacres of Hutu opponents of the genocide. The UN set up an International Criminal Tribunal in Arusha, Tanzania, and Rwanda has its own courts. In both cases, the process of trying accused genocidaires is long, laborious, and frustrating. Only eight convictions have been handed down in Arusha after five years of work, while in Rwanda only some 3,000 cases have been disposed of. At least 120,000 detainees are in prisons around the country, the vast majority of whom are accused of participation in the genocide. At the present rate it is estimated that it will take anywhere between two and four centuries to try all those in detention. The Rwandese government has developed a new procedure called “gacaca,” lower-level tribunals that attempt to blend traditional and contemporary mechanisms to expedite the justice process in a way that promotes reconciliation. The impact of gacaca remains to be seen, and as a process, it certainly needs an evaluation or, at least, an attempt to evaluate its possible contribution to the perplexing questions of justice, unity and social reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide. This paper mainly aims to analyse the draft legislation on the gacaca jurisdictions. Further, this essay attempts to examine the impact of criminal trials in the aftermath of mass violence and genocide. Although conventional wisdom holds that criminal trials promote several goals, including uncovering the truth; avoiding collective accountability by individualising guilt; breaking cycle of impunity; deterring future war crimes; providing closure for the victims and fostering democratic institutions, little is known about the role that judicial intervention have in rebuilding societies. The present essay deals only with criminal trials. By definition, these are focused on the perpetrators of abuses and their allies. Although not examined in the essay, a comprehensive and holistic approach to dealing with a legacy of past atrocities should also include range of victim-focused efforts, such as programs for compensation and rehabilitation, the establishment of memorials, and the organisation of appropriate commemorations. The main sources of this study are textbooks, articles from journals and official documents of national and international bodies. Since this essay aims at evaluating the gacaca proposals, a great deal of attention is paid to the terms of the draft legislation. It is certainly premature to make an in-depth assessment of a draft law and the merits and flaws of the legal institution it is designed to set up. Only gradually and over a period of time can the gacaca become effective and credible. Further research aimed at gathering data through interviews, field observations, participant observation, study and analysis of the implementation can also illuminate experience in ways that analysis of published sources do not. A thorough and sound appraisal of this new institution must therefore wait some time. I shall nevertheless attempt in this essay to set out some initial and tentative comments on some of the salient traits of the future gacaca tribunals. This paper makes a preliminary “human rights impact assessment” of the implementation of the draft law establishing “gacaca jurisdictions”. The potential role of the new institution in rebuilding the Rwandese society is also discussed. Considering the many complex issues which still surround the process of justice in Rwanda six years after the genocide, as well as the continuing challenge to the judicial system in terms of the inadequacy of resources for dealing with such an enormous caseload, recommendations to help the process follow the analysis of the gacaca proposals (Chapter Three). To end impunity, it is necessary to respond in accordance with human rights law to the genocide and mass killings. Therefore, the starting point for our evaluation of the gacaca proposals will be an analysis of the proposals in human rights law. Does human rights law impose any affirmative duties to punish genocide and other mass killings that occurred in Rwanda? In addition, for the “gacaca jurisdictions” to be effective, they should not be viewed in isolation, as their performance will depend to a large extent on whether other judicial mechanisms and institutions are functioning properly. The relationships between the gacaca jurisdiction and other mechanisms are thus reviewed. In particular, the process of setting up the gacaca jurisdictions should include an evaluation of the genocide trials which have taken place to date both at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and in the domestic courts and apply the lessons learnt (Chapter Two). An evaluation of the potential contribution of the use of gacaca courts needs to be put into the broader context of the conflict in Rwanda. Thus, an analysis of the conflict in Rwanda is necessary to grasp the challenges facing the questions of justice and social reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda (Chapter One)." -- Introduction.<br>Prepared under the supervision of Professor Jeremy Sarkin, Faculty of Law, University of the Western Cape<br>Thesis (LLM (Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa)) -- University of Pretoria, 2000.<br>http://www.chr.up.ac.za/academic_pro/llm1/dissertations.html<br>Centre for Human Rights<br>LLM

For the past two decades, statebuilding has been the object of a growing attention from practitioners and scholars alike. ‘International statebuilding’, as its dominant approach or model guiding the practices of national and international actors, has sparked numerous discussions and debates, mostly around its effectiveness (i.e. if it works) and deficiencies (i.e. why it often fails). Surprisingly, little efforts have been made to investigate what international statebuilding, in the multiple ways it is mobilized by various actors, actually produces on the political dynamics of the ‘fragile’ contexts it is supposed to support and reinforce. Using an instrumentation perspective, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between the micro-dynamics of the uses of international statebuilding instruments and the fragility of contexts. This exploration is articulated around five essays and as many angles to this relationship. Using the case of Hamas, Essay I explores the European Union’s (EU) terrorist labelling policy by questioning the nature and modalities of the enlisting process, its use as foreign policy tool and its consequences on its other agendas, especially its international statebuilding efforts in Palestine. Essay II examines a Belgian good governance incentive mechanism and sheds the light on the tension between the claimed apolitical and objective nature of the instrument and the politicization potential embedded in its design and modalities, naturally leading to a convoluted implementation. Essay III analyses the localization dynamics of transitional justice in Burundi and unveils the nature, diversity and rationale behind transitional justice subversion techniques mobilized by national and international actors, which have produced a triple form of injustice. Essay IV widens this scope in Burundi, developing the argument that the authoritarian trend observed in the 2010-2015 period did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of its appropriation. Finally, essay V deepens the reflection on appropriation by attempting to build a theory of regime consolidation through international statebuilding subversion tactics. Overall, the incremental theory building reflection of the essays converges towards the assembling of a comprehensive framework of the in-betweens of the normative diffusion of liberal democracy, the inner-workings of its operationalization through the resort to the international statebuilding instrument and the intermediary constraints or objectives of actors not only interfering with its genuine realization but also contributing to its antipode of regime consolidation, conflict dynamics and authoritarianism.<br>Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales<br>info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Les violations aux droits humains causent des milliers de victimes chaque année, des mécanismes de justice sont élaborés afin de répondre à ces crimes, mais les victimes demeurent peu consultées. Par le biais d’entretiens semi-directifs, cette étude présente le point de vue et les attentes des victimes de crimes contre l’humanité du Cambodge et du Rwanda sur la justice. La justice sociale constitue le cadre théorique de cette étude. Les résultats montrent que la justice pénale est centrale à la définition de la justice. La réparation et la vérité en constituent aussi les éléments essentiels. Toutefois, la capacité des tribunaux à rendre compte de la vérité est critiquée par les répondants créant un écart entre ce qu’elles veulent et ce qu’elles obtiennent. La qualité de la prise de décision et du traitement interpersonnel favorise aussi la perception de justice du point de vue des victimes. Les différentes composantes de la justice perçues, comme la punition, la réparation et la procédure, varient toutefois en fonction du contexte social et historique de la victimisation.<br>Human rights violations cause thousands of victims every year. Justice mechanisms, such as the International Criminal Court, have been developed to respond to these crimes, but victims remain under consulted. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Rwandan and Cambodian victims of crimes against humanity. Using social justice theories as a theoretical framework, this study examines victims’ perceptions of justice. The results show that while criminal justice is central in victims’ definition of justice, reparation and truth also are essential components. However, the criminal court’s ability to achieve truth is criticized by respondents creating a gap between the truth that they seek and the truth that they obtain. The quality of decision-making as well as how victims are treated also contribute to victims’ perception of justice. However, victims’ justice objectives vary according to the social and historic context.

Since the end of the genocide and civil war in Rwanda, various measures have been implemented to facilitate women’s political participation. This chapter looks to post-conflict Rwanda as a case study in the successes and limitations in efforts to increase women’s participation in public life. The chapter details the desired outcomes of increased political participation by women before turning to the Rwandan example. It argues that while the increased presence of women in public life has resulted in some positive economic, political, and social outcomes, the power of female politicians is largely limited and has not resulted in sustainable or equitable long-term policies. The chapter concludes that while Rwanda has formally adopted many of the international best practices of transitional justice, its overall gains in women’s participation are more uneven, contradictory, and nonlinear than is often recognized.

The chapter analyses the cosmopolitan penal imaginary building on western domestic penality, delving into the relationship between human rights sensibilities and criminal justice mentalities in the ‘fight against impunity’. Through the fieldwork in Uganda and Rwanda, the chapter describes asymmetries between the international and national criminal justice systems. It shows how international criminal justice circulates transnationally between different geographical sites via human rights NGOs and is closely linked to human rights expertise, and how human rights NGOs turn international criminal justice into issues about social justice. Applying a sociology of punishment perspective, the chapter brings out the similarities and differences in ‘penal imaginations’ between domestic and international criminal justice, and argues that international criminal justice both echoes the national and departs from it. For example, while international criminal justice relies upon retributive and expressive undertones, it makes no appeal to punitive sensibilities: a fact that can be understood in light of the close relation between international criminal justice and human rights NGOs. Yet, it is argued that human rights NGOs rely too strongly on punitive answers, and that amnesties can be just a matter of pragmatism in situations of profound violence. Thus, while the ICC has both retributive and reparative aims, the situation in northern Uganda demonstrates how international criminal justice became an impediment to peace. Moreover, the chapter reveals how a lot of practical issues had simply not been ‘thought of’ when setting up the ICC, such as acquittals and asylum-seeking witnesses.