Özet:

The Gacaca judiciary which was functionalized along with ordinary courts in the trials of the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide as a system differing particularly with its operation based on the participation of the people from the Western liberal judiciary model, was subjected to criticism based on international formal standards of fair trial. It is observed in these criticisms that the existing conditions, which led the government to pursuits aiming to reinforce the regular court system, are ignored. These criticisms were, at the same time, neglecting the guarantees that the defendants were provided with before the Gacaca courts on the basis of the values, purpose and logic on which they were based. Even though the Gacaca might not be the magic wand of transitional justice, these neglected points demonstrate that solving the problems that have arisen during its practice by transforming Gacaca into a Western liberal judiciary system was not possible considering the circumstances, and it could not respond to Rwanda’s post-genocide needs. In this case, if one wishes the sources of the problems that emerged within the practice of Gacaca to be determined and in this way transitional justice practices in the future to be guided, the analysis of Gacaca needs to be carried out by grounding it on the connections between the conditions, purposes and structural properties that constitute its base, and the political context within which it has functioned.