The Assessment of Moral Damages in Rwandan Judicial Law

The Rwandan legislation has not yet availed a legal text that may regulate the issue of the precise calculation of damages daily granted to claimants in litigations where are involved such awards. Indeed apart from some specific fields namely matters of land, family, road traffic and labor where there are established rates or percentages on which the judge should refer to calculate required damages, many other areas are submitted on the sovereign appreciation of the court; fact that puts parties in a legal insecurity compelled to lie at the mercy of the judge who decides according to his goodwill or ill-will and opportunity of all inclinations of corruption with consequence of multiplying appeals to randomly get more damages in terms of amounts as there are no legal parameters. This silence of law stays harmful to parties and even to judges whose discretionary decision should be accused of arbitrary or motivated by bribe; and there is a need of a general law establishing criteria to determine damages. The objective of the study is the assessment of the judicial determination of damages in Rwandan courts achieved through a deep analysis of this legal issue in the three chapters.