Content:

1.  Introduction  3

2.  Genocide in Rwanda  3

2.1  Definition of Genocide  3

2.2  Genocide in Rwanda  4

3.  Justice  5

3.1  The International Crime Court  5

3.2  International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)  6

3.3  Problems with Justice  6

4.  Conclusion  7

5.  Literature  8

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1. Introduction

Still genocide in Africa has not received the same attention as genocide in Europe or in another part of the world. That might be a reason, why in 1994 in Rwanda over one million people could get killed but nobody helped to stop the genocide there. But one the other hand it is also very hard to define what genocide is and even though tousands of people died it is also difficult to adjudge the culprits.

I would like to discuss why genocide is so elusive. Therefore I use the example of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when around one million Tutsis and moderate Huts were killed during a period of only 100 days.

Such a large amount of people in such a short time demands a good preparation and organisation. A lot of people are neccessary to acchieve whats happend in Rwanda. That makes it very difficult for the justice to find the right preparators, especially after the ending of the war - the so called ‘post-conflict’ situation and there are a lot of new factors which can increase a new situation of violence.

But at first I will give a short definition about genocide in general before I relate it to that special case in Rwanda.

Also in the second part of my assignment I will specify on the conflict in Rwanda and emphasise how the International Crime Court or rather the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda is working especially when it’s about post-conflict justice and which difficulties they have when it is about judgement in a genocide-case.

2. Genocide in Rwanda

In this first part of my assignment I give a short definition about genocid and the origin of the word. But the main focus should be the description of the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

2.1 Definition of genocide

Genocide is defined as mass-killing of people of a special “national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” ¹ That happens during the whole history but the first definition of the item was given during the Second World War by a jewish-polish lawyer named Rafael Lemkin. The roots of from the word ‘genocide’ derives from the greek word genos for family, tribe or race and the latin word -cide for killing. He used the word ‘genocide’ the first time in ‘Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation - Analysis of Government - Proposals for

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide, found March 27 ^th 2007

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Redress (1944).’ There he defined genocide as a coordinated plan to destruct a national group with aiming the annihilation of the group itself. That means not the realisation of destruction of a whole group is essential, it is sufficient if there is a plan of masskilling a special group.

He worked also on the treaty against genocide for the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” in 1951. ² Genocide is here defined officially in Article

2. not only the mass-killing is a form of genocide, but also things like causing serious bodily or mental harm, physical destruction and also forced transferring of children of one group to another.

But there is an important difference to ‘crime against humanity’. This is the persecution against people or a large amount of crime against them, e.g. Apartheit in South Africa. So there is a different intention because they don’t want to annihilate a whole group of people and there is also no plan when there is crime against humanity is existent. That is one point, which makes genocide hard to define, because here must be a plan available. Another problem is how many people must have been killed that we can speak about genocide.

2.2 Genocide in Rwanda

“For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.” 3

That Boutros Boutros Ghali, an Egyptian diplomat and the sixth Secretary-General of the UN from 1992 to 1996, said about the genocide in Rwanda. It happened during his term of office so he was criticised for the UN’s failure in that time.

In a periode of 100 days between 800 000 and one million Tutsis and moderate Hutu died, mostly killed by two extremist Hutu militia groups called Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi. Already since the end of the colonisation of Belgium in 1960 were many conflicts between Hutu and Tutsi like displacements and mass-killing. They should aim a treaty of peace, also with the pressure from outside, but both sides sabotaged this effort again and again. The aim of this treaty should be that the Tutsis can come back to Rwanda without persecution and disadvantages. 4

Especially extremistic Hutus planed the genocide. Members of the government, fanatic Hutu-Politicians and members of the army and the militia like Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, but also a big part of the radio and media were acting against the Tutsis, who wanted to

² According to: Crime and Punishment. In: New Internationalist. December 2005, page. 3.

³ http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/boutros_boutrosghali.html, found March, 27 ^th 2007.

⁴ According to: Adekanye, J’Bayo: Dynamics of Ethnic Conflicts in Africa. In: Causes of Conflicts in the Third World. Oslo: NSC/PRIO 1997, page 94ff.

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