JOSEPH MUTABOBA (Rwanda) said that the International Criminal Tribunals were a less-than-perfect response to mass atrocities. Only a relatively small number of people could be tried, and trials were unavoidably lengthy because of the requirements of judicial proceedings. That could raise questions about the court's deterrent effect. However needed an international criminal court might be, its probability of success should be evaluated in the light of those two Tribunals. If they were ultimately viewed as ineffectual, the international community should reconsider its commitment to creating what would amount to "a permanent version of a temporary failure, and a permanent United Nations failure for Rwanda".

He recalled his Government's opposition to the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda by Security Council resolution 955 (1994), as its mandate had not adequately met Rwanda's expectations. Today, the Tribunal's behaviour and output left Rwanda with no alternative but to register a vote of no confidence. In its protest over the Tribunal's structure, Rwanda had argued that the establishment of so ineffective an international tribunal would appease the conscience of the international community without responding to the expectation of the Rwandan people, and the victims of genocide in particular.

Among the primary reasons for Rwanda's opposition to resolution 955, he said, was the fact that the strongest punishment available to the Tribunal was life imprisonment, whereas the Rwandan legal system permitted capital punishment. Since its inception, the Tribunal had indicted 48 individuals, 36 of whom were detained in Arusha. Five had been tried and sentenced. The Rwandan national judiciary, with its highly limited resources, had brought more than 20,000 genocide-related indictments; 17,847 of the defendants had pleaded guilty, 1,989 had been tried and 5,760 released. Those trials had been closely monitored by the international community and had been found to conform to the highest international standards.

He drew particular attention to his Government's recent revival of an ancient traditional system known in his native language as gacaca. The gacaca courts would have jurisdiction to decide prosecutions brought against lower- level offenders. There would be 180,000 judges selected at the level of cells, 30,000 at the level of sectors, and 2,000 at the level of communes. Prisoners would be tried in public before the entire community. Drawing on recollections of the accused and the villagers, the judges would compile a list of those who died in the genocide, and those responsible. The accused would then be judged and sentenced. The innocent would be released and the guilty punished in accordance with the severity of their crimes.