Government’s perspectives on economic development through gacaca
First, the government interprets gacaca as facilitating economic developÂment at the individual, community and national levels and by all three of the methods mentioned above: bolstering the workforce, saving maintenÂance costs associated with the mass imprisonment of genocide suspects and providing compensation for survivors.
The government argues that gacaca's hastening of the judicial process will produce economic benefits at the national and community levels by returning farmers to their fields and thus increasing commodity production. Moreover, according to the official view, the release of detainees will reduce the financial burden on families who have often had to feed and clothe their loved ones durÂing their incarceration because the government lacks the resources to care for the massive prison population. In 2000, then-Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Charles Murigande, told the National Summit of Unity and Reconciliation, â€?[M]ore than 120,000 [genocide suspects] now detained must be fed [by the government] or receive food from their relatives, a situation that negatively affects [the] national economy.'[414] Gacaca, Murigande argued, would employ community service as a form of punishment for some convicted genocidaiτes and thus â€?[p]ass sentences that would help us to promote Rwanda's economy'.[415] In a 2009 report to the UN Human Rights Committee, Rwandan ambassador to the UN, Joseph Nsengimana, said that since 2005 gacaca's use of community serÂvice as a punishment had produced 14 billion Rwandan francs' worth of labour for the post-genocide reconstruction of the country.[416]Regarding individual economic development, the Gacaca Law requires some convicted perpetrators to pay compensation to victims, which may improve survivors' material conditions. The component of the Gacaca Law governing compensation is largely ill defined, allowÂing both for victims to claim restitution directly from perpetrators and for the government to force perpetrators to pay funds into the national Compensation Fund for Victims of the Genocide and Crimes against Humanity.[417] The Fund, established initially as the Genocide Survivors' Fund (GSF) in 1999 and drawing in 5 per cent of the government's annual revenue, is designed to award damages to victims through variÂous methods, including direct financial assistance, improved health care and educational scholarships.[418] The Compensation Fund, argues Mucyo, â€?will be distributed proportionally among the victims on the basis of the harm they suffered, as established by the gacaca courts or common law courts. In this way, each victim can receive at least some compensation, which is one pillar of reconciliation.’[419]
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