Two decades after the Rwanda genocide, the promised hopes of international accountability for such crimes is in trouble. Andrew Wallis examines the ingredients of a crisis that is both legal and political.
The belated trial of a suspected genocidaire in Paris highlights the complex political relationship between Rwanda and France. It also reflects problems in the hard road to international justice, says Andrew Wallis.
The Rwandan government have ambitious yet deeply disruptive plans to rebuild Kigali as Africa's Singapore. Despite plans to uproot vast swathes of the city to make way for 'virtual Kigali', the response by ordinary city-dwellers has been one of striking silence.
The tribunals judging crimes in Rwanda and former Yugoslavia were intended to deliver justice for victims of genocide. But several recent cases suggest that politics may be getting in the way, says Andrew Wallis in Kigali.
The UN Refugee Agency must not be the facilitator of a permissive attitude towards continued corruption and the absence of democracy in Rwanda. By calling on refugees who fled before 1998 to return home to the threat of persecution it risks legitimising Kagame’s autocratic regime.
Violence in eastern DRC is portrayed by western countries in terms of abject failure: people or events in the Congo (or Rwanda) have caused peacebuilding and development processes to fail. But the M23 is a direct result of processes that legitimate violent power. Français.
Though triggered by a combination of recent events, the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial history of the Kivus sets the stage on which they take shape. Understanding is not justification: beware the instrumentalisation of history by ideologues. Français.
The military and political tensions in the contested eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo are reinforced by diplomatic failures. A turn towards negotiation and compromise is vital if the area's long-term problems are to be addressed, says Andrew Wallis.
An eruption of militia-based violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo reflects a longer-term pattern of failure by national and international agencies. The effects are now being felt among diaspora communities in Europe as well as citizens in the region. The roots of violence must be a
