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XII. International Support

Belgium, the Netherlands, and the European Union have been the most generous donors to the judicial system but others including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Norway, South Africa and Sweden have contributed as well. They have supported the building and rebuilding of courts, improvements in information technology, the writing of new legislation and training of judicial personnel.

Many diplomats representing donor countries understand the difficulties involved in improving the delivery of justice. The European Union has on several occasions criticized abuses, such as those connected to the “genocide ideology” campaign and those remarked in Bizimungu trial.³¹⁷ Several diplomatic representatives have intervened promptly and successfully in cases of flagrant miscarriage of justice and in one exceptional case in 2007, donors expressed serious concern about the killings of detainees by police officers. After their intervention those killings stopped.

Donors have rarely, however, used their considerable influence effectively to address more fundamental and systemic problems, like those described above. Given the extent of financial and political support for the judicial system, donors should be in a position to press the Rwandan government more vigorously for action.

With the issuance of arrest warrants against important Rwandan officers, governments in Africa, as elsewhere in the world, now face a challenge to their commitment to the rule of law and their respect for obligations under the Interpol or European Arrest Warrant systems. Some of the persons being sought under the arrest warrants issued by Judge Bruguière and Judge Merelles continue to travel outside Rwanda. In April and May 2008 protocol chief Rose Kabuye was allowed to visit Germany and the United Kingdom and on another occasion, she was able to visit the United States. But when Lt. Col. Joseph Nzamabwita tried to go to Belgium in May, he was refused a visa or he was warned that he would be arrested if he came. He, and the delegation headed by the Rwandan Foreign Minister with whom he was to travel, cancelled the visit.³¹⁸ Col. Gacinya, at the time military attaché at the Rwandan embassy in Washington, was recalled to Rwanda soon after the issuance of the Spanish arrest warrant, thus sparing the US the need to react to his presence.³¹⁹

The United Nations and the African Union face the serious problem of having several of the officers now under arrest warrants serving as participants in the joint UN/AU peacekeeping force in Darfur, one as the deputy force commander.

Strengthening the Rwandan judicial system by offering funds and technical assistance may be easier than taking the decision to respect the orders, however flawed, of legitimate judicial authorities, but arguably the most important contribution other nations can make now to justice in Rwanda may be to set the example of upholding the rule of law in the complex problems that have resulted from the Rwandan genocide and other crimes of 1994.

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