Parliament yesterday welcomed a government’s bill to amend the law governing community mediators’ (Abunzi) committees across the country and remove their authority to mediate over issues that involve alleged criminal offences.

The bill was tabled in the Chamber of Deputies yesterday by the Minister for Justice, Johnston Busingye, who argued extensively that the mediators’ jurisdiction to mediate over certain criminal matters has left many people unsatisfied at how criminals in their communities were being dealt with.

"Wide consultations were conducted before coming up with the amendment. It was clear that cases that can be found in our Penal Code can’t continue to be resolved through mediation,” he told MPs.

Under the current law governing community mediators, grave crimes such as injuring or killing domestic animals, demolishing or damaging another person’s building, blackmail, looting or damaging other people’s property, among others, were eligible to be resolved through mediation by Abunzi provided that the value of the damaged property does not exceed five million Rwandan francs.

That arrangement has led to intolerable impunity in many communities across the country as criminals would be arrested by the Police only to be released and referred to the mediators’ committees, experts say.

"I would like to thank the government for introducing this law. We were on the brink of having a culture of impunity while trying to resolve many issues through mediation,” said MP Juliana Kantengwa.

MP Désiré Nyandwi agreed, arguing that it was ridiculous to see that "one would have to petition Abunzi when a car worth Rwf3 million has been stolen”.

The concept of community mediators, which was introduced in the country more than ten years ago, was drawn from the Rwandan tradition of solving problems through community dialogue and has since cut the number of cases filed in courts and subsequently reduced court backlog.

After years of practice as courts would refer cases of petty property related crimes to Abunzi before handling them in case the petitioners were not satisfied, it has been argued that only civil matters are fit to be handled by the mediators.

After consultations with concerned institutions, the Ministry of Justice said in an explanatory note to introduce the Abunzi bill in Parliament yesterday, "it was observed that mediation should not apply to criminal cases”.

"As a result, all provisions related to the criminal jurisdiction have been removed from this draft law,” the ministry added in the explanatory note to introduce the Draft Law on the Organisation, Jurisdiction, Competence, and Functioning of Abunzi Committee.

Apart from welcoming the bill, the MPs also advised the government that the threshold of five million for Abunzi’s consideration was too high and called for it to be cut down to end a situation that had opened the opportunity for big theft cases by powerful criminals to be dealt with softly at the community level through mediation.

Debate, about the bill will continue at the committee level in Parliament as part of the next step in the process to enact the new Abunzi law.

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