EAC urged to promote community justice

Members of the East African Legislative Assembly (EALA) say they intend to encourage EAC member states to adopt Rwanda’s Gacaca courts system as a way to resolving disputes and reducing case-backlog in courts.Peter Mathuki, a member of the EALA committee on legal, rules and privileges, who led a four-man delegation to Rwanda to assess how the country is implementing the Rule of Law as agreed in the treaty establishing the bloc, said this yesterday.“We are picking best practices with regards to rule of law in all EAC member states so that we could share them. We can similarly advise countries to borrow examples from Rwanda which used Gacaca courts to deal with crimes the formal system could never have resolved.” His remarks came after the Chief Justice, Sam Rugege, presented Rwanda’s judicial reforms.According Mathuki, Kenya is in the process of adopting the same system to deal with the post 2007 election violence cases.He added that his delegation is in Rwanda for a whole week where they intend to meet with all stakeholders to assess how rule of law and administration of justice had been enhanced.“It is expected that the facts and figures we receive from the interactions would enable the Assembly through its committee to benchmark the principles of good governance for the region.”The Chief Justice briefed the delegation on all the reforms undertaken by the judiciary and the innovations that had been put in place to upgrade the judiciary.“The independence of the judiciary goes hand in hand with rule of law and good governance; for us to ensure that the judiciary is totally independent, we had to conduct several reforms, including vetting of all judges and a change in the constitution where the President is no longer the head of the Judicial Council,” said Rugege.

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EAC urged to promote community justice