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• Introduction
• History of Rwandan law
• Homegrown legal concepts and solutions : Gacaca, Abunzi, and Imihigo
• Rwandan constitutional law
• Organization, jurisdiction, and functioning of Rwanda’s judiciary
• Persons, family, matrimonial regimes, and succession
• Criminal law

This book explores key innovations in Rwandan law, exploring how the country has tried to combine the homegrown legal system with the civil law and common law legal systems to create a new hybrid legal system. The author explores the history of Rwandan law through the pre-colonial, to colonial and post-independence periods, and examines the homegrown legal and justice approaches, such as Gacaca, Abunzi, and Imihigo, introduced to deal with legal problems that could not be dealt with using the western legal system in post genocide Rwanda. The book highlights the innovative Rwandan approach to incorporating international law in the domestic legal system; it also covers the evolution of Rwandan constitutional law and constitutionalism since independence, and the development of family law from a legal system that oppressed women to one that promotes the rights of girls and women. Finally, the book explores the combination of common law and civil law systems in the development of the new Rwandan criminal law and in the transformation of the organization, jurisdiction, and functioning of Rwandan courts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African law, international law, and the legal system in Rwanda.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
This book explores key innovations in Rwandan law, exploring how the homegrown legal system with the civil law and common law legal systems. The author explores the history of Rwandan law through pre-colonial, to colonial and post-independence periods, examines the homegrown legal and justice approaches, such as Gacaca, Abunzi and Imihigo, introduced in post genocide Rwanda to deal with legal problems that could not be dealt with using the western legal system; and highlights the innovative Rwandan approach to incorporating international law in the domestic legal system. The book also covers the evolution of the Rwandan Constitutional Law and Constitutionalism since independence; the development of family law from a legal system that oppressed women to one that promotes girls and women rights. Finally, the book explores the contribution of common law in the transformation of the organization, jurisdiction and functioning of Rwandan Courts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African law, international law and the legal system in Rwanda.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• 1. History of Rwandan Law
• 2. Homegrown Legal Concepts and Solutions: Gacaca, Abunzi and Imihigo
• 3. Rwandan Constitutional Law
• 4. Rwandan International Law
• 5. Organization, Jurisdiction, and Functioning of Rwanda's Judiciary
• 6. Persons, Family, Matrimonial Regimes, and Succession
• 7. Criminal Law.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book explores key innovations in Rwandan law, exploring how the country has tried to combine the homegrown legal system with the civil law and common law legal systems to create a new hybrid legal system. The author explores the history of Rwandan law through the pre-colonial, to colonial and post-independence periods, and examines the homegrown legal and justice approaches, such as Gacaca, Abunzi, and Imihigo, introduced to deal with legal problems that could not be dealt with using the western legal system in post genocide Rwanda. The book highlights the innovative Rwandan approach to incorporating international law in the domestic legal system; it also covers the evolution of Rwandan constitutional law and constitutionalism since independence, and the development of family law from a legal system that oppressed women to one that promotes the rights of girls and women. Finally, the book explores the combination of common law and civil law systems in the development of the new Rwandan criminal law and in the transformation of the organization, jurisdiction, and functioning of Rwandan courts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African law, international law, and the legal system in Rwanda.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
This book explores key innovations in Rwandan law, exploring how the homegrown legal system with the civil law and common law legal systems. The author explores the history of Rwandan law through pre-colonial, to colonial and post-independence periods, examines the homegrown legal and justice approaches, such as Gacaca, Abunzi and Imihigo, introduced in post genocide Rwanda to deal with legal problems that could not be dealt with using the western legal system; and highlights the innovative Rwandan approach to incorporating international law in the domestic legal system. The book also covers the evolution of the Rwandan Constitutional Law and Constitutionalism since independence; the development of family law from a legal system that oppressed women to one that promotes girls and women rights. Finally, the book explores the contribution of common law in the transformation of the organization, jurisdiction and functioning of Rwandan Courts. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African law, international law and the legal system in Rwanda.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword / Élisée Musemakweli
• Introduction / Tharcisse Gatwa, Philippe Denis
• Part 1. The Duty of Memory
• Le devoir de mémoire, un souci pour la société actuelle : les idée de quelques spécialistes de la mémoire au vingtième siècle / Viateur Ndikumana
• Contested memories and competing narratives of the past in post-genocide Rwanda / Philippe Denis
• Facing the guilt : churches and Christians confessing for the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda / Tharcisse Gatwa
• Remembrance, a transformative approach to traumatic memories in the communities of Rwanda / Appoline Kabera
• Part 2. Memory Work in Post-Genocide Rwanda
• Dynamic genocide commemoration framework / Augustin Nshimiyimana
• Mourning based culture for addressing grief and trauma / Augustin Nshimiyimana
• Policy and politics of commemoration of the genocide against the Tutsi : twenty-five years of an uneven journey / Penine Uwimbabazi -- healing wounds after genocide and extreme violence : the role of psychosocial support group therapy / Florence Batoni
• Student trauma first aid training project at PIASS / Anne Dietrich
• L'Église catholique dans le processus d'unité et réconciliation au Rwanda / Vincent Gásana
• Part 3. Memory Politics Outside Rwanda
• Reconciliation between Christian churches and Jewish communities after centuries of conflict leading to the Shoah / Dieter Brandes
• Memory, reconciliation and regional integrations : parallels between post-conflict French-German cooperation and post-genocide Rwanda / Jenan-Marc Trouille
• Memory as a site of struggle : the rebuilding of a traumatized nation as a faith-based political practice / Simangaliso Kumalo
• Memory and the civil rights movement in the United States of America / Rodney L. Peterson
• Working with memories and fostering compassion in dived communities : can the UK learn from Rwanda's churches? / Helen Trouille

"A quarter of a century after the genocide against the Tutsi, the memory of this highly traumatic event and of the various tragedies associated with it continues to haunt Rwandans, as has been the case in other post-conflict situations in the world. The survivors of the genocide permanently live with unhealed wounds and trauma. For a country to reconcile and move forward, the biggest challenge is to create the conditions for a real sharing of memories. All components of society, including public bodies, churches and civil-society organisations, are part of this efford ... This book provides information on the question of memory in the post-genecide Rwanda. It should be seen as a resource for students and community activists dealing with issues of memory, healing and reconciliation." -- Back cover

• Foreword
• Introduction
• International standards on child perpetrators of atrocities
• Putting international standards into practice
• Rwanda : setting the context
• Rwanda's responses, in law, policy and practice to child génocidaires
• International actors and Rwandan child génocidaire
• UNICEF Rwanda's policy and advocacy : a strategic approach
• Evaluating UNICEF Rwanda's approach : a case of principled pragmatism?
• Child perpetrators and child rights : Rwanda and beyond

Following a devastating genocide in 1994, the Rwandan government elected to hold all perpetrators accountable - including children. Thousands of children were held in prisons while awaiting charges; some were later convicted. This book is about these children. Drawing on interviews and extensive archival research in Rwanda, it documents their journey through prisons, formal courts, gacaca proceedings or re-education centres. Its insights extend beyond Rwanda, looking at how international law protects children accused of even the most serious atrocities. The book is about law in action, and how states, and international organisations, operationalise international standards on child perpetrators in challenging post-conflict conditions. Engaging with theories from international law, international relations and anthropology, it illuminates strategies utilised by UNICEF to promote the rights of alleged child genocidaires and traces UNICEF's positive influence on their protection. It makes the case for principled pragmatism as an approach to human rights promotion in post-conflict societies.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: judging the crime of crimes
• 1. 'When we walk out
• what was it all about?'
• 2. 'Watching the fish in the goldfish bowl'
• 3. 'Who the hell cares how things are done in the old country'
• 4. 'They don't say what they mean or mean what they say'
• 5. 'We are not a truth commission'
• Conclusion.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Accounts of international criminal courts have tended to consist of reflections on abstract legal texts, on judgements and trial transcripts. Genocide Never Sleeps, based on ethnographic research at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), provides an alternative account, describing a messy, flawed human process in which legal practitioners faced with novel challenges sought to reconfigure long-standing habits and opinions while maintaining a commitment to 'justice'. From the challenges of simultaneous translation to collaborating with colleagues from different legal traditions, legal practitioners were forced to scrutinise that which normally remains assumed in domestic law. By providing an account of this process, Genocide Never Sleeps not only provides a unique insight into the exceptional nature of the ad hoc, improvised ICTR and the day-to-day practice of international criminal justice, but also holds up for fresh inspection much that is naturalised and assumed in unexceptional, domestic legal processes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: Judging the crime of crimes
• 'When we walk out; what was it all about?'
• 'Watching the fish in the goldfish bowl'
• 'Who the hell cares how things are done in the old country'
• 'They don't say what they mean or mean what they say'
• 'We are not a truth commission'
• Conclusion.

Accounts of international criminal courts have tended to consist of reflections on abstract legal texts, on judgements and trial transcripts. Genocide Never Sleeps, based on ethnographic research at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), provides an alternative account, describing a messy, flawed human process in which legal practitioners faced with novel challenges sought to reconfigure long-standing habits and opinions while maintaining a commitment to 'justice'. From the challenges of simultaneous translation to collaborating with colleagues from different legal traditions, legal practitioners were forced to scrutinise that which normally remains assumed in domestic law. By providing an account of this process, Genocide Never Sleeps not only provides a unique insight into the exceptional nature of the ad hoc, improvised ICTR and the day-to-day practice of international criminal justice, but also holds up for fresh inspection much that is naturalised and assumed in unexceptional, domestic legal processes.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• The crime of genocide and its contextual features in Rwanda
• A framework for post-genocide Rwanda : legal imperatives concerning transitional justice
• Post-genocide justice in Rwanda : ordinary courts
• National responses to the Rwandan genocide : gacaca courts
• Gacaca courts under human rights scrutiny
• Gacaca jurisdictions in practice
• The reconciliation process in Rwanda
• Conclusion.

Combining both legal and empirical research, this book explores the statutory aspects and practice of Gacaca Courts (inkiko gacaca), the centrepiece of Rwanda's post-genocide transitional justice system, assessing their contribution to truth, justice and reconciliation. The volume expands the knowledge regarding these courts, assessing not only their performance in terms of formal justice and compliance with human rights standards but also their actual modus operandi. Scholars and practitioners have progressively challenged the idea that genocide should be addressed exclusively through 'westernised' criminal law, arguing that the uniqueness of each genocidal setting requires specific context-sensitive solutions. Rwanda's experience with Gacaca Courts has emerged as a valuable opportunity for testing this approach, offering never previously tried homegrown solutions to the violence experienced in 1994 and beyond. Due to the unprecedented number of individuals brought to trial, the absence of lawyers, the participative nature, and the presence of lay judges directly elected by the Rwandan population, Gacaca Courts have attracted the attention of researchers from different disciplines and triggered dichotomous reactions and appraisals. The tensions existing within the literature are addressed, anchoring the assessment of Gacaca in a comprehensive legal analysis in conjunction with field research. Through the direct observation of Gacaca trials, and by holding interviews and informal talks with survivors, perpetrators, ordinary Rwandans, academics and the staff of NGOs, a purely legalistic perspective is overcome, offering instead an innovative bottom-up approach to meta-legal concepts such as justice, fairness, truth and reconciliation. Outlining their strengths and shortcomings, this book highlights what aspects of Gacaca Courts can be useful in other post-genocide contexts and provides crucial lessons learnt in the realm of transitional justice. The primary audience this book is aimed at consists of researchers working in the areas of international criminal law, transitional justice, genocide, restorative justice, African studies, human rights and criminology, while practitioners, students and others with a professional interest in the topical matters that are addressed may also find the issues raised relevant to their practice or field of study. Pietro Sullo teaches public international law and international diplomatic law at the Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent in Brussels. He is particularly interested in international human rights law, transitional justice, international criminal law, constitutional transitions and refugee law. After earning his Ph.D. at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Dr. Sullo worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg as a senior researcher and as a coordinator of the International Doctoral Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment. He was also Director of the European Master's Programme in Human Rights and Democratization (E.MA) in Venice from 2013 to 2015 and lastly he has worked for international NGOs and as a legal consultant for the Libya Constitution Drafting Assembly on human rights and transitional justice.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• From genocide to Gacaca
• Learning "to be kinyarwanda"
• Gacaca mechanics
• Experiencing Gacaca
• The weight of the state
• Navigating the social
• A thousand hills, a thousand Gacacas
• Shades of heart.

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, victims, perpetrators, and the country as a whole struggled to deal with the legacy of the mass violence. The government responded by creating a new version of a traditional grassroots justice system called gacaca. Bert Ingelaere, based on his observation of two thousand gacaca trials, offers a comprehensive assessment of what these courts set out to do, how they worked, what they achieved, what they did not achieve, and how they affected Rwandan society. Weaving together vivid firsthand recollections, interviews, and trial testimony with systematic analysis, Ingelaere documents how the gacaca shifted over time from confession to accusation, from restoration to retribution. He precisely articulates the importance of popular conceptions of what is true and just. Marked by methodological sophistication, extraordinary evidence, and deep knowledge of Rwanda, this is an authoritative, nuanced, and bittersweet account of one of the most important experiments in transitional justice after mass violence.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. From Genocide to Gacaca; 2. Learning "to Be Kinyarwanda"; 3. Gacaca Mechanics; 4. Experiencing Gacaca; 5. The Weight of the State; 6. Navigating the Social; 7. A Thousand Hills, a Thousand Gacacas; 8. Shades of Heart; Epilogue;
• Appendix I: Important Dates;
• Appendix II: Supplementary Tables; Glossary; Notes; References; Index.

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, victims, perpetrators, and the country as a whole struggled to deal with the legacy of the mass violence. The government responded by creating a new version of a traditional grassroots justice system called gacaca. Bert Ingelaere, based on his observation of two thousand gacaca trials, offers a comprehensive assessment of what these courts set out to do, how they worked, what they achieved, what they did not achieve, and how they affected Rwandan society. Weaving together vivid firsthand recollections, interviews, and trial testimony with systematic analysis, Ingelaere documents how the gacaca shifted over time from confession to accusation, from restoration to retribution. He precisely articulates the importance of popular conceptions of what is true and just. Marked by methodological sophistication, extraordinary evidence, and deep knowledge of Rwanda, this is an authoritative, nuanced, and bittersweet account of one of the most important experiments in transitional justice after mass violence.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• From genocide to Gacaca
• Learning "to be Kinyarwanda"
• Gacaca mechanics
• The weight of the state
• Navigating the social
• A thousand hills, a thousand Gacacas
• Shades of heart.

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, victims, perpetrators, and the country as a whole struggled to deal with the legacy of the mass violence. The government responded by creating a new version of a traditional grassroots justice system called gacaca. Bert Ingelaere, based on his observation of two thousand gacaca trials, offers a comprehensive assessment of what these courts set out to do, how they worked, what they achieved, what they did not achieve, and how they affected Rwandan society. Weaving together vivid firsthand recollections, interviews, and trial testimony with systematic analysis, Ingelaere documents how the gacaca shifted over time from confession to accusation, from restoration to retribution. He precisely articulates the importance of popular conceptions of what is true and just. Marked by methodological sophistication, extraordinary evidence, and deep knowledge of Rwanda, this is an authoritative, nuanced, and bittersweet account of one of the most important experiments in transitional justice after mass violence.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• A history of clientelism in Rwanda
• The RPF : an unrivaled patron
• The mental map : shared expectations of rule
• The gacaca court : deciding innocence and guilt
• Confessions : surrendering the right to rule
• Denunciations : local space and local control
• Judges : political co-optation at the grassroots.

This book shows how Rwanda's transitional courts that tried genocide crimes - the gacaca - produced social complicity and cemented authoritarian rule. It is unique for its in-depth investigation of the courts' legal operations: confessions, denunciation, and lay judging, and shows how targeted incentives such as grants of clemency, opportunities for private gain, and career advancement drew the masses into the orbit of the ethnic minority-dominated regime. Using previously untapped data, it illustrates how a decade of mass trials constructed a tacit patronage-driven relationship in which the interests of the citizenry became tied to the authoritarian elite that had discretionary power to grant or withdraw those benefits at will. The operation of law in individual behavior and authoritarian control presented in this volume will be of use to students and scholars in the social sciences, and practitioners interested in criminal law and transitional justice.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction
• Part I. Clientelist and Authoritarian Legacies: 1. A history of clientelism in Rwanda
• 2. The RPF: an unrivaled patron
• Part II. Formal and Informal Rules of the Game: 3. The mental map: shared expectations of rule
• 4. The gacaca court: deciding innocence and guilt
• Part III. Consolidating Authoritarianism: 5. Confessions: surrendering the right to rule
• 6. Denunciations: local space and local control
• 7. Judges: political cooptation at the grassroots
• Conclusion.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book shows how Rwanda's transitional courts that tried genocide crimes - the gacaca - produced social complicity and cemented authoritarian rule. It is unique for its in-depth investigation of the courts' legal operations: confessions, denunciation, and lay judging, and shows how targeted incentives such as grants of clemency, opportunities for private gain, and career advancement drew the masses into the orbit of the ethnic minority-dominated regime. Using previously untapped data, it illustrates how a decade of mass trials constructed a tacit patronage-driven relationship in which the interests of the citizenry became tied to the authoritarian elite that had discretionary power to grant or withdraw those benefits at will. The operation of law in individual behavior and authoritarian control presented in this volume will be of use to students and scholars in the social sciences, and practitioners interested in criminal law and transitional justice.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction: Harmony legal models and the architecture of social repair
• Silencing the past : producing history and the politics of memory
• Escaping dichotomies : grassroots law in historical and global context
• Gacaca days and genocide citizenship
• Comite y'Abrunzi : politics and poetics for the ordinary
• The legal aid clinic : mediation as thick description
• Improvising authority : lay judges as intermediaries
• Conclusion: Legal architectures of social repair.

Kristin Conner Doughty examines how Rwandans navigated the combination of harmony and punishment in grassroots courts purportedly designed to rebuild the social fabric in the wake of the 1994 genocide. Postgenocide Rwandan officials developed new local courts ostensibly modeled on traditional practices of dispute resolution as part of a broader national policy of unity and reconciliation. The three legal forums at the heart of Remediation in Rwanda-genocide courts called inkiko gacaca, mediation committees called comite y'abunzi, and a legal aid clinic-all emphasized mediation based on principles of compromise and unity, brokered by third parties with the authority to administer punishment. Doughty demonstrates how exhortations to unity in legal forums served as a form of cultural control, even as people rebuilt moral community and conceived alternative futures through debates there. Investigating a broad range of disputes, she connects the grave disputes about genocide to the ordinary frictions people endured living in its aftermath. Remediation in Rwanda is therefore about not only national reconstruction but also a broader narrative of how the embrace of law, particularly in postconflict contexts, influences people's lives. Though law-based mediation is framed as benign-and is often justified as a purer form of culturally rooted dispute resolution, both by national governments such as Rwanda's, and in the transitional justice movement more broadly-its implementation, as Doughty reveals, involves coercion and accompanying resistance. Yet in grassroots legal forums that are deeply contextualized, law-based mediation can open up spaces in which people negotiate the micropolitics of reconciliation.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• MAP OF RWANDA
• INTRODUCTION
• ABBREVIATIONS
• CHAPTER 1 - The Rwandan Social Context
• CHAPTER 2 - Inside the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• CHAPTER 3 - Inside the Rwandan National Courts
• CHAPTER 4 - Inside the Gacaca Courts
• CHAPTER 5 - Legitimating Transitional Justice in Rwanda
• CHAPTER 6 - Conclusion
• APPENDIX
• GLOSSARY
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• TABLE OF CASES
• TABLE OF STATUTES
• INDEX.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The rise of international criminal trials has been accompanied by a call for domestic responses to extraordinary violence. Yet there is remarkably limited research on the interactions among local, national, and international transitional justice institutions. Rwanda offers an early example of multi-level courts operating in concert, through the concurrent practice of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the national Rwandan courts, and the gacaca community courts. Courts in Conflict makes a crucial and timely contribution to the examination of these pluralist responses to atrocity at a juncture when holistic approaches are rapidly becoming the policy norm. Although Rwanda's post-genocide criminal courts are compatible in law, an interpretive cultural analysis shows how and why they have often conflicted in practice. The author's research is derived from 182 interviews with judges, lawyers, and a group of witnesses and suspects within all three of the post-genocide courts. This rich empirical material shows that the judges and lawyers inside each of the courts offer notably different interpretations of Rwanda's transitional justice processes, illuminating divergent legal cultures that help explain the constraints on the courts' effective cooperation and evidence gathering. The potential for similar competition between domestic and international justice processes is apparent in the current practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this competition can be mitigated through increased communication among the different sites of justice, fostering legal cultures of complementarity that can more effectively respond to the needs of affected populations.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• The Rwandan social context
• Inside the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
• Inside the Rwandan national courts
• Inside the Gacaca courts
• Legitimating transitional justice in Rwanda.

The rise of international criminal trials has been accompanied by a call for domestic responses to extraordinary violence. Yet there is remarkably limited research on the interactions among local, national, and international transitional justice institutions. Rwanda offers an early example of multi-level courts operating in concert, through the concurrent practice of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the national Rwandan courts, and the gacaca community courts. Courts in Conflict makes a crucial and timely contribution to the examination of these pluralist responses to atrocity at a juncture when holistic approaches are rapidly becoming the policy norm. Although Rwanda's post-genocide criminal courts are compatible in law, an interpretive cultural analysis shows how and why they have often conflicted in practice. The author's research is derived from 182 interviews with judges, lawyers, and a group of witnesses and suspects within all three of the post-genocide courts. This rich empirical material shows that the judges and lawyers inside each of the courts offer notably different interpretations of Rwanda's transitional justice processes, illuminating divergent legal cultures that help explain the constraints on the courts' effective cooperation and evidence gathering. The potential for similar competition between domestic and international justice processes is apparent in the current practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this competition can be mitigated through increased communication among the different sites of justice, fostering legal cultures of complementarity that can more effectively respond to the needs of affected populations.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)