The Limits of a Genocide Lens: Violence Against Rwandans in the 1990s

This reflection examines how to characterize histories of violence. The genocide in Rwanda has become, after years of labour, documentation, legal proceedings, testimony, and scholarship, a canonical case of mass violence in the twentieth century. That place in world history is deserved. However, whether wittingly or not, the focus on genocide crimes against the minority Tutsi population in 1994 has come to define the history of 1990s violence in Rwanda for many students, policymakers, scholars, and other observers. The “Rwandan genocide” typically serves as the sole referent for thinking about mass violations of human rights against Rwandans, the marker for labelling the country’s violence. To make this point, the government in Rwanda has come to insist, and largely succeeded in promulgating the idea, that the correct name by which to mark the period is the “Genocide against the Tutsi.” However, while genocide against the resident Tutsi population indisputably took place in Rwanda in 1994, framing 1994 or the 1990s period uniquely around “the Rwandan genocide” or the “Genocide against the Tutsi” does not describe accurately the range of mass violence that occurred in this period. Mass violence against Rwandan Hutu populations