Chief Justice Emeritus, Prof. Sam Rugege on Monday, August 31 rooted for peaceful resolution of conflicts following his election as Chairperson of the Court Mediation Advisory Committee.
He was elected at the launch of the Court Mediation Advisory Committee, an alternative justice system, a function that was presided over by Chief Justice Faustin Ntezilyayo.
"It (mediation) is a passion of mine. We should go from litigation to peaceful resolution of disputes,” observed Rugege, who retired last year after serving his eight-year term at the helm of the Rwandan judiciary.
Rugege will be deputised by Aimé Kalimunda, the current President of the Court of Appeal, while its Secretary General is Bernadette Uwicyeza, a private mediator.
Uwicyeza formerly served as the Secretary General of the Kigali International Arbitration Centre (KIAC).
The Supreme Court recently published a list of 51 accredited mediators, most of whom senior lawyers in the country which also includes other professionals like engineers.
The Judicial Spokesperson, Harrison Mutabazi said that the mediators will mainly help in solving, amicably, civil litigations that have been filed to courts.
Rugege concurred with Chief Justice Ntezilyayo that the judiciary should be built on Rwanda’s history of negotiation and resolution of disputes through homegrown initiatives like Gacaca community justice system and Abunzi (community mediators).
"So there is no reason why we should not extend this tradition to cover all kinds of cases. There are no cases which are too big for mediation,” Rugege said.
"If we can have Gacaca laypeople deciding such complex, very emotional cases of genocide, there is no reason why we should spend five years trying to get a decision from court because courts are overburdened with cases," he said.
However, he pointed out that it should only be those complex cases where the [involved] people are not willing to compromise that should stay in the conventional courts.
"My hope is that the court-annexed mediation which the Judiciary is championing will really take off and became the main medium of resolving disputes. It is possible," he said.
He indicated that in some developed countries, 90 per cent of all disputes are resolved through mediation.
"We should reduce the cases in courts, we should be able to promote peaceful coexistence in our population, we should be able to speed up businesses because commercial cases have been decided through mediation and go back to resume good relations with business, and of course, that business will continue uninterrupted, leading to the development of our country," he said.
Ntezilyayo said that Rwanda has a long and successful history of mediation through the Abunzi and Gacaca systems.
"Court-Annexed Mediation (CAM) comes to build on this reach history. It is posited that CAM main advantage is that the judges, mediators (among them lawyers, but also mediators coming from other disciplines) and litigants become participants therein, thereby giving to them a feeling that negotiated settlement is achieved by all the three actors in the justice delivery system,” he observed.
Borrowing from other experiences, Ntezilyayo said that in order to ensure a roster of appropriate and competent mediators, there is a need to have some quality control mechanisms in place.
Such, he noted, include regular training and practice requirements, abiding by a code of conduct, and independent oversight mechanism that can take disciplinary action if warranted and address complaints lodged by participants.
In the fiscal year 2018/2019, 75,419 cases were filed to courts in Rwanda, while 72,648 got tried, according to data from the Judiciary.
Of those cases 610 were mediated meaning that they were resolved without court trial.