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Introduction The peculiar course of the gacaca process introduced in Rwandan society to deal with the legacy of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi has been thoroughly examined in book-length scholarly studies ( Clark, 2010 ; Ingelaere, 2016 ; Chakravarty, 2015 ; Doughty, 2016 ; Longman, 2017 ). 1 Not only observations of trial proceedings but also survey results and popular narratives collected during fieldwork indicate that testimonial activity – both confessions but especially accusations – was the cornerstone of the gacaca system ( Penal Reform
Introduction Beginning in 1990, the small Central African country of Rwanda was shaken by a pro-democracy movement and a rebel invasion, led by exiled members of the minority Tutsi ethnic group. The government responded to the dual pressures of protest and war by offering political reforms while simultaneously seeking to regain popularity with the members of the majority Hutu group by stirring up anti-Tutsi ethnic sentiments. Both a number of new domestic human rights groups and international human rights organisations documented the regime’s repression of
All of the authors contributing to this issue of Journal of Humanitarian Affairs (JHA) agreed to write articles elaborating on the presentations they gave at the international conference hosted by FMSH (Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme) and MSF-CRASH (Médecins Sans Frontières – Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires) on 20–22 March 2019 at the Hôtel de Lauzun in Paris. The title of the conference was ‘Extreme violence: investigate, rescue, judge. Syria, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo’. This issue also includes a recent text
humanitarian interventions. The topic was thrust upon me by events in Rwanda in 1994. As a teenage, second-generation Rwandan immigrant in Belgium, I was more personally affected than fellow classmates by the hypocrisy of the international community: the preaching of respect for human rights, followed by their omission during one hundred days of mass murder before the eyes of the world. It felt like there was more to the story than ‘good intentions versus regrettable outcomes’. Ever since, I have worried about the content and purpose of (Western
on their periphery. Consequently, humanitarianism at the heart of conflict dynamics and containment policies combined led relief operations to depend on the existence of humanitarian corridors in Sudan in 1989, Iraqi Kurdistan in 1991, former Yugoslavia in 1992 and Rwanda in 1994 ( Jean, 1997 ). The Absence of a Normative Framework or Consistent Definition The legal concept of ‘relief corridors’ appears in resolution 45/100 of the UN General Assembly from 14 December 1990. It alludes to the principle of free access to victims enshrined in the Geneva
quantified during the 1990s. They argue that rationalisation processes were adopted to claw back the neutrality they had lost during the military humanitarianism of the late twentieth century ( Chouliaraki, 2013 : 13–15) and to regain the trust of the international community after their failings during the Rwandan genocide (1994) ( Verpoorten, 2005 : 357). In relation to the emergence of quantification in society in general, the twenty-first century has witnessed the
need for operational ‘proximity’ to, as well as performative distance from, everyday social and political dynamics. Background MSF in North Kivu In North Kivu, international aid organisations installed themselves en masse after the influx of Rwandan refugees in 1994. The urban landscape of its capital, Goma, has been dramatically reshaped in consequence, while a range of NGOs have established projects in rural areas. The medical humanitarian organisation, MSF, has a long history in the region, having opened its first project in DRC in 1977. Today, three
, there will be more areas in which they won’t be able to operate, and more in which they will be able to operate but with less independence. The reality, though, is that things were headed in this direction anyway. The horrendous risk to humanitarian staff that now exists in war zones such as Syria has seen to that, as has an older phenomenon of strong regimes in the Global South unwilling to let NGOs operate without their nihil obstat . This dates back at least to the coming to power of Paul Kagame in Rwanda in 1994; and it was most flagrant in the
heterologous two-dose preventative Ebola vaccine. Phase 1 was conducted at six vaccination sites in two health areas of Goma, Majengo and Kahembe, which were selected because they were ‘crossroads’: Majengo is a ‘northern port’ of the city with links to the Grand Nord territories which were the epicentre of the epidemic, while Kahembe is a trading centre on the Rwandan border. The two doses were to be administered 56 days apart. However, on 9 April 2020, vaccination was suspended
humanitarian organisations to shift from working on the periphery of conflicts to the heart of them. Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Rwanda and the entire Great Lakes region of Africa became particularly high-risk areas for aid workers. It was during the intervention in Somalia in 1992 that the interface between security, operational procedures and humanitarian principles became central for MdM. The political and security climate at the time confined NGOs to urban centres across