Members of "mediation" committees elected

Rwandans on Monday voted to elect some 18,540 officials to serve on mediation committees, known locally as Abunzi, charged with handling disputes between members of the public before such cases are placed before national courts of law, an official of Rwanda's electoral commission told IRIN.

"They [the committees] will handle minor cases such as land and family disputes, simple robbery, destruction or damage of crops, adultery, simple assault and injury," Damien Habumuremyi, the commission's executive secretary, said.

At the same time, elections began on Monday, under the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion, for local women's leadership committees. The poll, involving the election of representatives from the cell, the country's lowest local administrative unit, to the national level, is expected to be completed on Friday.

Habumuremyi said the mediation committees, established under the justice ministry, would operate from the sector level to "provide a framework of obligatory mediation prior to submission of a case before the first degree [district] courts".

He said each committee would comprise 12 residents of a sector, who must be persons of integrity and acknowledged for their mediation skills.

The committee members would be expected to handle both civil and criminal cases, which would normally attract fines not exceeding US $5,200 in the national courts. They would serve renewable two-year terms of office.

A justice ministry official, who requested anonymity, told IRIN that the mediation committees would help reduce the number of cases filed in national courts, which are already burdened by a backlog of the 1994 genocide-related cases. "It will give our courts ample time to concentrate on serious crimes that include those of genocide," the official said.

Up to 80,000 suspects accused of taking part in the 1994 genocide are still held in the country's detention facilities. Some 937,000 ethnic Tutsi and politically moderate Hutus were killed during the genocide, according to Rwandan government figures.

In 2001, Rwanda introduced a traditional justice system, known as Gacaca, in an effort to ease pressure on the national justice system in dealing with the genocide cases.

The Gacaca courts, set up at village level, give both prisoners and families of victims an opportunity to face one another and talk about their roles and experiences during the genocide, before a panel of locally elected judges who then hand down verdicts.

However, genocide survivor organisations in the country have in the past accused Rwanda's justice system of being too slow in delivering justice.

According to Habumuremyi, political parties were not involved in Monday's elections.