Discussing community-based outreach activities by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

Due to its remote location, language barriers and the overall complexity of judicial trials, the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) are generally not well known nor positively perceived in Rwanda. In response to such criticism, the ICTR pioneered in setting up an outreach programme, mandated to improve the Rwandan population’s understanding of the work of the Tribunal, and to facilitate more positive attitudes towards the ICTR and its theorised contribution to reconciliation. This article sets out to discuss and provide an empirical evaluation of the effectiveness of such outreach activities by the ICTR on the community level. Through integrating novel empirical data deriving from focus group discussions with participants of community-based outreach activities in Rwanda, this article provides a nuanced assessment of the Rwanda Tribunal’s outreach efforts. Evaluating the level of knowledge about the ICTR and perceptions towards the Tribunal and its expected effects on reconciliation among outreach participants, and contrasting these findings with control groups who did not participate in outreach, reveals that community-based outreach activities by the ICTR did contribute to a more nuanced and advanced knowledge level regarding the Tribunal. Such an increased understanding, however, contrary to theoretical arguments, did not translate into more favourable perceptions towards the ICTR or the Tribunal’s contribution to reconciliation.