News that the Government is devising a new strategy to ensure that all the unenforced court rulings regarding the compensation of Genocide survivors are sorted out by December is heartening. The process, which has started with an assessment of Gacaca judgments related to properties, will tackle the 158,095 sentences that have not been executed so far. While it is noteworthy that 400,930 such judgments have been enforced, those that still need to get executed are too high a number. It is scandalous that 19 years after the Genocide against the Tutsi, many survivors are still waiting for justice and restitution. Many of these Rwandans are presently living in poor conditions. Of course no amount of compensation can erase the pain suffered as a result of losing your loved ones in such circumstances, but failure to enforce court rulings, in this case reparation, is denial of a basic right and should not be accepted. The Ministry of Justice should not only ensure that the judgments are executed; it should investigate why it has taken so long to abide by court decisions and take appropriate action. There seems to be a deep-seated problem. Is the delay in execution of court cases only associated with the verdicts rendered by the Gacaca courts or is the problem also prevalent in the conventional justice system? There is urgent need to get to the bottom of the whole issue because it surely represents an impediment to justice.
