Rwandan Genocide: The Role Of Conflict In World Politics

Sitting outside a grocery shop in the Nyabugogo slum in Kigali, Rwanda, Francis Nduwimana described a longing for a change in leadership in the presidential election on August fourth. “Rwanda is tired of Kagame, but cannot express its views openly. If citizens criticize Kagame, the government agencies will accuse them of dividing the country, and will either be imprisoned or killed,” stated Nduwimana (qtd. in Onyulo). Paul Kagame has been the president of Rwanda since 2000 and could possibly be president till 2034. Under Kagame’s rule, the Rwandan military has gained a massive amount of power over citizens. Rwanda’s military is violating the Human Right’s by taking away Rwandan citizens voices and their ability to restrict the government.

Often described as the most horrible and systematic human massacre since the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide has been a subject of research and debate for decades. Typically, ethnic and cultural differences between segments of Rwanda’s diverse population, namely the Hutu and the Tutsi, is the reason given to explain the genocide. Although this is a valid argument, the roots of the conflict are more complex stretching back to the era of colonialism. The impact of colonialism on Rwandan politics and society set the foundations for revolution in 1959 and, ultimately, genocide in 1994.

Less than 20 years ago more civilians were murdered in Rwanda in a three-month spree of madness than during just about any other three-month period in human history, including the Holocaust. No country in Africa, if not the world, has so thoroughly turned itself around in so short a time. Kagame’s government has reduced child mortality by 70 percent; expanded the economy by an average of 8 percent annually over the past five years; and set up a national health-insurance program(Gettleman 1). In Rwanda, vagrants and criminals have been collected and taken by the police and sent to a youth “rehabilitation center”. In Rwanda there are not even large slums due to the fact that the government does not allow it. The controversy of this topic is if Rwanda should have amended the constitution to allow Kagame to run for a 3rd term? The fact is that Rwanda should have amended the constitution to allow Kagame to run for a 3rd term

In the course of a hundred days in 1994, over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in the Rwandan genocide. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. My thesis is that the international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity. I will focus on numerous interconnected aspects that led to international inaction and also on the main actors, Belgium, the United Nations Secretariat, the United States and France, that knew that there was genocide underway in Rwanda - therefore, they had a responsibility to prevent and stop the genocide, but lacked political will. This led to inaction at the level of the Security Council (SC), where member states

Rwanda was one of the worst genocide in 1994, where 800,000 people but Tutsis, were exterminated by the Hutu. But opposed to media and governments, this was the reason of Rwanda’s political and economic position in the world system, it involved like World Bank and International Monetary Fund policies, the international aids and others.

The academic focus within the multiple fields of the social sciences and humanities often mistakes Rwanda by understanding how government officials operate. The previous section illustrates how continual misperception at a practitioner’s level will cause future harm between Rwanda’s relationships with the international community. At the academic level, misunderstanding how officials operate leads not to only incorrectly knowing Rwanda, but also misrepresenting Rwandan interests. Such as described by the realist theories covered in Chapter Two, states engage with other countries in order to promote national interest whether it be security, survival, economic development or territorial gains for hegemonic desires.

Taking the Rwandan genocide at its surface would make one think that it was a result of spontaneous “tribal” fighting between Hutu and Tutsi elements. But every serious observer of Rwanda has recognized that the genocide resulted from active planning of high state officials. The tragedy represents an extreme form of Rwandan Hutu nationalism in the hands of the fanatical state leaders. To put matters in perspective, it is clear that both nationalisms survived in Rwanda due to the actions of elite representatives of each community. Another point to note is the correlation of the uncertainty over the control of the state with nationalism. While the Rwandan state was firmly under the control of the colonial authorities, aided by the Tutsi chiefs,

The study of Rwanda’s history is primarily reviewed within the context of the 1994 Rwandan genocide also referred to as the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. This focus is understandable as over one million died within a three-month period. It resulted in a dramatic shift from past history as the nation tried to rebuilt itself socially through the context of a united ethnicity of ‘Rwandan’ rather than previous ethnic divisions of Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. For many researchers, the ‘new’ Rwanda began with the ending of the genocide. Over the past twenty-two years, public policies are interpreted as effects of the genocide. This is problematic, as focusing primarily on the genocide overlooks important themes and understandings that stemmed from important moments of history. This is especially true in relations to how

The Rwandan Genocide was a dark moment in the modern history of the African continent when long-standing ethnic tensions brought an entire nation to a state of chaos and carnage, in which the government attacked its own people and one neighbor attacked the next. The world, which was slow to respond, allowed many more deaths in Rwanda than what should have happened. After the world’s greatly needed but delayed response, there are many things that we must consider to keep this devastation from happening again. Throughout the Rwandan genocide, the Tutsi were targeted due to ethnic tension and disagreements with the Hutu, resulting in about 500,000 Tutsi killed.

Many attitudes led to Rwandan Genocide in 1994, specifically the historical, political, and social ones. Rwanda has a history that made the country very susceptible to sectarian ways between the Hutus and the Tutsis. During the 15th century, the Tutsis held a powerful monarchy and the Hutus were considered middle-class citizens, but after the Belgians overthrew the Tutsi Government, the Hutus were given the title of higher class citizens while the Tutsis were thrown to the bottom of the social hierarchy. Now that the Hutus ran the government, they could fight for revenge from being poorly

Back in 1994 there were over a million people killed in Rwanda. The cause of the genocide was by Josias Semujanga who brought social order, historical factors, political factors, ineffectiveness of humanitarian of mechanisms, and hate speech to cause the genocide. The Rwandan culture’s point of view on things were changing because of the introduction to Christianity during the colonization of Rwanda. This started to cause prejudice against Tutsis, they would refer to Rwanda as “power hungry” or “dishonest.” Belgian saw Tutsis as a country being able to take control of Rwanda, Hutus didn’t like the idea of whites and Tutsis being under the same regime causing the Hutus to demonize Tutsis. Hutus then took control of Rwanda. The Hutus didn’t allow the Tutsis to educate themselves, be a part of government or military. Semujanga tells how Rwanda had the idea that genocide in Tutsis would cure all the ethnic problems in Rwanda. When the genocide began, Tutsis couldn’t leave Rwanda as Hutus has closed the passages for entering and leaving Rwanda. In 1992 to 1995 over 100,000 civilians died during the Bosnia-Herzegovina. The war was caused by ancient ethnic hate speech from nationalist leaders in Serbia, causing thousands of deaths to Bosnian Muslims. During Kenya’s presidential election in 2007, the political parties divide because of ethnicity causing a wide spread of hate speech mostly over social

The dominance of state power is a product of the relations between the state’s ruling regime and citizens and the distribution of power between them. This approach looks beyond who has power and more on what kind of power is being exercised and by whom (Thomson 109). For Rwandan peasants, the policy is a source of sociopolitical exclusion, economic inequality, and individual humiliation as they reach its many demands. “The policy of national unity and reconciliation is an ambitious social engineering project that the RPF believes will forge a unified Rwandan identity while fostering reconciliation between survivors of the genocide and its perpetrators (Thomson 110). Thomson conducted an interview with a senior RPF official in 2006. He stated, “Rwanda cannot recover from the effects of the genocide until national unity is restored” (Thomson 110). Efforts to establish a better connection between the Hutus and Tutsis are ongoing but leading Rwanda to being peaceful and

The country of Rwanda is a small, land-locked country in Eastern Africa. By the early 1990s, Rwanda’s population of 7 million people was composed of three ethnic groups. Approximately 85% was Hutu, 14% was Tutsi, and the remaining 1% was Twa (United Nations, 2015). Animosity between the Hutu and Tutsi groups had grown substantially since the European colonialization period in the 1800s. During the colonialization period, European colonists considered the slimmer, taller, lighter-skinned Tutsis to be superior to the shorter, stockier, darker-skinned Hutus (Putterbaugh, 2010). As the Tutsis were more like the Europeans, they were treated better than the Hutus. The Tutsis were given positions of power as the existing Hutu kings and chiefs were

Rwanda is enmeshed in another cycle of repression, with an elite that represents a definite minority involved in legal and extra-legal policies that impoverish the majority of the people in the country. Unfortunately for all concerned, while the foreign aid is essential for the evolution of Rwanda and to raise it out of poverty, this same foreign aid is continuing the crisis and the government laws by and for the elite Tutsis who came out of Uganda in 1994 and their little group of allies. Despite, aid that flows to that government have the perverse effect of enabling this group to keep control even when that power begins from purposefully restricting the growth of the huge majority of people in the country. The civil war took place in Rwanda in the 1990 and 1994 and subsequently spread to the DRC and caused an enormous loss of human capital through countless victims. The war also destroyed the infrastructure and equipment, public and private buildings. Additionally, rich sources were diverted toward war activities. Additionally, productive resources were diverted toward war activities. Hakizimana, E., Endless, B. (2009, April 15). Rwanda Today: when foreign aid harms more than

This paper described the seizure of power and the merging of hegemony by a particular group of Rwandans who came from abroad. Their social base was, and remains, very narrow till the end. The brutal regime used certain strategies through repression, terror, and extreme violence elimination of countervailing voices, both political and social to achieve their goals. The government used excessive military as a force and mechanism of transformation both domestically and in the region. As a result, it turned this small and poor country into a