Rwandan Conflicts And The Effects Of African Conflict In Africa

After the atrocities of the Rwandan Genocide and the lack on international intervention, Rwandan was forced to rebuild itself from scratch. Rwanda is a small country located in central Africa. Its population is divided between two ethnic groups: the hutus and the tutsis. The roots of the Rwandan genocide date back to 1924 when Belgium first took over Rwanda, formally a part of Tanzania. The Belgians viewed Tutsi superior to the hutus. Many referred to this as Hamitic hypothesis. It was motivated mainly by the fact that Tutsi were taller and thinner than hutus. This lead to a major boost in Tutsi egos and mistreatment of the Hutus for decades. This angered the Hutus leading to a major conflict between the two ethnic groups.

Rwanda is a country located in the middle of the African continent. The two ethnic groups present in the country lived in peace under their monarch until the arrival of Europeans. The Belgians arrival into Rwandan is what split the two ethnic groups of the Tutsi and Hutus, making them identify themselves with ID cards. This caused tension between the two groups as the Belgians favored the ethnic Tutsi, and made them the head of the government. Decade’s later Hutu extremists would take over the government and have revenge on the Tutsi. The new government would send out broadcasts calling on Hutus to kill their friends and neighbors. The Rwandan genocide would become the worst genocide to ever happen in Africa and one of the worst in the world. Today Rwanda’s recovery is surprisingly fast with the help of multiple nations and organizations. Rwanda’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle and is an amazing story of a war between two peoples.

The tensions that led up to the genocide came into being after Belgium colonized Rwanda and had divided the people into two groups: the Hutus & the Tutsis. Although the Hutus held the majority, the Tutsis had the power because the Belgians had favoured the Tutsis. As a result, this caused a lot of resentments among the Hutus. Once Rwanda had gained independence and Belgium had left, the Hutus claimed control over the nation. As depicted in the movie, the genocide began with the murder of President Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu. The Hutu extremists blamed the Tutsi rebels for shooting down the president’s plane and killing everyone else on board. Although this was never confirmed, the Hutus began to slaughter thousand of Tutsi civilians, as a

Before watching this documentary from Frontline, I had never realized about the atrocities that had occurred in Rwanda in 1994. I had been naive in not realizing that mass genocidal killings like the ones shown were happening in our modern world. It was my assumption that international organizations like the United Nations or the United States would take action to prevent these horrendous acts from occurring. It was deeply shocking and overwhelming to see the horrendous acts humans were doing to each other. The murderers in Rwanda acted like savage animals without society or government to stop them from killing 800,000 innocent people. The most interesting aspect of the documentary was learning that the international community failed on purpose and let hundreds of thousands of people die.

Many people know about the gruesome killings of innocent Jews in the Holocaust, but fewer people are aware of the abhorrent Rwandan Genocide. When one majority group deemed themselves superior to a minority, unimaginable violence broke havoc. Rwanda is a tiny country in the heart of Africa with so little to offer, politically and economically. European influence from long ago caused tension among the population. The Rwandan Genocide is known as an incomprehensible, savage conflict strongly influenced by colonialism; the international response to the crisis was far from adequate.

Genocide is not a good thing to have in our world so I am going to talk about sometimes it has happened, How to fix it, and why the heck would someone start genocide.

The Rwandan Genocide would have been considered a civil war if the Tutsi people had the political and military power to fight back against the attacking Hutu people, However, No help came for the Tutsi people leaving them nearly defenseless against their offenders as they were mercilessly slaughtered.

One of the most prominent genocides that has occurred within the century was not only the Holocaust in 1940s, but also occurred in 1994 in Rwanda… which eventually would be referred to as a “preventable genocide” (p. 447). Rwanda was considered this because, “…On the one hand, it is possible to isolate the key developments that led step by step from the earliest colonial period in Rwanda to the genocide a full century later. On the other, there was nothing inevitable about this process” (p. 447). The genocide that occurred within Rwanda initiated between the two main groups of the country… the Tutsi and the Hutu. The genocide would last for roughly one-hundred days of which, “During 100 days in 1994, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Rwandan Tutsi

Destexhe, Alain. Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. New York, New York: New York University Press: 1995

The aftermath of the Rwandan genocide paved the way for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) facing an environment of war and instability. The DRC had two major wars, in 1996-1997 and 1998-2003.The key players of the first war were Congolese government forces with the support of Uganda under Laurent Kabila and the Democratic Forces for Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) loyal forces to the Mobutu regime. The second war was termed the “African First World War” by Alan Doss, a United Nations Special Representative for the Secretary General in 2009 (Doss,2009). It directly involved five other African countries, namely Namibia, Uganda, Angola, Zimbabwe and Rwanda, as well as DRC government forces and approximately

Rwandan Genocide and Ethnic Hatred “At the genocide's peak there were more than five deaths every minute in Rwanda: the rate of killing was three times as rapid as the murder of the Jews in the Second World War.” (5) For centuries, this region of Africa was ruled by many different clans with different religious beliefs and political structures. This even involves modern day Rwanda which is still filled with many different ethnic groups who still do not agree with each other. Some go about resolving their issues peacefully while others do not. The Hutu and the Tutsi people are the two main groups of people that are believed to be the cause of the Rwandan Genocide.

In 1994, a brutal battle of discrimination and hatred erupted. In the central African country of Rwanda, a long brewing tension broke out in a battle between the Tutsi and Hutu. Lasting approximately 100 days, the conflict forever changed the lives of 40% of the Rwandan population. About 800,000 Tutsi were killed and many refugees fled the country ( “Rwandan Genocide”). It was a grueling fight, based on land and power, that all started with a lopsided hierarchy created by the Belgians that loomed over the heads of the Rwandan people. Belgium’s colonization of Rwanda, served as a catalyst to the genocide between the Tutsi and Hutu by creating the unjust differences and unequal rights between

When mentioning countries within West Africa, Rwanda and “Congo” stand out as conflict prone countries when compared to Kenya in regards to internal issues. Rwanda is known for its genocidal level of internal conflict that occurred in 1994. The genocide occurred between the Hutu, ethnic majority, and the Tutsi, ethnic minority, resulting in upwards of 800,000 Tutsi dead. Eventually “the Tutsi-led Rwandese Patriotic Front gained control of the country through a military offensive in early July, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were dead and many more displaced from their homes. The RPF victory created 2 million more refugees (mainly Hutus) from Rwanda, exacerbating what had already become a full-blown humanitarian crisis.” The vast majority of the Rwandan refugees fled to The Democratic Republic of Congo, among them were many of the militiamen responsible for the genocide. These “refugees” soon aligned themselves with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s government and soon began attacking local Tutsi

Ever since, Rwanda has been a small country in central Africa located at the center of DRC, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi. According to its early history, it’s been in German east African colonized countries but was later on taken over by Belgium. They have been colonized until they received their independence on 1962.There were different ethnic groups in Rwanda but most of them are mainly sub-tribes of either Hutu or Tutsi populations. Approximately 85% of the population in Rwanda were Hutus and almost the rest were Tutsis. As things were regularly happening in the country, the Belgium started to lean on and favor more for the Tutsi minority over the majority who were Hutus. Therefore, as I would argue, the arrival and the act of Belgium supporting Tutsis over Hutus was the start of the abhorrence between the two ethnic groups and the reason behind the genocide that occurred in the country in 1994.

“One ugly, deadly and recurrent reality check persists: genocide. Genocide has occurred so often and so uncontested in the last fifty years that an epithet more apt in describing recent event than the often chanted “Never Again” (Power 1998, p. 1). Genocide is one of the most devastating phenomena in the international community it is so often unchallenged that the occurrences continue to repeat. While envisioning the impending danger of these incidents, it is necessary, through cross-country comparison to understand what drives and sustains genocide. This essay will analyze three paradigms that are suggested causes of the phenomena, idealism, political, and state interest while assessing the genocides in both Rwanda and Darfur in order to prevent