Prosecuting wildlife and environmental crimes has been a challenge to the prosecution since the law doesn’t provide explicitly for the offenses.
The National Public Prosecution Authority (NPPA) on Thursday validated the Rapid Reference Guide (RRG), a tool that will help regulate environmental crimes.
The RRG is a tool that will help investigators, prosecutors and other law enforcers in the collection of evidence and drafting charges as it combines together different laws used in the domain of wildlife and environmental crimes.
In an interview with The New Times, the Minister of Justice Emmanuel Ugirashebuja said that it is important to come up with this treaty since evidence for such crimes is currently based on reports from local leaders, some cases that are in court lacked evidence and the suspects were acquitted.
The Director of Wildlife Justice and Rule of Law, Katto Wambua, one of the partners spearheading this program said that they have used this tool in nine countries in Africa so far, which has improved the investigation and prosecution of environmental crimes.
Wambua said that the move is timely since Rwanda is becoming a regional tourism hub, and RwandAir growing its flagship, makes the country a transit of people carrying some of these illegal wildlife and protected possessions.
"We are going to train over 200 prosecutors and investigators so that they can be able to conduct investigations with an understanding of how it works,” he said
David Bwimba, the Director of Environmental Crimes at the Rwanda Investigation Bureau (RIB) said that wildlife and environmental crimes range from 100 to 300 annually and that not all of them are reported.
Bwimba further said that some of these crimes are not known by the public, due to lack of this information but the new tool will help enforce the law and give a clear understanding on such crimes.
According to figures from RIB, the crimes have been on the rise. In 2020, there were 130 cases, 197 cases were reported in 2021, while 285 were reported this year.