Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A traditional Rwandan system of justice in which local community members are allowed to testify freely, without the participation of lawyers, and cases are decided by a panel of judges chosen from the community.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
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Examples
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But when you look at the gacaca, which is traditionally a way of bringing together the people and community, tell what they went through, and admit what they have done, and then ask forgiveness, the gacaca today is basically a court of -- court of law.
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In villages around the country, traditional community trials called gacaca help the victims confront the killers in front of all of their neighbors.
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But when you look at the gacaca, which is traditionally a way of bringing together the people and community, tell what they went through, and admit what they have done, and then ask forgiveness, the gacaca today is basically a court of -- court of law.
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FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But the way you did it, with these so-called gacaca courts.
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In villages around the country, traditional community trials called gacaca help the victims confront the killers in front of all of their neighbors.
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Of the three suspects so far arrested, one was the victim's neighbour who she repeatedly accused of killing all her family members and was recently freed after confessing before local courts called gacaca, the group said.
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They contend the current Rwandan government is using its legal system, community-based courts known as "gacaca" and re-education camps to manipulate the truth about the country's history during that period in order to maintain its rule.
The Seattle Times 2011
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In 2001, the government began implementation of a grassroots village-level justice system, known as gacaca, in order to address the enormous backlog of cases stemming from the genocide.
unknown title 2009
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Local courts known as gacaca are empowered to try those who participated in the killings and can hand down sentences ranging from community service to life in prison.
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In 2001, the government began implementation of a grassroots village-level justice system, known as gacaca, in order to address the enormous backlog of cases stemming from the genocide.
unknown title 2009
chained_bear commented on the word gacaca
"Kagame didn't rely on outsiders to build his crucial success, which was political reconciliation. He started out by following the standard model in which perpetrators of violence were prosecuted and then jailed. 'But soon we had 130,000 in jail—and many more suspects outside,' Kagame said. 'The genocide in our country involved a huge percentage of our population, both in terms of those who were killed and those who killed.' So Kagame arrived at the idea of using an indigenous system—gacaca courts, essentially local village councils where people confess and are punished but are mostly forgiven and reintegrated into the communities from which they came.... this has led to a unique situation among postgenocide countries.... in Rwanda, killers and the relatives of their victims live side by side, in every village in the country, and together are rebuilding their future."
—Fareed Zakaria, "Africa's New Path: Paul Kagame Charts a Way Forward," Newsweek, July 27, 2008
July 24, 2009
reesetee commented on the word gacaca
Wow. I'm not sure I'd be able to pull that off if I were a victim's relative.
July 24, 2009