Rwanda's Permanent Representative to the UN Valentine Rugwabiza on Thursday presented two alternatives to the Security Council to save the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) from what Kigali perceives as worrying credibility crisis.

She was elaborating to the Security Council what the government of Rwanda perceives as a credibility crisis on the MICT when it comes to the issue of early release of convicted masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

MICT took over from both the former International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) – which closed shop in December 2015 – and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which closed last year.

Rugwabiza’s first suggestion was that MICT should put in place clear rules of procedure for early release and apply them transparently instead of leaving the decision to the personal discretion of the current or future President of the MICT.

"The credibility of the MICT and its legacy and contribution to the fight against impunity for crimes of genocide are at stake,” she said.

The second, she said, is that rules of procedures to be put in place should prevent genocide convicts benefiting from early releases from engaging in activities promoting the genocide ideology and denial.

Rugwabiza noted that a number of convicts released before the end of their sentences have since regrouped and organized themselves in an association denying the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and propagating the genocide ideology.

According to Rugwabiza, the open debate was "a fitting occasion” to assess the results and effectiveness of an important institution for international justice, the MICT.

Rugwabiza noted that the ICTR was a pioneer in establishing a credible international criminal justice system. Some of its achievements, she said, especially the verdicts it delivered in relation to rape and media as means of perpetrating genocide, were significant milestones for jurisprudence on genocide.

"With these positive achievements in mind, it should be concerning to all that the legacy of the ICTR and the credibility of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) are seriously at stake. Since the MICT was established in 2012, it has released, before the end of their sentences, more than 10 masterminds of the Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda,” Rugwabiza said.

"These early releases have been granted in nontransparent circumstances and inconsistent procedure. Few weeks ago, to our surprise, the Government of Rwanda received, for the first time from the President of the MICT, a request for opinion on three additional applications for early releases of genocide convicts”.

The Government of Rwanda was surprised, she explained, because, in the six years of existence of the MICT, the government had never received such a request before.

While Kigali appreciates the opportunity to provide "our opinion, which we did,” she said, the request from the MICT underlines the lack of transparency and the inconsistency "we have been denouncing for a long time.” It also demonstrates, she explained, that the decision not to seek the opinion of the Government of Rwanda or the associations of the victims in previous cases was the personal discretion of the President of the MICT.

"Indeed, one may ask what allowed the MICT to seek our opinion this time while the rules of procedure, have remained unchanged”.

The President of MICT Rugwabiza was referring to is no other than Judge Theodor Meron, reappointed as President of the Mechanism in 2016 for another four-year term. The National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), in 2016, issued a damning verdict about the judge’s decisions.

The Commission detailed "grave mistakes” committed by Meron and the Residual Mechanism on cases related to the Genocide against the Tutsi that he was entrusted, by the UN, to handle.

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