Rwanda Celebrates 10 Years of Mediated Justice, Reports KT Press

    KIGALI, RWANDA, October 20, 2014 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has challenged fellow Africans to emulate the quick, efficient, and cost-effective Rwandan style of solving community misunderstandings instead of taking them to the formal courts of law.

Since 2004, mediators, or abunzi in the local Kinyarwanda language, have been settling community-level land disputes and other wrangles.

"Community mediators gave Rwandans access to cheap, speedy, unifying and convenient way of solving misunderstandings", said President Kagame.

With misunderstandings solved, he said, "People get time to engage in development activities".

Elected within their community based on integrity and courage, mediators are volunteers, and only receive incentives like healthcare coverage.

The country has 30,786 mediators, 13,854 (45%) of whom, are women.

In 2013 alone, of over 57,000 cases registered, mediators sorted majority of them, with just 8,431 cases heading to the conventional courts of law.

Rwanda's Justice Minister, Johnston Busingye, said mediators' efficiency lies within their proximity to the community.

"Misunderstandings are well-known by people within the community. That is why mediators solve them well and quickly", said Busingye, in a ceremony to mark ten years since the creation of the mediation organ.

Mediators are part of what the country calls "home-grown solutions", a way of adapting cultural practices to help solve problems before turning to the outside world.

In similar fashion, from 2002 to 2012, nearly two million Genocide cases were settled through Gacaca, one of the world's biggest justice systems.

Derived from a traditional, community conflict resolution model, hearings were held in the grass, or Gacaca. Without Gacaca, some legal experts say it would have taken Rwanda nearly three hundred years to complete the cases.

President Kagame admitted "Gacaca had its imperfections", but it should teach the continent a lesson, nonetheless.

"Gacaca served as an indicator that Africans are capable of finding solutions to their various problems", he said.

Lamin Manneh, UN Resident Coordinator in Rwanda, agrees Rwanda is "a learning environment".

"We will continue to support Rwanda's transformational agenda", he said.

Over the last ten years, mediators have resolved nearly 80% of the cases at a "satisfactory rate", fostering "reconciliation and forgiveness" among Rwanda's eleven million people.

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