Tulane: Timothy Longman, Rwanda Gacaca Courts

In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the Government of Rwanda implemented an innovative judicial mechanism to try accused perpetrators. Gacaca adapts an indigenous dispute resolution mechanism to the modern purpose of pursuing transitional justice. Based on research conducted in Rwanda, Professor Timothy Longman assesses the gacaca process and considers whether it could serve as a model for other countries emerging from conflict.

Timothy Longman is associate professor of political science and Africana studies at Vassar College, where he has taught since 1996. In addition to his post at Vassar, he is a visiting lecturer in the International Human Rights Exchange at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. From 2001-2005, he served as a research fellow for the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley, directing research on social reconstruction and reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. He has served as a consultant in Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo for USAID and the State Department, the International Center for Transitional Justice, and Human Rights Watch, for whom he served as director of the Rwanda field office 1995-1996. His current research looks at social reconstruction in the aftermath of violence, focusing on issues of justice, memory, and identity in post-genocide Rwanda. He has also conducted research in Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa and is working on a major project looking comparatively at church-state relations throughout East and Central Africa. He has published numerous articles, book chapters, and reports, and is currently completing a book manuscript on Memory, Justice, and Power in Post-Genocide Rwanda.

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[eugeniestrose]

Professor Longman's case has a few issues. One major issue with his case is the level of participation of Hutus in the killings. Even if we equal a victim by just 1 killer, you still end up with at least a million of killers in Rwanda. As someone who was there, I strongly suggest that the level of participation was much higher than assumed and that women greatly participated in the killing by telling on the victims' hideouts. Unfortunately, those victims can't testify against them.