Adjudicating Transnational Crimes in Rwanda: Legal Framework and Jurisdictional Challenges

Transnational crime refers to certain criminal phenomena that transcend borders of two or more countries, violate the criminal laws of multiple states, or affect another country. The common characteristics of transnational crimes is based on the extension of criminal responsibility towards a common responsibility of States which implies that the countries entering into this extension of responsibility are involved de facto in the implementation of the entire procedure due to the participatory obligation to which they are subject. This imply that combating transnational crimes must be a collaborative effort. Thus, Rwanda must organize its legal systems in order to align with the requirements created by the nature of transnational crimes and international standards in prosecuting and adjudicating these crimes. This study assesses strengths, gaps and challenges of the legal framework in adjudicating transnational crimes in Rwanda. In this study, main legislations which are closely related to the transnational crimes, jurisdiction and their adjudication in Rwanda were qualitatively analyzed. It has argued that despite the essential legal measures taken by the Rwandan legislator to strengthen the fight against cross-border or transnational crimes, there are still areas to improve at the national, regional and international level, particularly in terms of updating regularly the legal measures pertaining to the fight against cross border crimes and in the cooperation in criminal matters with other States.