Collaborative Research: Enhancing Public Access: Archiving Court Cases to Study Genocide and Transitional Justice

在20世纪，种族灭绝造成的死亡人数超过了战争或凶杀。因此，了解谁犯下灭绝种族罪以及如何在事后伸张正义在21世纪至关重要。因此，本项目将审查1994年卢旺达种族灭绝的独特法庭数据，以评估参与种族灭绝的数十万平民的特征，卢旺达法院如何寻求追究这些人的责任，以及这种对大规模暴力的法律反应如何影响个人和社区。由于许多其他大规模暴力事件涉及平民参与，因此了解实施大规模暴力的人的特征有可能为干预措施提供信息，以制止或预防暴力。世界各国也实施了追究肇事者责任的法院和相关司法机制，了解这些法院的运作方式及其对人民和社区的影响也将为今后的司法工作提供信息。因此，项目成果将广泛传播给学术界、政府和公众，包括预测和应对大规模暴力的组织，如联合国防止种族灭绝问题特别顾问，以及在暴力事件发生后促进法律应对的组织，如国际过渡时期司法中心。这个项目提出了三个相关的问题，以促进关于大规模暴力及其后果的社会科学研究：1)谁参与了大规模暴力？什么会影响对这种参与的法律反应？3)对大规模暴力的法律反应如何影响个人和社会？为此，调查人员调查了卢旺达的情况，1994年卢旺达有多达100万人被杀。参与暴力的卢旺达人后来在加卡卡法院受审，这是卢旺达政府在种族灭绝之后建立的以社区为基础的司法系统。通过分析196万份gacaca法院案件档案，该项目将评估谁参与了暴力，gacaca法院如何应对，以及gacaca法院对当今卢旺达公民和社区的影响。本项目有三个核心的科学贡献：(1)现有的种族灭绝研究强调了犯罪者的正常状态，尽管很少有大规模的研究经验地评估了参与暴力集体行动的人的特征。Gacaca法庭记录构成了迄今为止最大的暴力肇事者数据集，可以分析参与种族灭绝的平民的特征。(2) gacaca法院系统独特地混合了惩罚性和恢复性司法，以回应民事参与者。更好地了解这些法院如何运作，对于科学地理解现行法律、过渡时期司法机制和基于社区的司法至关重要。这将包括对影响法院程序和惩罚的个人和社区一级因素的分析，引发对研究不平等和社会法律程序的学者至关重要的问题。(3)第三，了解gacaca将为有关过渡时期司法机制的文献提供信息，从它们对参与者的长期影响到它们对法院诉讼发生地社区的影响。

In the twentieth century, genocide killed more people than wars or homicide. Understanding who commits genocide and how to bring justice in its aftermath is therefore vitally important in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, this project will examine unique court data from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda to assess the characteristics of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who participated in the genocide, how courts in Rwanda sought to hold these individuals accountable, and how such legal responses to mass violence affected individuals and communities. Because many other instances of mass violence involve civilian participation, understanding the characteristics of people who commit mass violence holds the potential to inform interventions to stop or prevent violence. Courts and related justice mechanisms that hold perpetrators accountable are also implemented in countries worldwide, and understanding how these courts function and the effects they have on people and communities will likewise inform future justice efforts. The project results will therefore be widely disseminated to academic, governmental, and public audiences that include organizations forecasting and responding to mass violence, such as the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, as well as organizations that facilitate legal responses in the aftermath of violence, such as the International Center for Transitional Justice. This project asks three related questions to contribute to social scientific scholarship on mass violence and its aftermath: 1) Who participates in mass violence? 2) What influences legal responses to this participation? And 3) How do legal responses to mass violence affect individuals and societies? To do so, the investigators examine the case of Rwanda, where as many as one million people were killed in 1994. Rwandans who participated in the violence were later tried in gacaca courts, a community-based justice system that the Government of Rwanda created in the aftermath of the genocide. By analyzing 1.96 million gacaca court case files, this project will assess who participated in the violence, how the gacaca courts responded, and the influence of the gacaca courts on Rwandan citizens and communities today. This project makes three core scientific contributions: (1) Existing studies of genocide stress the normality of perpetrators, though few large-scale studies have empirically assessed the characteristics of those who take part in violent collective action. Gacaca court records constitute the largest dataset of perpetrators of violence to date, allowing for an analysis of the characteristics of the civilians who participated in the genocide. (2) The gacaca court system uniquely blended punitive and restorative justice to respond to civilian participants. Better understanding how these courts functioned is vital to scientific understanding of the law in action, transitional justice mechanisms, and community-based justice. This will include an analysis of the individual and community-level factors that influenced court processes and punishments, invoking questions that are central to scholars of inequality and socio-legal processes. (3) Third, understanding gacaca will inform literature on transitional justice mechanisms, ranging from their long-term influence on participants to their influence on the communities where court proceedings occurred.