Kigali, Rwanda│Spring 2006 By Benjamin Allen In early 2005, USAID supported a team of five international experts from the U.S. National Center for State Courts (NCSC), a U.S.-based nonprofit organization that promotes innovations in judicial systems, to conduct an assessment of the Rwandan court system. The assessment, which was presented to the Rwandan Supreme Court, showed weak financial procedures and court personnel that lacked financial management training, which USAID then set out to help repair.

In 2003, amendments to the Rwandan constitution had strengthened the posi¬tion of the judiciary as a separate branch of government. This included a declara¬tion of the financial and administrative autonomy of the courts, which had previously negotiated budgets with each separate municipality. However, reforms had not yet been fully effective.

Following the 2005 assessment, USAID and NCSC sought ways to improve the judiciary’s budgetary process and finan¬cial management procedures. Finding a lack of communication on financial matters between the Supreme Court and provincial courts, the NCSC worked with provincial-level judges to ensure greater participation in the budgetary process. Starting in August 2005, the program successfully trained key staff of the Supreme Court and lower-level courts, including 40 senior staff of the Supreme Court, 57 judges, and 150 clerks. USAID supported a national conference for the provincial courts to plan the judiciary’s 2006-2008 budget. USAID also worked to produce a finan¬cial procedures manual for the judiciary that met the standards of the Auditor General, the supreme audit institution.

Charles Kariwabo, the president of the Kigali Court, has the new financial procedures manual on his desk. He notes that the process towards greater finan¬cial independence is underway. “Today

we can defend our budget, even if they [the government] don’t accept all our proposals.”

In the past, Kariwabo had to defend his budget at the local prefecture. This dependence on the executive branch, even for purchases as minor as paper and office supplies, significantly weakened the ability of courts to act impartially in cases involving the state.

Today, the provincial courts defend their budgets to the Supreme Court, which presents the budget to the government. This means that while the provincial courts have not yet gained total financial independence, the battles are fought at a much higher level, and that lower courts are relatively isolated from the possibility of direct executive branch manipulation.

Kariwabo is careful to note that he and his colleagues “thought about judicial independence for a long time. Each new step towards independence we receive with pleasure, but we keep demanding more.” The assistance provided by USAID has helped the Rwandan judi¬ciary become more empowered to make these demands. Other international donors, including the Dutch, Belgians, and UNDP, are taking over the mantle from USAID to continue efforts to improve judicial independence in management, financial, and legal issues.

Originally published in USAID in Africa