As part of the ongoing cooperation between the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Kigali Bar Association, a hundred judges and lawyers are benefiting from the ICTR’s expertise in online research.

The two-week workshop that kicked off yesterday at ICTR’s Remera headquarters is described by the organisers as an opportunity for the Rwandan legal practitioners to progress in online research.

The tribunal’s Chief of Legal Library and Reference Section, Angeline Djampou, said the training will empower participants with capacity to accurately manage the time they spend doing research on internet.

"We intend to help our participants to efficiently do an online research using a minimal time possible,” she said during an interview.

She noted that during the workshop, it will be clarified to participants that the internet disposes of uncountable resources, which obliges a scientific researcher to specifically identify just the important information they need.

The ICTR is a UN mandated court put in place to try key masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and as it nears completion, part of its exit strategy is to empower the Rwandan judiciary if they are to take on cases that might have been left before the court closes down.

Djampou explained that trained librarians from ICTR have been selected to come and empower Rwandan lawyers in online research which will help them access free judicial information.

Though the turnup at the first day was extremely low, ICTR’s representative in Kigali, Mamadou Toure, encouraged participants to seize the opportunity and make efforts to benefit from this training of judicial information research.

Since 2000, the Arusha-based tribunal has been collaborating with the Rwandan judiciary for the sector’s capacity building in the country. Early last month another seminar was held in Kigali on International Criminal Law.

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