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3 The indifferent bystander? If it can be demonstrated that Britain was not fully aware of the horrors occurring in Rwanda in April 1994, the same cannot be said of the position in the middle of May. Slowly, RPF victories in the war opened up some regions of the country to journalists, and more images and stories appeared in the British press. Then, when thousands of Hutu fled the war into neighbouring Tanzania the first of the refugee crises developed almost overnight and this received fairly extensive press coverage. But despite the increased awareness of
transform the institution. As mentioned above, two states opposed the ideas put forth in the Kampala Document, and this was enough to stop its adoption by the OAU Assembly of Heads of State and Government. The Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, and Resolution was established in 1993, but it was ineffective in stemming the flow of conflicts and atrocities that plagued the continent. As this chapter will demonstrate, the failures of the Mechanism to prevent numerous conflicts, and the Rwandan Genocide in particular, would have a profound impact on African
-Saharan Africa: the Rwandan genocide of 1994 and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) conflict in Northern Uganda between 1987 and 2006. Investigating these will help understand some of the challenges faced by African societies during and after conflicts and in particular the difficulties experienced by CBOW in the processes of postconflict reconstruction. What will become clear is that although the conflicts under consideration have very distinct characteristics, and although both also differed profoundly from the armed conflicts and occupations discussed 187 188 CBOW in the
While there is recognition that non-state armed groups operating in Africa attempt to manage their reputation internationally, the reasons for their engagement with the international community and the approaches taken by these groups deserves more attention. Over the last decade, the new media environment and Web 2.0 technologies have provided armed groups in the east of Congo such as the Forces Démocratiques de Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), former-National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) and Movement 23 (M23) with increased
for parochial national interest over Libya and Iraq (sanctioning Muammar Qaddafi and Saddam Hussein), and he berated them for their lack of political will in dumping impossible tasks in Rwanda and Bosnia on the UN without providing the organisation with the resources to do the job. Boutros-Ghali was often seen as a pompous Pharaoh who made some ultimately fatal errors of political judgement. He broke tradition by appointing Chinmaya Gharekhan as his “personal representative” to the Security Council, thus failing himself to attend the
Destruction and human remains investigates a crucial question frequently neglected from academic debate in the fields of mass violence and Genocide Studies: what is done to the bodies of the victims after they are killed? Indeed, in the context of mass violence and genocide, death does not constitute the end of the executors' work. Following the abuses carried out by the latter, their victims' remains are treated and manipulated in very particular ways, amounting in some cases to social engineering. The book explores this phase of destruction, whether by disposal, concealment or complete annihilation of the body, across a range of extreme situations to display the intentions and socio-political framework of governments, perpetrators and bystanders. The book will be split into three sections; 1) Who were the perpetrators and why were they chosen? It will be explored whether a division of labour created social hierarchies or criminal careers, or whether in some cases this division existed at all. 2) How did the perpetrators kill and dispose of the bodies? What techniques and technologies were employed, and how does this differ between contrasting and evolving circumstances? 3) Why did the perpetrators implement such methods and what does this say about their motivations and ideologies? The book will focus in particular on the twentieth century, displaying innovative and interdisciplinary approaches and dealing with case studies from different geographical areas across the globe. The focus will be placed on a re-evaluation of the motivations, the ideological frameworks and the technical processes displayed in the destruction of bodies.
regime maintenance in east Africa in recent decades – notably in Rwanda and Uganda. Access to key Western markets and industries, including tourism, has also been of critical value to less aid-dependent governments such as those in Kenya, for the same purposes. The level and extent of Western support to these and other governments, however, has generally been contingent on the latter fitting a particular profile vis-à-vis Western interests. Commentators have consistently concluded, for example, that governments and states perceived to be
International Military Tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo and the International Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda. It also looks to future trials that could take place before the Permanent International Criminal Court. Any trial can be viewed as a drama.2 However, it is never an abstract drama. A trial or series of trials has to be localised in a system of criminal law and justice. International trials have to be localised in ‘systems’ of ‘international criminal law’ and ‘international criminal justice’. However, the very existence of such ‘systems’ has been
. More men crowded in behind Simon; all were armed with machetes, garden hoes or homemade clubs and all were known to Reverien. This was Rwanda in 1994.1 In the one hundred days from 7 April to 18 July scenes like this were tragically common in the small central African country of Rwanda. Unlike the Nazi Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda did not require ghetto clearances, meticulous scheduling of train timetables or the building of industrial death camps. Instead, like Reverien’s family, Tutsi were killed, often by friends, neighbours or even family, where they were
169 Chapter 8 Genocide and the ICERD William Schabas Although there is no reference to genocide in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD/the Convention), the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD/the Committee) has shown a special interest in the subject. Ironically, CERD examined the periodic report of Rwanda in March 1994, only a few weeks before the outbreak of the worst episode of genocide since the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the