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 Re: تلخيص: From war to peace and reconciliation in Darfur منتدى عماد الأمين (Re: Elmuiz Haggaz)
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Gacaca, meaning “sitting on grass” or also “lawn-justice” is a quintessential traditional Rwandese institution for conflict resolution. By its very ad hoc nature, a Gacaca court can be formed in any community to mediate and impose penalties on wrong doers. Gacaca depends on moral force to implement its ruling although that is heavily backed by the threat of the much harsher national legal system which often remains open for the plaintiff in case of refusal of the Gacaca ruling. Recognising the vastness of the number of prisoners awaiting trial following the 1994 genocide, the government of Rwanda adapted the Gacaca, with some modification, to serve as an alternative legal system. Gacaca was to deal with the milder but more numerous crimes committed during the genocide. Four categories of crimes were identified with Gacaca restricted to categories 2-4:
Genocide Crime Categories:
Category One: Planning, organisation, instigation, supervision.. of genocide
Category Two: Physical attacks resulting in death
Category Three: Physical attack not resulting in death
Category four : #####ng, theft, property damage, ..
Adapted from Musoni 2009.*
Gacaca is constituted of four hierarchical levels. Starting from the lowest, Gacaca has cell, sector, district and provincial tribunals. Cell tribunals deal with property offences; sector tribunals with injuries and district tribunals with killing but not its organisation. Provincial tribunals are reserved to act as final appeal courts for Gacaca cases.
The power of Gacaca resides in its capacity for speedy constitution. This is demonstrated by appointment of 266,000 Gacaca judges within the same year of 2001 when the Gacaca Act was issued, 2001(Amnesty International, 2002a). With Gacaca to be disbanded in June 2009, its courts will have completed 1.5 million cases. The remaining prisoners are estimated to be around 5,000 and who are too old to stand trial or sick and implicated in relatively minor offences will be pardoned (see Musoni, 2009).
Despite its limitations, the achievements of Gacaca courts have been impressive. A pertinent question here is how can Darfur replicate its success while at the same time avoid its limitations? (For a critique of Gacaca see Amnesty International 2002a and b; 2002b; Haile 2008). Like Rwanda, Darfur has traditional systems of conflict settlement which can be activated in its post-conflict work. In the following paragraphs, I will draw on the experience of the Berti, my own ethnic group, and use it as a convenient model for Darfur. The reader must allow for minor variations among other ethnic groups (For the Berti see Holy, 1974 and 1991;El-Tom 2008).
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Elmuiz Haggaz
فيس بوك
تويتر
انستقرام
يوتيوب
بنتيريست