Spotlight on Rwanda

A Special Breakfast Session was held for Rwanda. The Rwanda’s High Commissioner to Nigeria, Ambassador Stanilas Kamanzi, spoke to delegates on the topic, “Rwanda: Justice After Genocide – 22 Years On”.

This Session examined how Rwanda responded to the challenge of bringing justice to the thousands of genocide perpetrators and victims alike, a task made more difficult by the fact that many judges lawyers and other judicial staff were killed during the genocide and much of the country’s infrastructure was destroyed.

Participants were given an opportunity to reflect on progress made across Africa in ending impunity and holding to account perpetrators of grave crimes.

RWANDA’S JUSTICE SECTOR

Prior to the 1994 Tutsi Genocide, Rwanda’s judicial apparatus reflected the old allegiance to successive political regimes that were marked by corruption and unqualified staffed whose objective was not to adhere to the rule of law, but to satisfy the appointing authorities.

The justice sector also suffered from the absence of well trained and qualified lawyers and magistrates, the deliberate obstruction of the establishment of a bar association, archaic and obsolete laws, and the institutional violation of the principle of the judicial independence,

In 1992, an audit was held to evaluate the justice sector, which found that out of 1000 judges in the country, only thirty-two (32) had law degrees; and out of eighty-nine (89) prosecutors, only eighteen (18) had law degrees. It was evident from these statistics that the judiciary was lagging behind. Today all judges, Courts clerks and Prosecutors have at least a law degree.

Legal reforms that took place in Rwanda since 2003 established an Independent Judiciary in 2003. The judiciary was no longer under the Executive.