International Criminal Courts in Action: The ICTR's Effect on Death Penalty and Reconciliation in Rwanda

This article focuses on a major reform encouraged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) – the abolition of the death penalty in Rwanda. For a decade prior to this reform, Rwandan courts have been imposing the death penalty in genocide cases. Using a qualitative empirical research method, still uncommon in international legal studies, the article shows how the ICTR’s requirements influenced the abolition, and then considers the impact of the abolition on national reconciliation in Rwanda. The findings suggest that the abolition has contributed to reconciliation, including through re-humanizing perpetrators and their relatives, improving survivors’ perception of society, and inspiring both survivors and perpetrators to envision a shared future. This is quite remarkable considering that, during the debates on the ICTR’s establishment, Rwanda insisted that sentencing to death genocide perpetrators was necessary for post-conflict justice and reconciliation. The article thus sheds a new light on the relationship between international tribunals and national reconciliation. In particular, it suggests that international tribunals can advance national reconciliation (and thus attain one of their explicit goals) through encouraging domestic legal developments such as death penalty reforms. Moreover, by raising awareness to the abolition’s positive effects on interethnic relations in Rwanda, the article could inform debates about the future of capital punishment in other death penalty countries.