Rwandan Genocide Research Articles

Editor’s Plaisance

Editor’s Plaisance

NTRK2 methylation is related to reduced PTSD risk in two African cohorts of trauma survivors

Extensive pharmacologic, genetic, and epigenetic research has linked the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) to memory processes, and to risk and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the present study we investigated the epigenetic pattern of 12 genes involved in the regulation of GR signaling in two African populations of heavily traumatized individuals: Survivors of the rebel war in northern Uganda (n = 463) and survivors of the Rwandan genocide (n = 350). The strongest link between regional methylation and PTSD risk and symptoms was observed for NTRK2, which encodes the transmembrane receptor tropomyosin-related kinase B, binds the brain-derived neurotrophic factor, and has been shown to play an important role in memory formation. NTRK2 methylation was not related to trauma load, suggesting that methylation differences preexisted the trauma. Because NTRK2 methylation differences were predominantly associated with memory-related PTSD symptoms, and because they seem to precede traumatic events, we next investigated the relationship between NTRK2 methylation and memory in a sample of nontraumatized individuals (n = 568). We found that NTRK2 methylation was negatively associated with recognition memory performance. Furthermore, fMRI analyses revealed NTRK2 methylation-dependent differences in brain network activity related to recognition memory. The present study demonstrates that NTRK2 is epigenetically linked to memory functions in nontraumatized subjects and to PTSD risk and symptoms in traumatized populations.

‘More than a million’: the politics of accounting for the dead of the Rwandan genocide

ABSTRACT Accounting for the dead after a humanitarian catastrophe is often fraught with methodological and/or political pitfalls. The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda is a case in point. A UN Commission of Experts estimated that between April and July 1994 at least 500,000 civilians had been murdered. The post-genocide Rwandan government soon made clear that foreign help with demographic and forensic investigations was neither appreciated nor needed, and proceeded with its own counts of genocide victims. The article critically examines these counts; contrasts them with accounting efforts after the Bosnian conflict of the mid 1990s; compares the official Rwandan numbers with scholarly estimates; proposes an alternative method for calculating the death toll; and concludes that the official death toll roughly doubled the number of genocide victims. The article provides insight into how history is written in the new Rwanda.

What Caused the Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi?

As we commemorate the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi—which took place 26 years ago in April of 1994—it is essential to reflect on the failures of many different individuals, organizations, and ...

Contextualizing the versification of genocide and gender violence in Zimbabwean poetry

ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the motifs of genocide and violence in Zimbabwean literature. For more articulation of ideas, it intersects both preoccupations of genocide and gender violence in the Zimbabwean ideological purview, particularly in selected poetry. The paper probes into disarm sensitivity the domain of genocide and violence as universal phenomena and underscores various levels of vitriolic and diatribe people sometimes face in their interactions in a society that is polarized by racial and ethnic violence. It valorizes genocide and sectarian violence as bodily configuration of destruction on the mental, economic, social and political psyche of the people in time and space. Contextualising different perspectives from the World war I to the World war II, the holocaust, the experiences of the peoples of Afghanistan, Congo, Algeria, together with the Nigeria’s Boko Haram insurgency and the Fulani Herdsmen’s usurpation of lands are some examples of violence which directly or indirectly facilitate genocide. Similarly, the genocide experience of Namibia and the destruction of the Zulu kingdom of South Africa have all contributed to diverse application of genocide phenomenon which lends axiomatic credence to the loss of sense of belongings; the loss of lives and social abuse; physical and mental destruction; economic polarization and inhuman dispositions frequently experienced by people of diverse races. The imposition of colonialism, post-colonialism and neo-colonialism at divergent epochs have consequently crippled people and made them incapacitated to meet the immediate yearnings of their dynamic societies. The painful experience of genocide in Burundi and Rwanda has degenerated into hate and perjury. However, based on all those reflections on genocide, this paper specifically examines genocide and violence within the framework of Zimbabwean landscape and poetry in order to demonstrate that ‘genocide has largely been visualized as a crime under international and national laws and has been criticized in all ramifications’. This paper is a response to how Zimbabwean people experience different categorizations of genocide and copious representations of these phenomena in poetry. It x-rays the human loss of lives, innate pogrom and psychological destructions ostensibly visualized by the people at different times before and after the independence of 1980. The paper showcases how Zimbabweans have not enjoyed the dividends of democracy, but rather experienced dejection in their lands leading to rejection and forceful migration to different countries. All poetry citations are to the collection of poetry entitled: (And Now the Poets Speak). This paper applies the genocide theory of ‘final solution’- a psychological tenet which was propounded by Sabby Sagall and enhanced by Susan Zyl to explain the trajectory of genocide and how this brings the framework of violence to an end in Zimbabwe and in Africa at large.

“Though My Father was a Killer, I Need to Know Him”: Children born of genocidal rape in Rwanda and their perspectives on fatherhood

BackgroundThere is increasing interest in understanding the contributions of fathers to child and family psychosocial conditions. However, fatherhood has been largely unexplored in relation to children born of conflict-related sexual violence. ObjectiveThis paper aims to explore the realities and perspectives of children born of rape during the 1994 Rwandan genocide and in particular, their views on fatherhood and their biological fathers (who were perpetrators of sexual violence). Participants and SettingsThe sample included 60 youth (29 females/31 males), aged 20/21 years old. Participants were recruited through professional networks in three regions of Rwanda. Youth participants were aware of the circumstances of their birth. MethodsIn-depth qualitative interviews and focus group discussions were used to garner youth’s perspectives and experiences. Inductive forms of data analysis were used whereby through careful reading and coding of transcripts the researchers identified key themes that were emerging from the data. ResultsYouth participants reported ambivalent and often conflictual feelings towards their father, tension-filled relationships with their mother, and maltreatment perpetrated by step-fathers. Despite their absence, fathers held a significant, vital and symbolic role in participants’ perceptions of themselves, sense of identity, and family belonging. ConclusionsChildren born of rape live with the intergenerational legacy of sexual violence in a context of father absence, strained family relationships, and community stigma. Specific father-related challenges need to be addressed when planning family, community and social policies and programs for children and youth in post-conflict societies.

Slow Progress on UN Rapid Deployment: The Pitfalls of Policy Paradigms in International Organizations

AbstractWhen reform negotiations in international organizations (IOs) produce limited substantive progress, the diagnosis is typically a lack of political will. We identify a different dynamic: in protracted negotiations, international policy paradigms can emerge that enshrine a politically realistic but incomplete issue definition and thereby focus the debate on a subset of policy instruments that do not fully address the underlying problem. We draw on the multilateral negotiations literature to show how policy paradigms—which are widely explored in Comparative Politics, but largely neglected in International Relations—can emerge even in heterogenous IOs, where deep cognitive cohesion is unlikely. The risk of negotiation failure incentivizes negotiators to adopt and maintain “achievable” issue and goal definitions, which over time are accepted as axiomatic by diplomats, IO officials, and policy experts. The resulting international policy paradigms help avoid institutional paralysis, but can also impede more ambitious reforms. To establish the empirical plausibility of this argument, we highlight the contemporary international policy paradigm of rapid deployment in UN peacekeeping, which focuses more on establishing an initial brigade-sized presence than on rapid deployment of the full peacekeeping force. Drawing on primary documents and interviews, we identify the roots of this First Brigade policy paradigm in reactions to the UN's failure to respond to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and trace its consolidation during UN reform negotiations in the 2000s and early 2010s. We also demonstrate that an alternative explanation of the paradigm as reflecting operational lessons-learned does not hold: a brigade-sized initial presence is rarely sufficient for mandate implementation, does not reliably speed up full deployment, and creates risks for peacekeepers. By highlighting the existence and impact of international policy paradigms, our study adds to scholarship on the role of ideas in International Relations and provides a novel perspective on reform negotiations in IOs.

Intent to deceive: Denying the genocide of the Tutsi, By Linda Melvern

Intent to deceive: Denying the genocide of the Tutsi, By Linda Melvern

International criminal law and border control: The expressive role of the deportation and extradition of genocide suspects to Rwanda

AbstractThe use of criminal law in border control has gained increasing and warranted scholarly attention. International criminal law is no exception, although the orientation of the debates in international law is different from that at the national level. While scholarship on domestic border control is characterized by a deep scepticism of the use of criminal sanction, the focus in international criminal law has been on the exclusion of individuals suspected of involvement in an international crime from the protective sphere of refugee law. The divergence of this scholarship does not fully account for how responses to allegations of involvement in an international crime are often embedded within domestic immigration laws, making concerns regarding domestic border control relevant for discussions in international criminal law. To examine these domestic entanglements, this article analyses an independently generated dataset of 122 cases in 20 countries concerning 102 individuals alleged to have participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. This dataset enables an empirical analysis of the role that international criminal law is playing in their extradition, deportation or domestic prosecution. It argues that these cases are underpinned by plural types of expressive work. They communicate not only an ongoing commitment to recognizing the universal wrong of genocide, but also more ambiguous messaging about what constitutes a fair trial in Rwanda, who constitutes a ‘criminal migrant’ and, to a Rwandan audience, the transnational penal reach of the Rwandan state.

Hate speech and political media discourse in Nigeria: The case of the Indigenous People of Biafra

The study adopts approaches in linguistics and critical discourse analysis to interpret media speeches and public statements of the Biafra secessionist movement leader, Nnamdi Kanu, as hate speech. The study shows that hate speech in discourses produced by the separatist Indigenous People of Biafra appears as language aggression, such as insults and verbal attacks, as well as threats. Discourse structures such as the use of interrogation and metaphor also appear in the hate narratives. Compared with the Rwandan case, the study argues that hate speech could result in similar incitement and violence. While hate speech caused genocide in Rwanda, it did not work in Nigeria, largely because of the division among the Biafra campaigners and the Igbo political elite about the Biafra independence campaign.

Archiving (In)justice: Building Archives and Imagining Community

This article explores the role that archives play in the constitution and governance of the international community. First, drawing on post-colonial scholarship, it develops a framework to explicate the link between archive and community, centring on questions of voice, identity and responsibility. It then examines how the archive can be analysed, pointing additionally to the importance of the archive’s materiality. Second, these ideas are explored through a reading of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda’s (ICTR) archive, which helped rebuild the international community in the wake of its failure to prevent the Rwandan genocide. By providing a detailed reading of the ICTR’s records, and drawing on the framework established in the first section, the article shows that the archive constructed a liberal, patriarchal and colonial understanding of the international community.

Book Review: British Media and the Rwandan Genocide

Book Review: <i>British Media and the Rwandan Genocide</i>

‘Is Help Coming?’ Communal Self-Protection during Genocide

Despite the rhetoric of the Responsibility to Protect principle (R2P), vulnerable groups continue to experience genocide. Some, such as the Yazidis in Iraq, have tried to mitigate genocide through communal self-protection. The dominance of R2P in contemporary normative discussions about responding to genocide, however, means that there has been a lack of research into the lived realities of such experiences. This article explores the phenomenon of communal self-protection during genocide, through a multiple case study analysis. It examines the pre-eminent examples of communal self-protection during three cases of modern genocide — the experiences of the Armenians at Musa Dagh during the 1915 Armenian genocide, the Tutsi at Bisesero during the 1994 Rwanda genocide, and the Yazidis in Sinjar during the 2014 Yazidi genocide. It presents a typology of communal self-protection strategies during genocide, developed from the case study analysis. The article finds that communal self-protection is only feasible as a strategy in exceptional circumstances. Even in a best-case scenario, communal self-protection offers a temporary reprieve, rather than sustainable living conditions. Vulnerable groups attempting communal self-protection are ultimately reliant on external rescue for their survival, which may not be forthcoming. Communal self-protection should therefore not be regarded as a viable strategy to mitigate genocide in any circumstance.

“They Forgot Their Role”: Women Perpetrators of the Holocaust and the Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda

They Forgot Their Role is a comparative study of women’s actions and agency during genocide, examining women perpetrators of the Holocaust and the genocide in Rwanda. It foregrounds the stories of individuals’ experiences of genocide and examines the impact of deeply entrenched patriarchal systems on women who became perpetrators in Nazi Germany and 1994 Rwanda. It explores how, in both instances, many of the socially prescribed and perpetuated norms of gendered behavior were suspended, modified, or dissolved. It asks how this “relaxing” of the patriarchal order facilitated women’s participation in both genocides and considers the impact of a prevailing silence that has influenced women’s post-genocide trajectories and narratives. Men perpetrators are “ordinary,” women perpetrators are “aberrant, flawed, or inhuman.” And it argues for further discussion and analysis of women perpetrators in contemporary society and in scholarship.

Twenty Years after Leave None to Tell the Story, What Do We Now Know about the Genocide of the Tutsi In Rwanda?

In 1999, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) published an extensive account of genocide in Rwanda, Leave None to Tell the Story. Based on interviews and archival work conducted by a team of researchers and written primarily by Alison Des Forges, Leave None to Tell was quickly recognised as the definitive account of the 1994 genocide. In the ensuing two decades, however, much additional research has added to our understanding of the 1994 violence. In this paper, I assess Leave None to Tell the Story in light of the research conducted since its publication, focusing in particular on three major challenges to the analysis. First, research into the organisation of the genocide disputes the degree to which it was planned in advance. Second, micro-level research into the motivations of those who participated disputes the influence of ideology on the genocide. Third, research has provided increasing evidence and details of violence perpetrated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). I contend that despite these correctives, much of the analysis continues to hold up, such as the role of national figures in promoting genocide at the local level, the impact of the dynamics of local power struggles on the violence, and the patterns of violence, including the effort after the initial massacres to implicate a wide portion of the population. Finally, as a member of the team that researched and helped write Leave None to Tell, I reflect on the value of this rare sort of research project that engages human rights organisations in an academic research project.

Book Review: &lt;em&gt;Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and as Perpetrators&lt;/em&gt;

Book Review: &lt;em&gt;Gender and the Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Rescuers and as Perpetrators&lt;/em&gt;

Regional Mechanisms and Intra-State Conflicts: Implementing the African Union’s Principle of Non-Indifference?

The member states of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) established the African Union (AU) in 2001, following recognition that Africa needed a more effective institution that could maintain peace and security. In particular,the 1994 genocide in Rwanda demonstrated to the continent that it needed to enhance its ability to act before conflicts became unmanageable and destructive.The AU consequently established an institutional framework for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflicts. This institutional framework consistsof two parallel frameworks, namely the African Peace and Security Architecture (APSA).

“You Feel Like You Belong Nowhere”: Conflict-Related Sexual Violence and Social Identity in Post-Genocide Rwanda

Globally, the systematic use of sexual violence in modern warfare has resulted in the birth of thousands of children. Research has begun to focus on this often invisible group and the obstacles they face, including stigma, discrimination and exclusion based on their birth origins. Although sexual violence during the Rwandan genocide has been documented on a massive scale, little research has focused on the relational dynamics between mothers who experienced genocide rape and the children they bore. This paper explores the post-genocide realities of these two under-explored populations, revealing two key tensions in relation to identity-building and belonging. Drawing upon in-depth interviews conducted with 44 mothers and 60 youth, we examine how youth participants’ quest for the truth in forming their own identities is often in conflict with mothers’ efforts to disassociate their identities from sexual violence and genocide. Furthermore, both mothers’ and children’s identities remain ‘caught’ in the rigid ethnic politics of the genocide at the national level. Ultimately, this article highlights that the distinction between the self and the larger politics of post-genocide Rwanda are not easily disentangled, as challenges faced by these families exist at the nexus of the personal and the national, the individual and structural.

The ictr and Its Contribution to the Revivification of International Criminal Law

In this article, Emily Crawford explores one set of key institutional and legal responses to, and consequences of, the Rwanda genocide – the ictr and the revival of icl that the ictr and the icty heralded. Tracing the development of the concept and institutions of icl, Crawford observes how the case law of the [ad hoc] tribunals, and the ictr in particular, were pivotal in progressively developing the international law of genocide, and the law of non-international armed conflict’.

Rwanda: Lessons Observed. Lessons Learned?

In seeking to determine whether and in what way the experience in Rwanda may have changed peacekeeping, this article examines three official international institutional reports that were issued after the genocide in Rwanda. Their discussion of United Nations peacekeeping after Rwanda, each from a slightly different vantage point, provides a window into the thinking of the time as to what changes should occur in peacekeeping as a result of the Rwanda experience. Two reports focused on the future of peacekeeping more generally, the Brahimi Report, published in 2000, and the hippo Report, published in 2015 are used as benchmarks to determine whether and to what extent those proposed changes occurred. The article argues that while many changes in peacekeeping can be identified since 1994, peacekeeping remains unchanged at its core in that it is still based on the foundational principles of consent, impartiality and minimal use of force.