Rwandan genocide of 1994 appears in a distinctive position in the history of genocides with the extraordinary number of people that were victimized within one hundred days, the wide-spread participation of the Hutu population in the massacre, and the atrocities that were committed by perpetrators on victims with whom they had preexisting social relations. These contextual qualities of the genocide have influenced the Rwandan society’s preferences related to transitional justice in the aftermath of the genocide. The post-genocide setting which reflected these qualities has limited the number of feasible mechanisms through both the scarce economic resources it involved and the threat of a new wave of violence that was created by the broken social fabric. In this particular context, Rwanda has re-instrumentalized Gacaca, which had been the traditional resolution mechanism of Rwanda, as a transitional justice mechanism by reshaping it in line with present requirements and supplementing it with the power of the modern state. The Gacaca jurisdiction, with its feature of being based on the direct participation of the people rather than professionals, was built in a way that would enable it to situate its impact in the social or, to put it another way, to transform the social as opposed to mere punishment, while judging the perpetrators of the genocide via the social.