The Gacaca courts () were a system of community justice claimed by the Rwandan state to be rooted in "tradition" despite being a fundamentally novel punitive system based on incarceration and forced public labor (called TIG). The term 'gacaca' can be translated as 'short grass' referring to the public space where neighborhood male elders (abagabo) used to meet to solve local problems. The name of this system was then adopted in 2001 as the title of the state's new criminal justice system "Gacaca Courts" (Inkiko Gacaca) to try those deemed responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide where over an estimated 1,000,000 people were killed, tortured and raped. After the genocide, the new Rwandan Patriotic Front's government incarcerated large swathes of the population (often on the basis of no more than a neighbor "pointing a finger" at them) and consequently struggled to pursue justice on such a massive scale. It then announced the introduction of Gacaca Courts as the only possible means to address the massive population of untried prisoners, the more than 100,000 people accused of genocide, war crimes, and related crimes against humanity. By 2000, approximately 130,000 alleged genocide perpetrators populated Rwanda's prisons (Reyntjens & Vandeginste 2005, 110). The state justified the use of these unconventional courts by claiming that using the justice system Rwanda had in place, the trial of such massive numbers of alleged perpetrators would take well over 200 years during which Rwanda's economy would crumble as a massive amount of their population awaited trial in prison. In 1994, the United Nations Security Council created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to try high-ranking government and army officials accused of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But by June 2006, the tribunal had come to only 22 judgments involving 28 people. At this rate, the Rwandan government claimed that it would take 200 years to prosecute the 130 000 people who were in prison awaiting trial. The Gacaca Courts were established in law in 2001, began to operate on a trial basis in 2002 and eventually came to operate as trials throughout the country by early 2007.