ipl-logo

De-Escalation In Rwanda

654 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Causes And Consequences Of The Rwandan Conflict

Introduction
Prior to the Rwandan genocide, the Rwandan population consisted of some eight million people. In 1992, beginning the second week of April, some 800,000 ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed – the majority murdered by civilian militias with the support of government forces. Over the next three months, Rwandans would experience the most accelerated, deliberate human cleansing of known history. The Rwandan genocide did not occur without warning. The violent collapse and subsequent purging of Rwanda necessitated multiple failures, exacerbated by both the domestic government and the international community (IC). This essay will examine the root causes of the massacres and prescribe appropriate measures for de-escalation at …show more content…

Ratification by the Soviet Union necessitated the UN ignore the massacres of Russian bourgeoisie and “middle peasants.” Hence social class and economic status are conspicuously omitted from the convention as recognized motives for genocide. Although the UN definition is imperfect, it nonetheless represents international consensus and provides a legal framework for prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide. Gregory Stanton’s publication, “The Ten Stages of Genocide,” identifies ten critical phases during the enactment of genocidal killings. Summarized, these stages are:
1. Classification: All societies have stratifications that separate people into groups by ethnicity, race, religion, and nationality. Polarized societies lacking mixed categories are more prone to enacting genocide. At this stage, Stanton suggests developing inclusive institutions that transcend divisions can reduce social tensions.
2. Symbolization: Names and other symbols are applied to the stratifications. Stanton asserts that neither classification nor symbolization necessarily produces conditions resulting in genocide unless they instigate discrimination and …show more content…

Organization: The perpetrators create the framework for enacting genocidal killings. They organize civilian militias and collect weapons. At this stage, Stanton advises the IC to impose embargoes on governments engaging in genocidal behaviors. Militias should be outlawed and independent commissions should be created to investigate human rights abuses and report violations.
6. Polarization: Extremists drive the groups apart with divisive propaganda. Moderate voices are intimidated and silenced. Political officials positioned to prevent the genocide are arrested or killed. Stanton argues for the protection of moderate leaders and targeted sanctions from the IC.
7. Preparation: The dominant group makes plans for the enactment of genocide. Extremists collect weapons, mobilize militias, and attempt to indoctrinate the population. They use euphemisms to disguise their intentions. Arms embargoes must be enforced against the perpetrators and the IC must arrest and charge extremist leaders with “conspiracy to commit genocide.”
8. Persecution: Victims are identified and separated. Death lists are created and genocidal killings begin. At this stage, a genocide emergency must be declared. Armed international intervention should be prepared by major powers and relief groups should be mobilized to support the inevitable refugees and

Show More
Related
1293 Words | 6 Pages

“Who does now remember the Armenians (Adolf Hitler, 1939)?” Who does? When someone hears the word "Genocide", the words killing and death may come to mind. A genocide is defined as, Article II: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:Killing members of the group;Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Read More
593 Words | 3 Pages

“The rise of genocide coincides with the rise of the modern political state, and every single one of these events is inconceivable without the

Read More
627 Words | 3 Pages

“The convection on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide” a treaty by the united nations explains how genocide is a broken crime, will be stopped, and discipline

Read More
896 Words | 4 Pages

1: Linda Jacobs Altman, Genocide: The Systematic Killing of a People, Enslow Publishers) To

Read More
1624 Words | 7 Pages

In 1944, a Polish-Jewish lawyer came up with the word, “genocide.” However, even seventy-five years later, many people still debate what factors go into making a genocide. Of course, there is mass murder, mistreatment of large groups of people, and difficult life conditions. Take the Cambodian Genocide, for example. People were tortured and killed so much during this genocide that at one of the death camps, “as few as 12 managed to survive” (Pierpaoli).

Read More
906 Words | 4 Pages

“What connects two thousand years of genocide? Too much power in too few hands.” (Simon Wiesenthal) Genocides have been going on for years and years to come, the murder, the starvation, the manipulation, and, the constant fear. During the time of the Holocaust, genocides were striking and seemed to never come to an end.

Read More
1523 Words | 7 Pages

No, the shooting down of President Habyarimana’s plane did not initiate the genocide but rather, the genocide was affected by the deep rooted tensions between two groups who inhabited Rwanda, the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s. These two groups had gone through a long period of power struggles which will be explored throughout this essay. Showing that the genocide did not occur as a result of one assassination. “It is buried too deep in grudges, under an accumulation of misunderstandings...’ . Although it is argued that the plane crash did indeed initiate the genocide and that the genocide was merely a reaction to the plane crash.

Read More
1136 Words | 5 Pages

The act of genocide carried out by a group’s oppressors characterizes itself in the intimate knowledge the oppressor has of the group’s social, cultural, and political institutions. Raphael Lemkin describes genocide as an act of anti-sociology where the perpetrator destroys a group’s societal institutions to destroy them in whole or in part. This destruction is described by Lemkin as an anti-sociology because of its targeting of all aspects of a group’s societal institutions: political, social, cultural, economic, biological, physical, religious, and moral. (Lemkin, Chapter IX: Section 2). Genocide destroys a group’s social, individual, political, and cultural connections as demonstrated by the Armenian and Native American genocides where

Read More
1585 Words | 7 Pages

Throughout the semester this class has presented information that wasn’t known to me, for example that there is a specific definition for the term genocide, there are deeper reasons into committing genocide, and that there are other genocides besides the Holocaust. With my new found knowledge I plan on discussing and answering two question that have been presented after completing this course, first, while studying the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and the Rwandan Genocide, one has to notice that all three incidents take place during times of war whether from outside aggressors or internally between one another, so one must question why are genocides (these in particular) more likely to occur during wartime? The next question that must be answered deals with the first-person accounts of these acts and how the accounts reflect the events that took place? Do the recollections help explain what truly took place, are they truly accurate or do they contradict anything we’ve learned and introduce more questions than they answer. To ultimately answer the first question of why genocides tend to take place during times of war, one has to think that there is some type of advantage of committing genocide during times of war and for this question I have decided to compare two cases to help answer this question, The Holocaust and The Armenian Genocide.

Read More
523 Words | 3 Pages

The Rwandan genocide vs. the Holocaust “Genocide is an attempt to exterminate a people, not to alter their behavior.” Jack Schwartz. Genocide is mass murder, it happens in all parts of the world. A common known genocide is the Holocaust. Where a group known as the“Nazis” (lead by Hitler) murdered more than six million people (many were Jewish).

Read More
896 Words | 4 Pages

Looking back on the genocide, through the film Hotel Rwanda and documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, it is proven that the United Nations and outside governments failed to respond in the face of obvious genocide. Hotel Rwanda can be seen

Read More
1178 Words | 5 Pages

War and genocide have historically been closely related and even described as Siamese twins. Genocide can occur without war but war cannot occur without some elements of genocide as the distinction between legitimate war and genocide is not clear. War is defined as an armed conflict between different nations or groups within a nation. Scholars who have studied the relationship between war and genocide have argued that they are one in the same. It is a very convincing argument especially when examining the UN Convention on genocide.

Read More
802 Words | 4 Pages

As a response to the systemic, widespread and massive rape campaign carried out against Bosnian Muslims and Croat women and girls during the 1992 to 1995 Bosnian War, the 1993 United Nations Security Council Resolution 827 (UN Security Council, 1993), as a preamble to the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), contains the first ever documented UN reference to rape committed during armed conflict or rape as a violation of international humanitarian law (Schott, 2011, p. 5). The United Nations has identified four types of war rape. These four types include opportunistic rape, which is random; political rape, which defines the woman as property and frequently incorporates public rapes as a means

Read More
848 Words | 4 Pages

The genocide was an after affect of the scramble for Africa by European countries who help no regard for the people who already lived their. In the scramble for Africa many European countries raced to make claims on land in Africa that was already lived on by natives, they mistreated the natives and killed and enslaved many of them. This was prevalent in Rwanda when the belgians imperialized the land. The belgians sent the Hutus who were the majority of the population into slavery and lead to mass deaths of their people. But they lead the land through another ethnic group the tutsis who made up about 15% of the population compared to the 85% population of Hutus.

Read More
1011 Words | 5 Pages

Conflict resolution as a field of study as indicated has formed hypothetical bits of knowledge into the nature and source of conflict and how conflicts can be resolved through peaceful systems to effectuate a dependable settlement. Morton Deutsch, was the first to form and understanding into the helpful results of collaboration as a scholastic enquiry. In his view, various variables like the way of the debate and the objectives every group in a conflict goes for are crucial in deciding the sort of introduction a group would convey to the negotiation table in its endeavor to unravel the conflict (Morton Deucth, 1985, p.24). To him, two essential orientations do exist. These are competitive and cooperative.

Read More

More about De-Escalation In Rwanda

Related Topics

Open Document