Gacaca court

The Gacaca courts were Rwanda's system of community-based transitional justice, established to address the roughly 130,000 people accused in connection with the 1994 genocide, in which between 520,000 and 702,000 people were killed, a caseload that overwhelmed Rwanda's formal justice system. Legally created in 2001 and operating from 2002, the courts became active nationwide by early 2007, drawing their name from the Kinyarwanda word for the short grass on which neighborhood elders traditionally gathered to settle local disputes and restore order and harmony by acknowledging wrongdoing and pursuing justice for victims. The government presented the courts as serving several goals of transitional justice at once: establishing a historical record of the genocide, speeding up trials, ending impunity, encouraging reconciliation among Rwandans, and drawing on local custom to administer justice.