Kigali, Rwanda ? Rwanda fired more than 500 judges and appointed 223 new ones, a reform intended to improve the performance of a judiciary crippled by thousands of cases from the 1994 genocide, officials said Wednesday in Kigali.

The 503 judges were fired because they lacked the qualifications to run a competent and efficient judiciary, said Johnston Busingye, the Justice Ministry’s secretary-general.

The fired judges were hastily appointed after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which more than 500,000 minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus were killed. Thousands of lawyers, judicial workers and other professionals were among those killed in the 100-day slaughter orchestrated by the extremist Hutu government then in power.

Since then, Rwanda has carried out an ambitious reconstruction program, including training a new breed of professionals. On Tuesday, Rwanda swore in 223 new judges, including those on the first-ever High Court.

Rwandans voted on July 12 to elect mediation committees that will resolve minor criminal and civil complaints, a common feature in Rwanda that was abolished under Belgian colonial rule, which ended in 1960.

The committees will help ease the burden on conventional courts struggling to try more than 80,000 genocide suspects. The committees will not deal with genocide cases.