Genocide in Rwanda. Conflict Analysis of the Civil War

Scientific Essay from the year 2017 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Peace and Conflict Studies, Security, grade: 3.75, Addis Ababa University, language: English, abstract: The main purpose of this essay is to make analysis of the genocide based on the tools of conflict analysis. Specific to Rwanda, the analysis focuses on four issues: context of the conflict, cause of the conflict, conflict actors and conflict dynamics. As it is indicated in the title of this essay, it is difficult to understand the three months genocide without the 1990-1994 civil war. Hence, analysis of the Rwandan genocide flows from the 1990 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invasion. Besides, I believe that the 1994 Rwandan genocide is the culminated outcome of the civil war.

This is essay is arranged as follows. This essay first reviews the context of the conflict in historical perspective. It then explores the main causes of the conflict depending upon the structural cause, proximate cause and triggering factors of the genocide. Founding on the context, cause and actors of the conflict, it will investigate the conflict dynamics of the Rwandan Genocide. Lastly, the success story how Rwanda survived the material and psychological impact of the genocide from the post conflict re-construction perspective will be addressed. However, due to word limitation set by our professor, main incidents and factors of the conflict are analyzed through maps and graphs. Besides, this essay has benefited a lot from Professor Ian Taylor lecture and power points.