Country Case Studies of reasons, including ongoing conflict, a record of severe human rights abuses, and the action of successive governments that seriously violated the rights of citizens with impunity. Dating back to the colonial period, and throughout the period of conflict, governments entrenched a deep set of divisions within Rwandan society, particularly along ethnic lines. These divisions were further enforced thought the enactment and implementation of dehumanizing laws and policies, inequality in treatment, and differential access to basic services. All these resulted in the Genocide that claimed the lives of over a million Tutsis, who in turn left behind more than 300,000 orphans, without any one to take care of them, and 500,000 widows. Sixty-seven per cent of the women were raped and infected with HIV. There were thousands of handicapped survivors, terrified and vulnerable, clamouring for justice and security, and a highly polarized, suspicious and traumatized population, characterized by distrust and fear and lack of shared national unity. The economy had collapsed, with sixtyfive per cent inflation. Moreover, the judicial system and other state management mechanisms had been completely destroyed. Transitional justice measures This was a challenging time that my country had never been through before; nobody knew where to start or how to proceed. There was total chaos that needed strong people and committed leaders who were able to disregard their own feelings, their own emotions and their own interests and rescue the country from the ashes of the Genocide; leaders who were ready to take the painful and challenging journey of national healing, unity and reconciliation as a prerequisite for lasting peace, security, good governance and development. In this regard, government established a national consultative forum to help the leadership to harmonize their understanding of the difficult legacy of un­ pleasant history and at the same time search for a common vision for the future. The forum was given a number of topics to think about, including national unity, democracy, justice, the national economy and security. Many traditional and imported modern options on how to deal with our past were suggested, but the imported solutions could not work in the Rwandan context. Rwandans decided to go with home-grown solutions, delivered from our socio-cultural fabric to replace imported divisive practices. I would like to share with you today some of the successful home-grown solutions, and hopefully some people can learn from them. Gacaca Court: A people (village)-based jurisdiction, but largely premised 50 International Conference on Transitional Justice, Zimbabwe