Gender Crimes Jurisprudence in the ICTR: Positive Developments

Considering the magnitude of rape and other sexual crimes perpetratedduring the Rwandan genocide, gender crimes prosecutions at theInternational Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) have beeninadequate so far. Nonetheless, the ICTR case law must be commendedfor the impulse given, with and after Akayesu, to the criminalizationand punishment of gender-related violence. This paper pointsto the achievements of the ICTR case law in this respect.     

Personal and Political Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda

The majority of scholarly research on Rwanda currently focuses on determining the causes of and participation in the genocide. In this paper, we explore a variety of questions that have come to the forefront in post-genocide Rwanda. In particular, we are concerned with the prospects for peace and justice in the aftermath of the gross abuses of human rights that occurred and, to that end, we consider the potential uses and limits of restorative justice initiatives in the process of healing and reconciliation in Rwanda. We argue that restorative justice initiatives have moved the country closer toward reconciliation than retributive measures, such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. That said, we also suggest that the Rwandan government, despite claims that it seeks to achieve reconciliation, has not shown a serious commitment to healing the wounds that persist between either individual Rwandans or the groups that they comprise. In the end, then, we make a case for the importance of pairing a comprehensive search for justice in Rwanda with a commitment to truth-telling and accountability by the victims and perpetrators of the genocide, as well as by current government officials.     

Human rights violations and genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

The massacres that took place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) between 1996 and 2003 have posed an interesting challenge to the global community, specifically to its more powerful members. Ironically, the Tutsi-dominated government of Rwanda enjoys international recognition and benefits based on the genocide, Rwanda suffered in 1994, but continues to deny the same benefit to Hutus as they were accused of leading a counter-genocide campaign then in the DRC. While the people of the DRC, as well as human rights activists, call for justice for all who were affected, the government of Rwanda, strongly backed by a number of powerful international powers, opposed attempts by the international community to pin charges of genocide perpetrated by its army in the DRC on it. Because of the clear negation of the genocide report by the Rwandan government, the nature of human rights, human rights violations, and genocide criteria proposed and defended by key members of the international community in relation to the mass killings in the DRC are examined.     

Genocide Trials and Gacaca Courts

After many decades of impunity, Rwanda has embarked upon a courseof transitional justice committed to prosecuting all who aresuspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide. The first phase,which began in 1997 and is still continuing, targets the mostserious offenders. Some 10,000 have been tried under the system.Confronted with its limitations, Rwanda has devised a secondapproach, known as gacaca, which focuses on a lower and lessheinous level of participation in genocide, and which is inspiredby traditional models of local justice. Acting upon legislationadopted in 2001, a pilot phase convinced Rwandan justice officialsof the viability of the process throughout the country. Theinstitutions have been fine-tuned, and become fully operationalin the course of 2005. Because the pilot phase encouraged denunciation,instead of offering ‘closure’, the process has actuallyrevealed a much broader popular participation in the atrocitiesof 1994. Rwandan authorities now say the gacaca process willprosecute more than 1,000,000 suspects.     

Criminology and genocide studies: Notes on what might have been and what still could be

Scholars of genocide and mass killings have proposed several theories explaining how the behaviors of governments, political leaders, and ordinary citizens contribute to extreme violence. Many of the explanatory constructs developed in these theories bear a striking resemblance to core concepts of criminology or could be readily integrated with criminological ideas. As examples, this paper briefly describes the ideas of Herbert Kelman, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and R.J. Rummel from the perspective of criminology and examines their applicabilitythe recent genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. The conclusion is that criminology, by largely ignoring the crime of genocide, has missed opportunities to both contribute to the field of genocide studies and to improve the specification of its own ideas.     

AGE,GENDER, AND THE CRIME OF CRIMES: TOWARD A LIFE‐COURSE THEORY OF GENOCIDE PARTICIPATION*

This article asks whether genocide follows the age and gender distributions common to other crime. We develop and test a life‐course model of genocide participation to address this question using a new dataset of 1,068,192 cases tried in Rwanda's gacaca courts. Three types of prosecutions are considered: 1) inciting, organizing, or supervising violence; 2) killings and other physical assaults; and 3) offenses against property. By relying on systematic graphic comparisons, we find that the peak age of those tried in the gacaca courts was 34 years at the time of the genocide, which is older than the peak age for most other types of crime. We likewise find that women were more likely to participate in crimes against property and comparatively unlikely to commit genocidal murder. Symbolic–interactionist explanations of crime suggest people desist from crime as a result of shared understandings of the expectations of adulthood. We argue that this process may be turned on its head during genocide as participants may believe they are defending their communities against a perceived threat. Thus, in contrast to other criminological theories suggesting that people must desist from crime to be accorded adult status, some adults may participate in genocide to fulfill their duties as adult men.     

What's So Special about Specialized Courts? The State and Social Change in Salt Lake City's Domestic Violence Court

The nationwide growth in specialized or problem‐solving courts, including drug courts, community courts, mental health courts, and domestic violence courts, among others, raises questions about the role of the state with respect to social change. According to social control theories of the state, especially theories of technocratic or rationalized justice, law is increasingly about efficiency, speed, and effectiveness. Specialized courts, however, take on a social problem approach to crime, seeking to address crime's “root causes” within the individual, the society, and the larger culture in ways more characteristic of social movements. Are specialized courts about social control or social change? This study examines state action in a specialized court in domestic violence in order to examine this question. I focus on a domestic violence court that arose in February 1997 and four years later employed full‐time judges, prosecuting and defense attorneys, and numerous other staff to handle all misdemeanor domestic violence cases in Salt Lake County, Utah. I ask how legal, political, and community officials justify the court and its operation in order to examine some important issues about the role of the state and social change. Ultimately, I suggest that my findings about the complementary roles of social control and social change within domestic violence courts have implications not only for critical theories of technocratic justice and for the battered women's movement but also for democratic theories of the state.     

The Rwandan diaspora in Canada and the United States: reconciliation and justice

Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, many Rwandans fled and a modest diaspora was established throughout Canada and the United States. Diaspora are subject to many of the same concerns regarding justice and reconciliation as those who remain in Rwanda. This research focused primarily on how this diaspora attempted to achieve justice and reconciliation, if institutional mechanisms (gacaca) in Rwanda had a residual effect, and if they created any specific mechanism to facilitate justice and reconciliation among themselves. In-person and telephone interviews were conducted with eight members of the diaspora in the United States and Canada between May 2015 and March 2016.

Interviews suggested that justice among the diaspora is inherently connected with justice in Rwanda, and participants felt that justice has not been achieved in either location. Reconciliation among the diaspora, while tied to reconciliation in Rwanda, may be its own construct. Interviews demarcated ‘thin’ reconciliation and ‘thick’ reconciliation, suggesting that ‘thin’ reconciliation exists among the diaspora, but that ‘thick’ reconciliation is rare. Discussion of gacaca was limited, as participants stated it did not address justice and reconciliation in Rwanda. Participants did not report any diaspora specific mechanism regarding attempts at justice and reconciliation.     

Restorative Justice and Collective Responsibility: Lessons for and from the Rwandan Genocide

Genocide struck Rwanda in 1994. Since then, national and international trials have endeavored to promote reconciliation, deterrence, peace, justice, and human rights. This article posits a disconnect between these trials and the attainment of their avowed goals. This disconnect emerges in part from the influential agendas of international lawyers who equate selective criminal prosecution with the "rule of law" and espouse criminal prosecution as the preferred and uniform response to mass atrocity. Creating a presumption in favor of criminal prosecution has dampened the need to explore whether such trials actually are suitable for the particular afflicted society. A socio-legal analysis suggests that Rwanda is precisely a place where constructed notions of what "rule of law" ought to be are supplanting the need to implement reconstructive policies that may be best for Rwanda. In particular, the populist nature of the Rwandan genocide, coupled with the vast level of victimization, suggest that a shame-based restorative approach may be more successful in promoting reconciliation, deterrence, and peace than the guilt-based retributive approach currently in vogue. This article argues that, when the law blames occurrences of genocidal evil largely on the existence of some evil people, it obscures the fact that so many people, to varying degrees of complicity, are required for this evil to result in so many deaths.     

Gendered Genocide: The Socially Destructive Process of Genocidal Rape,Killing, and Displacement in Darfur

Accounts of mass atrocities habitually focus on one kind of violence and its archetypal victim, inviting uncritical, ungendered misconceptions: for example, rape only impacts women; genocide is only about dead, battle‐aged men. We approach collective violence as multiple, intersecting forms of victimization, targeted and experienced through differential social identities, and translated throughout communities. Through mixed‐method analyses of Darfuri refugees' testimonies, we show (a) gendered causes and collective effects of selective killing, sexual violence, and anti‐livelihood crimes, (b) how they cause displacement, (c) that they can be genocidal and empirically distinct from nongenocidal forms, (d) how the process of genocidal social destruction can work, and (e) how it does work in Darfur. Darfuris are victimized through gender roles, yielding a gendered meaning‐making process that communicates socially destructive messages through crimes that selectively target other genders. The collective result is displacement and destruction of Darfuris' ways of life: genocide.     

Victimization, survival and the impunity of forced exile: A case study from the Rwandan genocide

A case study of a Rwandan genocide survivor and a review of the cultural and historical contexts of that crime are presented. The case study examines not only the events that occurred during the genocide, but also the post-victimization reflections of the respondent. It is argued that neither survival nor victimization in genocide are bounded events, but a set of processes. Survival during genocide is accomplished only by navigating through a series of lethal threats. Victimization is perceived to continue after the genocide through the impunity granted to perpetrators.     

Criminology and victimology of rape in context with war-like conflicts using the example of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

The topic of this article is sexual violence in context with war-like conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The fundamental categories of sexual violence in war-like conflicts are described. The authors discuss the types of sexual violence as defined in the report of the UN Commission of Experts on the war-like conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. Four criminal trials were evaluated: three held before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague/Netherlands and one before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha/Tansania. The defendants were found guilty of torture, crime against humanity and genocide. Potential procedures with respect to similar crimes in current or prospective conflicts are discussed. An alternative may be the assignment of medical personnel (for example of the German Federal Armed Forces). Finally, the post-war cooperation between the Institute of Legal Medicine at the University Medical Centre of Hamburg-Eppendorf as well as the medical and government institutions in Rwanda is presented, which has been going on since 2005.     

Towards a pattern in mass violence participation? An analysis of Rwandan perpetrators' accounts from the 1994 genocide

In this article, I focus on the logic whereby a group of eight Hutu became involved in mass violence during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This process is considered as a sequence of meaningful events that progressively shaped the actors' frame of analysis. As such, each sequence brings a new qualitative reality which, in turn, constitutes the platform upon which the involvement in, and the perpetration of, mass violence become acceptable and legitimate in the eyes of the perpetrators. Based on both Howard S. Becker's notion of career and Roger Petersen's analysis of resistance and rebellion, I disaggregate the entire process of participation in mass violence into a sequence of six mechanisms, generating two main phases. The first one, mobilisation, refers to the movement from a neutral state to a mobilised state. The second phase, collective action, covers the drift from mobilisation to action, namely, killings.     

Collecting on Moral Debts: Reparations for the Holocaust and Pořajmos

In the early 1980s, Sebba (1980) explored the victimological and criminological dimensions of German Holocaust reparations, utilizing a broad definition of victimization similar to Mendelsohn's (1976) earlier framing of this notion, which included victims of genocide and mass violence. Since this time, scant attention has been paid to the victimology of state crime, and even less to the victimological implications of genocide and mass violence. This is unfortunate since critical victimological lessons can be drawn from the study of the victims of genocide and mass violence. In this article, we focus on the post–World War II monetary reparations, or "compensation," demands made against the West German state by Jewish and "Gypsy" survivors of Nazi state-sponsored violence. Through a comparative analysis of these two cases, we seek to illustrate the organizational, social, and discursive conditions that either enabled or obstructed victim mobilization and, in so doing, to develop critical tools for better understanding "victim movements" and the trauma narratives they construct.     

Between Law and Culture: Rwanda's Gacaca and Postcolonial Legality

This article recounts a clash between an establishment international nongovernmental organization (NGO), Amnesty International, and the government of Rwanda over the meaning of international human rights norms in a postconflict society. It offers a critical perspective on the mainstream human rights community's due process critique of Rwanda's gacaca— a system of over ten thousand local judicial bodies modeled on a precolonial communal dispute resolution the Rwandan government introduced to process the over one hundred twenty thousand suspects crowding its prisons following the 1994 genocide. This moment of norm contestation offers a lens to broader problems facing the human rights regime. It argues that Amnesty International's legalistic approach to the gacaca prevents it from appreciating its unique postcolonial hybrid form, and that other approaches, such as the one adopted by Penal Reform International, are perhaps better models for human rights praxis in the developing world.     

Variables influencing victim selection in genocide

While victims of racially motivated violence may be identified through observation of morphological features, those targeted because of their ethnic, religious, or national identity are not easily recognized. This study examines how perpetrators of genocide recognize their victims. Court documents, including indictments, witness statements, and testimony from the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia (FY) detail the interactions between victim and assailant. A total of 6012 decedents were included in the study; only 20.8% had been positively identified. Variables influencing victim selection in Rwanda included location, segregation, incitement, and prior relationship, while significant factors in FY were segregation, location, age/gender, and social data. Additional contributing factors in both countries included self-identification, victim behavior, linguistic or clothing evidence, and morphological features. Understanding the system of recognition used by perpetrators aids investigators tasked with establishing victim identity in such prosecutions.     

Preventing Genocide: Measuring Success by What Does Not Happen

Although the concept of genocide prevention is recognized in international jurisprudence and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, its content remains vague and peripheral to legal scholarship and policy-making. Effective prevention is particularly challenging to grasp because success must be measured by what does not happen. Reaction to mass-atrocities must be replaced by early warning and rapid engagement through modest and feasible measures. With escalating violence, there may be greater attention to a situation, but also less willingness to intervene as humanitarian intervention through force and similar means becomes increasingly costly. A better understanding of the norms, institutions, and tools within reasonable reach of decision-makers is essential to translating genocide prevention from an elusive ideal into reality. This article evaluates and elucidates the law and practice of early warning and genocide prevention. First, the far-reaching potential of a preventive approach is illustrated based on the example of Rwanda where measures as modest as jamming radio broadcasts inciting hatred could have substantially constrained genocidal violence. Second, scholarship on the indicia and prediction of mass atrocities will be explored with a view to understanding the timeliness of action. Third, the legal and institutional dimensions of an obligation to prevent genocide and other mass-crimes will be addressed with a focus on recent developments within the UN system. And fourth, success stories from Macedonia, Côte d??Ivoire and Burundi will be examined in order to demonstrate the practical impact of early warning and prevention     

Then they came for the dogs!

This paper examines the British state’s desire to liquidate the Pit Bull as a breed. It examines the moral panic that brought the Pit Bull Terrier to public attention and traces the government’s knee-jerk response that resulted in the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991), the legal instrument that mandated Britain’s first attempt at canine genocide. Though public protection was the stated justification of this exercise in state violence, there was and is no evidence to support the case for canine killing through the indiscriminate blanket medium of breed specific legislation. Far from conceiving the dog an aggressor and humans its victims, this paper precedes on the assumption that the dogs are the victims and humans the inhuman aggressor. The paper concludes by examining the factors that provoked the UK’s descent into mass dog killing.     

The Aporia of Collective Violence

From the theoretical perspective of René Girard, Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida the Rwanda genocide of 1994 may be interpreted as an instance of foundational violence. Given the constant reference in the Rwanda genocide discourse to the failed revolution of 1959, it is perhaps rather a case of deferred foundational violence. Useful as this notion of ‘foundational violence’ may be, as theoretical category it is also hugely challenging because the implicit claim is not just historical (‘states are routinely founded on violence’) but analytical (‘founding moments are per definition violent’). The result is a profound tension between, on the one hand, the need to understand the event as somehow unexceptional or typical of the founding of new socio-political orders and, on the other hand, the need to judge it as exceptional, an ‘outrage’, a crime against humanity. This paper treats the tension between the unexceptional and exceptional as aporetic, that is, as a profound puzzle consisting of two equally valid imperatives which are nonetheless mutually exclusive. It is also an attempt to find a way beyond the impasse.