Constructing the truth, dealing with dissent, domesticating the world: Governance in post-genocide Rwanda

Post-genocide Rwanda has become a ‘donor darling’, despite being a dictatorship with a dismal human rights record and a source of regional instability. In order to understand international tolerance, this article studies the regime's practices. It analyses the ways in which it dealt with external and internal critical voices, the instruments and strategies it devised to silence them, and its information management. It looks into the way the international community fell prey to the RPF's spin by allowing itself to be manipulated, focusing on Rwanda's decent technocratic governance while ignoring its deeply flawed political governance. This tolerance has allowed the development of a considerable degree of structural violence, thus exposing Rwanda to the risk of renewed violence.