Competition for resources is fierce. Funds spent on ensuring impeccable trials will be at the expense of other human rights, such as housing for the genocide's survivors, educating orphans and treating the mutilated. While Rwanda's trials are far from perfect they are far better than is portrayed by comparison with due process elsewhere. There is often considerable evidence against the accused. Testimony of survivors and witnesses, and increasingly frequent confessions of guilt, are cathartic for those devastated by genocide.
Sentences are mostly lighter than for lesser crimes in the United States.
Many accused of genocide are sentenced to less than 10 years. Hundreds have been sentenced to death yet only a handful have been executed by firing squad. Those shot were the more notorious enforcers of the genocide who, the Rwandan government's defenders argue, were executed partly to satisfy survivors' demands for justice to be seen to be done. Criticism of the trials is but one of several faults human rights groups find with Rwanda. The government is also accused of failing to curtail revenge killings of Hutus.