P. Uvin, Reading the Rwandan Genocide, International Studies Review 3:3 (2001), 75-99.

Rwandan genocide - killed up to a million people, mostly Tutsi, but also tens of thousands of Tutsi.
Came at the end of a four-year civil war, during which war-related violence killed thousands,
hundreds of thousands more into refugees - mostly Hutu. Thousands of Tutsi dead.
Post genocide - RPF may have killed tens of thousands of Hutu, to secure its rule, fend off
continued attacks. Also - attacks across the boarder in Congo, inc. on refugee camps.
Why?
Defining moment for Rwanda, though Rwandans themselves havent played much of a role in
writing it.
Hutu/Tutsi difference?
Official Hutu difference - essentialist. Hutu, Tutsi radically different races, origins, histories,
moral/ethical features.
Official Tutsi (now significant) difference - social-constructivist. Differences products of colonial
imagination, divide and rule policies.

Scholars - old scholars, pre-genocide - divided on the above. Newer scholars - more social
constructivist. Limited by the limits of acceptable political discourse in Rwanda to the latter
(especially for journalists). Intellectual atmosphere in favour of it.

Differences in stature - genetic? Because of differences of diet? Bad sampling - all tall people
Tutsi? Economic relations.

The truth is in the middle. Danielle de Lame, Catharine Newbury, David and Catharine Newbury,
Jean-Paul Kimonyo, Christopher Taylor.

Do have different origins, didnt invent them from nothing. But the meaning of these differences
does change, as a result of power/ideological struggles. Become more rigid in colonial period -
racist, inequalities of power. Tutsi power holders, colonisers. Kept changing until the genocide.

Three paradigms for explaining the genocide.
- Elite manipulation? Elite want to stay in power. Economic crisis since 1980s, structural
adjustment programs, birth of domestic political opposition, FPR invasion in 1990, subsequent
civil war, internationally sponsored peace agreements.


Group of people around Habyarimana use racism and violence to fend off threats. Very common:

Some favour political explanations, some favour economic ones - fall in coffee prices, structural
adjustment, etc.
State role in instigating/micromanaging important, but too narrow. Methodological, psychological
appeal of finding the perpetrators - the single set of aberrant perpetrators. But also rooted in society.
Ecological resource scarcity - scarcity of ecological resources causes genocide. Highest
population density in Africa, for an almost entirely rural country.
- Malthusian argument, over carrying capacity. Environmental refugees, demographic
entrapment. International Red Cross Federation:
Food production was slowing as dramatically as the popu- lation was increasing. . . . In the late
1980s Rwandas foreign residents were speculating on a catastrophe before the end of the century.
Would it be famine, which struck the Rwandan southwest in 1989, or AIDS with a 33 percent infec-
tion rate in urban areas in 1990? Bloody conflict arrived first.
UNHCR: Striking example of ethnic conflict, ignited by population pressure and diminished land
resources.
ALSO - soft Malthusianism. Though ecological resource scarcity generates tension, other
variables - nature of state, conflict resolution, economic/social dynamics - determine outcomes.
Often assumed. When they analyse it, they come to the conclusion that it played a role, but cant be
explained outside the cultural/political processes.

Sociopsychological features of the persecutors.
Supposed unquestioning obedience of Rwandans/Rwandan culture. Obedience provides order,
security.
But in practice do resist authority, evade taxes, passively sabotage, etc.
Appealing - allows us to move up ladder of command, find the truly guilty ones. Risks
recapitulating ethnic stereotypes - obedient Hutus, dissimulating Tutsi.


Psychological explanations vague hard to verify, often contradictory. Absolve, rather than explain
the genocide?
Definitely culturally grounded, but not cause of the genocide? Christopher Taylor:
Something political and historical happened in Rwanda in 1994, but some- thing cultural
happened as well. The violence which occurred there . . . was not merely symptomatic of a
fragmented social order succumbing to externally and internally generated tensions. Beneath the
aspect of disorder there lay an eerie order to the violence of 1994 Rwanda. Many of the actions
followed a cultural patterning, a structured and structuring logic, as individual Rwandans lashed
out against a perceived internal other that threatened in their imaginations both their personal
integrity and the cosmic order of the state.
Understanding of dynamics set in motion by past occurences of violence. Destruction of relations
between groups, hardening of identity categories - leaves a persistent resonance in peoples minds,
especially if violence is ethnic.
Hate crimes have a huge spiritual, social impact on people - not only on victims, but on victims
communities. Create a tear in the social contract, worsened if perpetrators of violence go
unpunished - cycle of impunity.
Strong link between victimisation, commission of violence. People whove suffered violence are
likely to repeat it, espeically against the same group that originally attacked them.
Preventative attacks against the other - make self appear righteous, humane. They deserved it.
I nternational community
International community responsible for genocide? Conspiracy - France, active presence of French
troops, financial support for genocidal regime, operation turquoise. Piad for, organised under
auspices of international community, structural adjustment responsible. Need radical reaction in
Western approach to genocide?
More reasonable version - perpetrators had a sense of immunity. International inaction - causal
force for genocide. Deliberate inaction before, after genocide - no reaction to Dallaires cables,
warning of planning of genocide, no condemnation (Clinton forbids officials to use the term
genocide), dismantlement of UNAMIR.
Government received signals that they could continue the genocide without being bothered.
Fits in with the broader scholarship on genocide - genocides occur when theres no external
constraints.
Helen Fein, Accounting for Genocide after 1945: Theories and Some Findings, International
Journal on Group Rights, No. 1 (1993), pp. 86, 99; Barbara Harff, The Etiology of Genocides, in
I. Wallimann and M.N. Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies
of Mass Death (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987).
West should compensate Rwanda? Strengthen international legal mechanism for future action?
Questions: how much did people know in advance? Dallaires discoveries came late. UNSG - signs
hard to distinguish between regrettable but ordinary political violence. Most tension beforehad -
primarily socioeconomic/regional, not ethnic. Benefit of hindsight?


UNAMIR force? Talentino - international intervention could have had an effect? Kuperman -
critique. Intentional deception by perpetrators, incomplete reporting by Western sources,
concurrent resumption of civil war, genocide. Would have tkaen a long time to fly in enough troops.
Des Forges didnt use the term genocide 11 days in to the conflict.

Excessive focus on genocide - weakens argument for intl action - why go for such a high
threshold? There had ben terror/racism/violence in Rwanda for years beforehand.
OAU - long, slow escalation of racist violence, but no one did anything about this, despite potential
mechanisms.
UN indepdendent inquiry - failure resources, poltiical will to prevent enocide. Can even make it
worse.

International activities, with good intentions, unintentionally worsened the genocide? Despite a
virtual textbook case of modern conflict management, systematically sabotaged by radicals inside
the country.
Failure of actions taken, not lack of action. Arusha had tragic consequences.
Two radically different conclusions.
Technical/liberal peace/global government solution. Better early warning, monitoring, intervention
systems, more fine-tuned instruments for conflict prevention/resolution.
Democratisation not the best solution? The OAUs International Panel of Eminent Personalities
shows how mainstream this position has become when it states that some outsiders were blinded
by their faith in multipartyism as a panacea for all Rwandas woes. Forces politicians into difficult
choices.
Conservative, anti-internationalist. Stay out of African conflicts, make things worse. International
intervention - bound to be counter-effective. Marina Ottaway, Research Director at Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace -
do nothing except seek to limit the supply of arms to all combatants in the hope that either one side
will prevail sufficiently to reconstruct a state or that the opponents will reach a stalemate forcing
them to seek an accommodation in good faith.
All of them - only go a short way back. No reason for the world to wait until the conflict begins.
What causes genocide?


Development aid - Rwanda one of the biggest models for donor aid in the world. Genocide fed on
racism, authoritarianism, structural violence, presence, ideology, mode of functioning of the
development enterprise part of these dynamics.

Several critical studies of the pre-genocide activities:
ment enterprise was part of these dynamics.
64

Aid agencies have produced only a few critical evaluations. I know of
three: in 1996, the Swiss Development Cooperation published an
evaluation of its thirty years in Rwanda by a committee of outside experts;
in 1998, a Belgian NGO umbrella organization commissioned a general
study of its members work in the country; in 1999, the German Agency
for r Technische Zusammenarbeit
[GTZ]) published a synthetic study of its role in six conflictual countries,
including Rwanda.
65
Of the three, the German is the most critical, arguing
that the GTZs role in the process up to the genocide is generally
negative. Yet after a lengthy political fight, the German authorities
decided to not publish the study; as a result, only a synthe- sis report for
six countries is available.
Blindness of aid world - promoted greater political/social inequality. Democracy always the best
bet? Conditionality/policy dialogue not used enough vs. corruption, human rights abuses.

STrong, emotive subject.
- too many monocausal explanations
- empirical questions - how much was it a popular uprising?
- did the intl community know what would happen in advance?
Uvin - very ordinary. Dynamics of Rwandan society, very familiar elements in society.
Discussions that focus on the last moment, limit the trigger for international intervention - just the
strong cases - failure.
Earlier, deeper mainstreaming of human rights, and conflict revolution mechanisms.