Mediation has proven to be the best option for addressing disputes by ensuring that victims get justice, but also, mends relations and prevents imprisonment, actors in the justice sector have said. They made the observations on Friday, November 25, in Kigali, during National Advocacy Dialogue with stakeholders in the Justice Sector under the theme: Taking stock of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Pilot Project. It was organised by Transparency International Rwanda (TI-RW). Apollinaire Mupiganyi, Executive Director at Transparency International Rwanda, said that since July 2022, the organisation shifted from a pure Legal Aid Services to Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) model. “This year, Transparency International Rwanda put more efforts in solving disputes through mediation, where in our country policy, we place first the resolution of disputes amicably, instead of taking legal actions to court,” Mupiganyi said. Data from the oganisation show that since January to October 2022, TI-RW received 4,084 complaints, among which 247 (6 per cent) were addressed through mediation – using the Alternative Dispute Resolution model. The organisation indicated that the mediated cases are largely dominated by civil matters. Eugenie Gahongayire, one of Inshuti z’Umuryango – women and men elected by residents at village level so that they help prevent violence or mediate families – in Kicukiro District, said that there was a married couple that had been in conflicts to the point that the wife had attempted to commit suicide. She said that the husband worked as a security guard, while the wife was unemployed. In order to help address the issue, she said she listened to their case, attentively, and was able to reconcile them, such that they are now living in harmony. “The wife said that her husband would come home at night and tell her that he no longer needed her, that she should go back to her parents. Because the wife loves her husband so much, she had decided to take her own life,” she said. For the husband, she exposed that he claimed the wife ‘no longer suited him’, that he reached home and found the wife had not cooked, and that she had poor hygiene. These, Gahongayire said, are small ‘mistakes’ which might ruin a relationship, spouses do not dedicate time to have dialogue and talk about them. “The couple was on the verge of separation, but it is now enjoying a happy marriage,” she said, pointing out that the husband gave money to her wife to run a small income-generating business. “I told them that if they chose to get married, they should live together in love,” she said. Contributing to prison decongestion Mupiganyi said that Transparency International Rwanda carried out a policy research looking at the implementation of alternative mechanisms to imprisonment and found that prisons in the country are overcrowded as they accommodate inmates who are beyond their capacity. According to the National Commission for Human rights’ report for the fiscal year 2021-2022, the Commission’s inspection found that the 14 prisons that are in the country had a capacity to accommodate 61,301 inmates, yet they had 79,673 inmates, which implies a prison congestion as they, overall, exceeded their capacity by about 30 per cent. Of those inmates, 55,033 were charged with ordinary crimes, while 22,640 were charged with Genocide crime. Because of that issue (prison congestion), and other problems that are observed in the Rwandan community, there is a national alternative dispute resolution policy that was approved by the Cabinet in September this year,” he said. What this mediation policy is putting forward is to look for ways to dispense justice to the affected citizens, but also ensure that the Rwandan community does not descend into conflicts – mediate them at the same time deliver justice, he said. Anastase Nabahire, Director General of Justice Sector Coordination at the Ministry of Justice underscored that the ministry has started conducting awareness activities for the newly adopted ADR Policy, that its Policy Pilot Joint Implementation plan is expected to be adopted by the end of December 2022. “Mediation is a clear practice that we were requested to include in laws, so that they become laws that foster mutual understanding, build mechanisms to solve disputes without resorting to courts, so that the people who have an issue have enough time to take care of development activities, their life and that of their children and friends, and the country become more prosperous,” he said. However, he warned that there are cases that should not be eligible to mediation, including felonies and murder.
