President Paul Kagame has said that the responsibilities to dispense justice are enormous, saying that justice is one of the key pillars on which our development hinges. Kagame said this on Tuesday, January 25 while presiding over the swearing in of Justice Beatrice Mukamurenzi, who was recently appointed judge of the Court of Appeal. “Even our history teaches us many things. One of them is to not tolerate injustice, rather take the lead and fight injustice committed against anyone, everywhere,” he said. The President said that liberation was meant to get rid of injustice. “We should not give up the battle against injustice,” he said, indicating that people should denounce misdeeds wherever they occur. The Court of Appeal, he said, is one of the entities that were established to expedite the adjudication of court cases, for Rwandans to get justice in a swift manner, remarking that “justice delayed is justice denied.” For justice to be dispensed effectively, Kagame said that all concerned organs should work together to that end. In that regard, he said that the judiciary should be regularly evaluated so as to make the needed improvements, and scale up good practices. The President congratulated the newly sworn-in judge and promised her the support needed for her to fulfill her responsibilities. A law establishing the Court of Appeal was published in the Official Gazette of June 2018. In 2019, one year after its establishment, the Court of Appeal had adjudicated up to 94 percent of cases that were initially stuck in the Supreme Court, according to data from the judiciary. According to statistics, there were over 854 cases that were pending before the Supreme Court, and these included 619 criminal cases, 92 civil cases, 89 commercial cases, eight labour cases, and 27 administrative cases. Prior to the establishment of the Court of Appeal, the Supreme Court used to take on appeal cases from the High Court, Military High Court, and the Commercial High Court which led to a heavy backlog. Injustice cases It is to note that the Office of the Ombudsman has been finding injustice in some cases tried in courts in the country. Its annual report for the financial year 2020-2021 found injustice in 12.2 percent of the cases that were tried in courts but were submitted to her office by citizens over unfair judgments. It requested the Supreme Court to retry those cases. The rate of injustice identified by the Ombudsman in the received court cases was higher – by 2.3 percentage points – compared to the previous year when the level of injustice was at 9.9 percent. Overall, for the cases related to court judgment, in 2020/2021, out of 361 files submitted to the Office of the Ombudsman for review on the grounds of injustice, it analysed 343 (95 percent), while 18 (5 percent) are yet to be looked into. Of the 343 analysed files, 42 were considered to have been unfairly judged, representing 12.2 percent.
