African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights

You can see here another provision within the criminal code, which again precludes certain kinds of behaviors associated with or which might lead to further genocidal violence.

The, um, African Court on Human and People's Rights, the equivalent to the European Court of Human Rights in Africa, um, had to deal with an issue in 2017 in respect of the constitutionality of these provisions.

It's a very considered and careful decision.

It acknowledged that the government, uh, has a responsibility to adopt all measures to promote social cohesion and concordance to try to prevent a future genocide, and the state has a responsibility to ensure that laws are respected, every offender answers before the law.

It's entirely legitimate for the state, the African Court said, to have introduced laws on the minimization, propagation or negation of genocide.

Nonetheless, the laws in question should not be applied at any cost to the rights and freedoms of individuals or in a way which disregards international human rights standards.

Here's the issue.

These laws have been used in a highly repressive way to inhibit free speech broadly or anyone attempting to destabilize the incumbent government.

Per CNN's reporting, Victoire Ngabire, an opposition politician who challenged Kagame in 2010, was jailed on what she says were trumped-up terrorism charges.

She was eventually acquitted by the African Court on Human and People's Rights, which found that the Rwandan government had violated her rights.

Paul Rusesabagina, the man whose actions during the genocide were dramatised in the film Hotel Rwanda, was arrested in 2020 after a plane he believed was heading to Burundi diverted to Kigali, then sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism charges before being released after a presidential pardon in 2023.

Per the Centre for Justice and Foreign Policies analysis published in January 2025, Kagame and his ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front , have been in power since the genocide, winning the two most recent elections with 99% of the vote on both occasions.