Inside the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Abstract

Abstract In Chapter 2, an empirical evaluation of the ICTR’s objectives, as understood inside the institution, highlights the court’s focus on the development of international criminal case law. Among the judges and lawyers at the court, this is the dominant understanding of their work, and it has shaped the ICTR’s formal interaction with Rwanda’s concurrent national and local transitional justice processes. Inside the Tribunal, the actions of the Rwandan national courts and gacaca are explained in a way that is consistent with the ICTR’s focus on building an international legal regime. The work of the Rwandan domestic courts is interpreted within this cultural context, better explaining the Tribunal’s Rule 11 bis decisions on the transfer of its remaining cases to Rwanda while offering a heuristic device to analyze the ways in which the ICTR deploys information generated by the gacaca courts in its Trial Chamber judgments.