This document discusses truth and reconciliation efforts in post-genocide Rwanda. It notes that nations that experience violence often establish Truth and Reconciliation Committees to promote healing. In Rwanda, establishing the truth is less important than in South Africa since the genocide was public. The document discusses challenges around justice and reconciliation for Hutus and Tutsis given their political and social dynamics. Suggestions include power sharing, citizenship reconciliation, and addressing the economic marginalization of Hutus to prevent future violence.

1. Analytical Reasoning: Genocide
in Rwanda Part 2 Of 2

2. Day 6
Truth and Reconciilation in Post Genocide Rwanda
• Nations after a disjointed governance marked by
genocide, apartheid and massacres would
institute a Truth and Reconciliation Committee to
heal wounds and return the nation to order and
normalcy.
• An example is the TRC of South Africa after the
end of the Apartheid regime and the freedom of
Nelson Mandela.

3. Continued
• Test: Research into and name three other
nations that had the TRC (Truth Reconciliation
Committee).
• With genocide, there are victims and
victimizers. The distinctions are not clearly
made but the glaring point is that the Hutu
are “the guilty majority and the Tutsi are the
fearful minority.”

4. Peace cannot be achieved without
truth and justice.
• Issues of Truth and Reconciliation Committee in
post-genocidal Rwanda.
• a) The truth in Rwanda genocide is known, there
is no need for confession as was the case in South
Africa. In Rwanda, genocide was public and open.
Any living Hutu is presumed guilty of killing
because if you did not kill, you were killed by your
own.
• b) What does justice and reconciliation mean to
Hutus and Tutsis?

5. Peace cannot be achieved without
truth and justice.
• c) The Hutus are the political majority and the Tutsis
the political minority. While the minority calls for
justice, the majority calls for democracy.
• d) How can the minority be safeguarded from a
genocidal reoccurrence?
• e) How can the Hutus no more be marginalized
economically?
• f) Should Justice be retributive, that is punitive (punish
the evil-doers) or should it be reconciliatory? What is
the more realistic and tenable option?
• g) Should the genocide survivors be compensated and
rehabilitated? How about the Hutu refugees who fled
to Congo Republic, will they also be rehabilitated?
•

6. Some Suggestions:
• a) For a lasting peace and to remove danger to the
Tutsis, they should be given a separate state of their
own.
• b) There should be a re-organization of power between
the citizens not on cultural lines but as political
entities.
• c) Rwandan citizenship should be reconciled.
• d) Their history must be written so that the lessons of
the past will be available to the younger generation.

7. Suggestions Continued
• Should there be international intervention or
should Rwanda work on its own solution?

8. Rwanda: Lessons Learned
• Stop the genocide before it becomes a
genocide.
• React promptly and firmly to preparations for
the mass slaughter of civilians.
• Pay close attention to the media in situations of
potential ethnic, religious, or racial conflict. In
cases of impending genocide, be prepared to
silence broadcasts that incite or provide
directions for violence.

9. Continued
• Be alert to the impact of negative models in
nearby regions.
• Obtain accurate information about what is
happening on the ground.
• Identify and support opponents of the genocide.
• Call the genocide by its rightful name and
vigorously condemn it. Commit to permanently
opposing any government involved in genocide,
including by refusing it assistance in the future.

10. Continued
• Impose an arms embargo on the genocidal
government.
• Press any government seeming to support
the genocidal government to change its
policy.
• Be prepared to intervene with armed force.

11. Day 7
• A Re-enactment of the Rwandan genocide
• Class divides into two groups: A)Hutu B)Tutsi
• Reconcilers, Panel of judges
• Class Activity: To be filmed

12. Day 8
• Assignment: written exercise: what were, in
your opinion, lessons learned from Rwandan
genocide?
• How can genocide situations be avoided in the
future?

13. Day 8 Continued:
• Post Test
• What is genocide?
• Where can it occur?
• Who does it involve?
• Name a people who has suffered genocide

14. References:
• Des Forges, Alison (1999). Leave None to Tell the
Story: Genocide in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch.
ISBN 1-56432-171-1.
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda.
Retrieved 2007-01-12.
• See, e.g., Rwanda: How the genocide happened,
BBC, April 1, 2004, which gives an estimate of
800,000, and OAU sets inquiry into Rwanda
genocide, Africa Recovery, Vol. 12 1#1 (August
1998), page 4, which estimates the number at
between 500,000 and 1,000,000. Seven out of
every 10 Tutsis were killed.

15. References continued:
• Transcript of remarks by Mark Doyle in Panel 3:
International media coverage of the Genocide of the
symposium Media and the Rwandan Genocide held at
Carleton University, March 13, 2004
• Ch. 10: "The Rwandan genocide and its aftermath"PDF
in State of the World's Refugees 2000, United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees
• "Operation Support Hope". GlobalSecurity.org. 2005-
04-27.
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/support_h
ope.htm. Retrieved 2008-10-02

16. References continued
• Carroll, Rory, US Chose to Ignore Rwandan
Genocide, Johannesburg The Guardian,
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/mar/31/usa.rw
anda
• www.un.org
• www.nsarchive.org
• Power, Samantha, Bystanders to Genocide
www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09
/bystanders-to-genocide/4571/
• www.gwu.edu/~nsarchive/NSAEBB/index.html

17. References Continued
• www.hrw.org/legacy/english/docs/2004/03/2
9/rwanda8308.htm
• Mamdani, Mahmood, (2001). When victims
become killers- Colonialism, Nativism, and the
Genocide in Rwanda, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, N.J.