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Around 800,000 1 people were killed in Rwanda between 6 April 1994, when President Juvenal Habyarimana was assassinated, and 18 July 1994, when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) declared victory and formed a new government. Some 10,000–50,000 Hutu supporters of opposition parties were targeted, but the vast majority of those killed were civilians from the minority Tutsi community. The perpetrators
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
Heads of State and Government in November 1966. The body passed a resolution supporting a fair referendum, which took place in March 1967. Ultimately, with the support of the OAU, French Somaliland decided to become an independent country with loose ties to France. It became independent on 27 June 1977 as the Republic of Djibouti. 18 Rwanda and Burundi The crises in Rwanda and Burundi began with the Rwandan revolution in 1959. There were multiple crises through the late 1970s that show just how differently the OAU handled internal violence compared with
oppression and colonial conquest (Dunn 2002: 55). As noted in Chapter 3, Kabila had been a member of Lumumba’s cabinet and fought with Pierre Mulele, who led one of the biggest revolts against Mobutu and was a driving force for the creation of the Simba and Mai Mai popular militias in the 1960s.2 During the 1996 and 1998 wars, Mai Mai militias generally fought on the side of the Government to repel the RCD rebellion and the Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian invasions. However, they remained autonomous from the army, and since the transition most groups have developed an anti
which offered misleading explanations of why conflict had broken out in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and which apparently justified inaction rather than intervention. At the same time, it is also claimed that greater attention to the suffering of victims of human rights abuses or humanitarian crises offered the possibility of a new role for journalists in pricking the conscience of the West and encouraging
extractive context of plural authorities. Alongside the already militarised environment caused by the wars of 1996 and 1998, both North and South Kivu have been targets of unilateral UN and UN-backed military operations of the DRC and Rwanda against remaining armed groups. This is in addition to continuous proxy wars between the DRC and Rwanda, which both cooperate and antagonise at multiple levels, and a corresponding mushrooming of popular Mai Mai militias. Militarisation has also followed from the tendency to deploy the military as representatives of state authority and
its interventions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. A challenging context to which France contributed First, it is important to investigate the context at the time and, more specifically, the challenges faced by humanitarian intervention and French troops in the field. The norm contestation of humanitarian intervention and the role played by France: the Rwandan genocide As mentioned in Chapter 1 , for a principle to become an international norm, it needs to be internalised by the
regional context. Williams sees key events, notably Idi Amin’s oppression and the Rwandan Genocide, which created local resonance with the principles and aims of R2P, and the inclusion of Article 4(h) in the AU Constitutive Act and the African endorsement of the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome Document demonstrate significant African regional support for R2P. 5 In this sense, Africa went through a process of localization in adopting Article 4(h) as it was drawn from the international but adapted to the regional needs. I also argue that the impact of Amin’s oppression and
states for the possession of individual identity that is required of rights claimants. European efforts to classify citizen populations and issue ID cards led to violent ethnic division in countries such as Thailand (Scott, 1998 ) and Rwanda (van Brakel and Van Kerckhoven, 2014 ), showing the negative impacts associated with colonial documentation practices. For Indigenous
deteriorating human rights and humanitarian situations means UN peacekeepers are often called upon to create safe areas and use more “robust” measures to deliver humanitarian aid. If there is a peace to keep, it is a fragile one, with violations occurring from all sides. Second generation peacekeeping often involves preventative diplomacy and enforcing Security Council decisions. 7 The human rights and humanitarian tragedies in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia forced a rethinking of the idea of neutrality when gross violations of human rights are being perpetrated. The rules