Critique of sources' perspectives on achieving economic development through gacaca

How successful then has gacaca been in fostering economic devel­opment at the three levels? Regarding the improvement of people's personal economic circumstances, we should not overemphasise the impact that punishment in the form of either compensation or forced labour has had on individuals, especially on survivors.

It is also questionable the extent to which gacaca has aided the eco­nomic development of separate communities. Most of the arguments concerning gacaca's contribution to increased productivity at the com­munity level rely on the same questionable assumption that underpins the arguments for solving the problems of overcrowded jails, namely that gacaca will hasten the judicial process, decrease the prison popu­lation and thus bolster the currently depleted workforce with released detainees. As we saw earlier, gacaca has not swelled communities' labour forces in this way in all parts of the country. As PRI also points out, some communities have benefited from the TIG process substantially more than others.

Furthermore, some communities have experienced economic difficul­ties because of gacaca, as many people have spent at least one full day per week attending gacaca hearings; time that would otherwise have been used for work. As highlighted in the previous chapter, the eco­nomic burden upon rural participants in gacaca is one reason that some have stopped attending gacaca hearings. Gacaca's requirement of mass popular participation comes with a significant economic cost. Thus, we should conclude, overall gacaca has not significantly improved the eco­nomic situation at the community level.

At the national level, the huge expense of running gacaca across the country poses major problems for an already cash-strapped state. Again, the government has saved some resources, as gacaca has helped decrease the number of suspects in jail. The costs involved in main­taining gacaca in such a large number of communities, however, have cancelled out many gains made by decreasing the prison population. The government, among other expensive activities, has trained gacaca judges, transported detainees to and from prison when they testify at gacaca, and coordinated the centralised gathering of legal data from jurisdictions around the country. The government's initial budget esti­mate for the total running of gacaca was 6 billion Rwandan francs or approximately US$13 million,^[434] the third highest funding for any pri­ority government activity at the time.^[435] By 2003, the government esti­mated that 35 billion francs or US$75 million was needed for gacaca to process the full backlog of genocide cases.^[436] A review of Rwandan government budgets from 2002 to 2009 indicates that total government spending on the direct running of the gacaca jurisdictions amounts to approximately 22 billion francs or US$39 million, although this amount does not include gacaca-related expenditure by other govern­ment bodies such as the NURC, the Ministry of Justice and the Rwanda Correctional Services.^[437] Gacaca is substantially cheaper to run than more conventional justice institutions, especially when compared to the immense costs involved with the running of the ICTR, which to date has cost more than US$1 billion.^[438] Several foreign governments, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA, have provided funds for gacaca, greatly decreasing the financial burden on the Rwandan government.^[439] However, the costs associated with running gacaca are still immense, and even with this level of support, gacaca has significantly drained the nation's resources, affecting the government's abilities to facilitate national economic development.

Gacaca's ability to contribute significantly to individual, community and national economic development has been curtailed by the immense needs of the population, the government's lack of resources, and gacaca's variable impact on the size of the available workforce. Other institu­tions that focus solely on economic matters and possess a greater ability to restructure key facets of Rwanda's economy are likely to prove more effective in pursuing this outcome. Therefore, although gacaca may con­tribute in some minor senses to economic development at the three lev­els discussed, it has overall failed to fulfil this objective.