Das Unmögliche richten. Schuld, Strafe und Moral in Ruanda

The article deals with different procedures of taking to court and call to account the mass of perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and to doing justice to the few surviving victims and to international humanitarian law. The first section outlines the fundamental differences between vengeance and forgiveness on the one hand and redistributive and restorative justice on the other. The second section sketches the preconditions and the course of the genocide itself. Section three deals with the pitfalls and accomplishments of the International Criminal Court for Rwanda, section four with those of the Rwandan criminal courts in applying criminal law to mass violence. Section five presents and analyses the modernized Rwandan gacaca courts as a possible means to overcome the (partial) inadequacies of redistributive justice and to reconcile the Rwandan society. It is argued that although the gacaca courts do not work in a truly restorative manner and sometimes even counteract the idea of restoration, they still do bear the potential of democratizing and civilizing the war-torn and violence-ridden country of Rwanda. Section six finally discusses the restrictions, implications and limitations the Rwandan government was and is facing in choosing between redistributive and restorative approaches.