In the wealth of commentary quite properly generated by this month’s twentieth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, two brief articles caught my eye. One by Laura Seay was academic: an overview analysis of whether reconciliation by legal means has worked. The other by Susan Dominus was journalistic: a report on one photographer’s portraits of reconciliation, and the stories that lie behind them.

Seay’s analysis was posted on The Monkey Cage (now run by the Washington Post). It looks at the impact of Rwanda’s transitional justice programmes on national reconciliation. Two core legal measures were the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, created specifically to try leaders of the genocide, and gacaca courts, again formed specially but contrastingly based on customary institutions. The ICTR has a mixed record, and even when it finishes its work (perhaps at the end of this year) will not have prosecuted every allegedly culpable figure. If anything, gacaca courts are yet more controversial.

Operating at the community level, these courts sought to strike a balance between global mechanisms and local experience. Their aims were to dispense justice, deliver accountability, and promote national reconciliation. In more than a decade from 2001 to 2012, when they ceased to function, they processed nearly 2 million cases. However, they were constrained by a formal requirement that they focus solely on genocide crimes, and also by government intimidation. Tutsi survivors were sometimes retraumatized by appearing in court, and few gained any real reparations. Hutus discovered that they were subjected to a sense of collective guilt. Observers therefore tend to conclude that gacaca courts generated no meaningful reconciliation, and may even have deepened ethnic division.

Dominus’s report appeared in the New York Times Magazine (and is referenced by Seay). It describes Pieter Hugo’s work in photographing Hutu perpetrators pardoned by Tutsi survivors of their actual crimes. In each case, reconciliation was facilitated by Association Modeste et Innocent, a non-profit group. “In AMI’s program, small groups of Hutus and Tutsis are counseled over many months, culminating in the perpetrator’s formal request for forgiveness. If forgiveness is granted by the survivor, the perpetrator and his family and friends typically bring a basket of offerings, usually food and sorghum or banana beer. The accord is sealed with song and dance.”

Engaging at the individual level, the AMI initiative undertakes reconciliation “one encounter at a time”. It has diverse results that are evident in Hugo’s images. “Some pairs showed up and sat easily together, chatting about village gossip. Others arrived willing to be photographed but unable to go much further.” Nevertheless, there is clear value in AMI’s painstaking efforts.

Commissioned by Creative Court, an arts organization based in The Hague, the full set of Hugo’s photos is currently on display there, and will eventually be shown in churches and at memorials in Rwanda. Eight images of paired perpetrators and victims are also accessible online, together with testimony from each person.