'You're either with us or against us': Civil society and policy making in post-genocide Rwanda

Abstract

Land reform and post-genocide justice and reconciliation are arguably the two most pressing challenges facing Rwanda. Both will only be delivered by collaboration between government, civil society, and international donors. This article explores the realignment of these actors within post-genocide andpost-conflict policy-making processes. Rwanda isahard case forNGOs and civil society, in that both the internal freedoms of democracy and the external support structures that often assist resistance to authoritarian rule are lacking. Further complicating matters, the interplay between the moral legitimacy of the Rwandan government and its material dependence on donorsshapestheopportunities andconstraints ofallpolicyactors.The article proceeds by profiling the policy context and relevant policy actors; mapping the land reform and gacaca policy processes, and the contribution of two civil society actors, LANDNET and Penal Reform International (PRI), to these processes; and concludes by evaluating the determinants of civil society effectiveness. The core argument is that spaces for civil society engagement in policy processes are ad hoc and personalized, rather than based on institutional relationships between society and the state. BETWEEN 7A PRIL AND THE BEGINNING OF JULY 1994, in a hundred days, up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in Rwanda in the clearest case of genocide since the Holocaust. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) established its claims to legitimacy by stopping the genocide and winning the war. The new regime’s moral legitimacy intersects with acute material dependence on donors and an international community de