Gacaca genocide trials began on March 11, 2005 in Rwanda. All over Rwanda, some 56,500 genocide suspects are appearing before 118 Gacaca (community-based semi-traditional) courts. See www.inkiko-gacaca.gov.rw
Resources on the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda  (This website)

Ripples of Genocide: Journey Through Eastern Congo, chronicling the devastation unfolding in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Committee on Conscience, in cooperation with Angelina Jolie and the International Crisis Group, launched an online exhibition, The site includes a teachers guide to aid educators in developing lessons on the country's situation. "Since 1998, more than 3.5 million people have died in the Democratic Republic of the Congo," states Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum's Committee on Conscience. "More people have died in this conflict than in any other since World War II, but it has received scant attention in the U.S., and few Americans are aware of its massive scope."The war in Congo began in 1996, and with only a brief period of peace, reignited in 1998. For civilians, particularly in the east, the results are devastating. A mortality study by the International Rescue Committee estimates that between 1998 and 2004, approximately 3.8 million deaths have occurred as a result of the way. The number of deaths continues to rise. It is the deadliest conflict since World War II. www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/congojournal

CÔTE D’IVOIRE Historical Background A study of the risk for Genocide by Peter Stridsberg Genocide as Process, Analysis of Risk Factors, Ignored early warnings from Rwanda. Developed by a Swedish researcher based on from the analytical techniques presented at the Stockholm International Forum 2004 [18 pages, 58 endnotees] peter.stridsberg@proceedo.se

Kenya the 98th State Party to the ICC: On March 15, 2005 Kenya ratified the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. On Oct. 28, 2005 Mexico became the 100th State Party to ratify the ICC. Established on July 1, 2002, the ICC is currently investigating crimes committed after that date in Eastern DR Congo (Kinshasa), Northern Uganda (both States which are Parties to the Statute) as well as Darfur, Sudan (a nonparty State) by means of a March 31, 2005 UN Security Council Referral (Resolution 1593).

African Union's Peace and Security Council launched. On May 25, 2004 (Africa Day) the African Union (AU) officially launched the AU's Peace and Security Council (PSC). Africa Day marks the 1963 formation of the then 32-member Organisation of African Unity (OAU). The organization grew in size and was transformed into the 53-member African Union (AU) in 2000 with a greater mandate than the OAU. Now the the AU can intervene in conflicts inside member states, a change prompted by the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, when the OAU and the international community stood by and did nothing. The new PSC is a 15-member standing council that facilitates the timely response to conflict and crisis situations in Africa. It is the AU's decision making organ for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. The Council will mandate peacekeeping missions in conflict areas where ceasefire accords have been signed and will recommend to the assembly of AU heads of state that troops be deployed uninvited in cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. By 2010, the African Union plans to have its own standby rapid reaction force of 15,000 men. See www.africa-union.org and http://www.dfa.gov.za/

Ethiopia: Trials of members of the Dergue Regime (1974-1991), which begun in 1994, continue in Ethiopia. On December 27, 1999 Zeleke Zerihun was convicted by the Federal High Court in Addis Ababa.
Rwanda: Since December 1996 more than 2,500 people have been tried in Rwandan domestic courts for the 1994 Rwandan genocide

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (Arusha, Tanzania). On March 13, 2001 Juvénal Kajelijeli, former Mayor of Mukingo Commune, went on trial in Arusha. He was arrested in Benin in May 1998 and charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, and crimes against humanity including rape and extermination.

Links:

Special Court for Sierra Leone The Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up jointly by the Government of Sierra Leone and the United Nations. It is mandated to try those who bear the greatest responsibility for serious violations of international humanitarian law and Sierra Leonean law committed in the territory of Sierra Leone since 30 November 1996. As of February 2004, eleven persons associated with all three of the country's former warring factions stand indicted by the Special Court. They are charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. Specifically, the charges include murder, rape, extermination, acts of terror, enslavement, looting and burning, sexual slavery, conscription of children into an armed force, and attacks on United Nations peacekeepers and humanitarian workers, among others. Indictments against two other persons were withdrawn in December 2003 due to the deaths of the accused. www.sc-sl.org

African Security Dialogue and Research (ASDR) is an independent, non-governmental institute based in Accra, Ghana, specializing in issues of security and their relationship with democratic consolidation. Executive Director, Eboe Hutchful, is a Ghanaian Professor in Political Science and African Studies. He is a long-time researcher on militarism and civil-military relations and has published extensively on these and other themes. His recent works include The Military and Militarism in Africa, (co-edited with Professor Abdoulaye Bathily of the University of Cheikh Anta Diop), and a forthcoming volume titled Taming the Praetorians: Restoring Civil Control of the Military in Democratic Transitions in Africa. www.africansecurity.org

The Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), established in Janunary 2004 near Accra, Ghana, will initially serve as a Regional Centre of Excellence, developing into a world class education, training and research facility, embracing all aspects of peace operations. In this respect, training and study will cover an increasingly wide range of subjects and participants will embrace the full spectrum of military, security sector, diplomatic and non-governmental agencies likely to be involved in peace operations. The centre offers Ghanaian, regional and international participants the opportunity to examine specific peace operations issues at the operational level and to update and share their knowledge of the latest practices through conferences, discussions, lectures and computer assisted training exercises. www.kaiptc.org

Foundation for Human Rights Initiative (FHRI) is an independent, non-governmental organisation established in December 1991 in response to the growing need for human rights awareness in Uganda.

Institute for Security Studies (ISS) is a non-profit regional research institute operating across sub-Saharan Africa organisation established in 1991 with offices in Pretoria and Cape Town and liaison offices in Maputo and Nairobi. in 1999 the ISS has established an Africa Early Warning Programme to promote and assist in the development of an early warning capacity at the OAU.

Pambazuka News: Weekly Forum for Social Justice in Africahttp://www.pambazuka.org/

Cape Town Holocaust Centre the first and only Holocaust Centre in Africa. www.museums.org.za/ctholocaust/

Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might Have Succeeded in Rwanda Scott R. Feil, April 1998

On September 2, 1998 Jean-Paul Akayesu, became the first person convicted by an International Tribunal of the crime of genocide. The former bourgmestre, or mayor, of Taba commune in Rwanda, Akeyesu joined the killing of the Tutsi population of Taba commune on April 19, 1994, thirteen days after the genocide in Rwanda began. Judges of the ICTR also found that "sexual violence was an integral part of the process of destruction" in Taba commune. On October 2, 1998 Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment. For educational material on this case, the see ICTR website or Teaching Human Rights Online (THRO)

Is there Genocide in Sudan?  Helen Fein: "Genocide by attrition occurs when a group is singled out for political and civil discrimination. It is separated from the larger society, and its right to life is threatened through concentration and forced displacement, together with systematic deprivation of food, water, and sanitary and medical facilities. These measures, along with the frequent imposition of overcrowded living quarters, lead to death through disease and starvation Read a new discussion on on Sudan at the Crimes of War (www.crimesofwar.org) website, with remarks from Helen Fein, Jerry Fowler, Sondra Hale, Robert O. Collins, Francis Mading Deng and Randolph Martin.

On September 9, 2000 Guinea become the 132nd party to the Genocide Convention About half the nations in Africa are not yet parties to the Genocide Convention, including Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone and Sudan List of parties to the Genocide Convention (UNHCHR status report) List of over 52 nations NOT party to the Convention (this website)

When artist Kofi Setordji saw the television images of a bulldozer shovelling hundreds of bodies into a ditch in Rwanda in 1994, as if they were no more than waste, he decided it was time to act. He considered it his duty as an artist to show the world what had happened. He posed himself questions like: What is it that is making man waking up one day, deciding to exterminate a whole group of people? What is the role of the international community and of politicians.

For two and a half years Setordji worked on the genocide monument, which consists of 300 pieces.The genocide monument is now on exhibit in Accra, Ghana. Parts of the it have been exhibited in the Ivory Coast, Senegal and France. Plans have a been made for a tour of Germany. A virtual exhibition of the Genocide Monument can be viewed online at: http://www.vmcaa.nl/genocide

"!ke e:/xarra //ke"
"Diverse People Unite" - the South African Motto

In April 2000 the motto of the new South African Coat of Arms was unveiled by President Thabo Mbeki. The motto, written in the extinct Khoisan language of the /xam (San) people is "!ke e:/xarra //ke", meaning "diverse people unite" or "people who are different join together". For many centuries the English-speaking world called the Khoisan people by the insulting term "Hottentot" and /xam people by the insulting term "Bushmen." Under the Apartheid regime the surviving descendants of the Khoisan people were classified as a people of “mixed blood” called “Coloured.”

President Thabo Mbeki has mentioned the Khoisan and /xam people on several occasions during the 1990s. On May 8 1996, in Capetown when the Constitutional Assembly adopted the "THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA CONSTITUTION BILL 1996" President Mbeki said

"I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and dependence and they who, as a people, perished in the result."

On April 27, 2000 in an address at the unveiling of the new South African Coat of Arms at Bloemfontein, kwaggafontein, President Mbeki remarked on the motto "!ke e:/xarra //ke" ("diverse people unite") saying:

"We have chosen an ancient language of our people. This language is now extinct as no one lives who speaks it as his or her mother-tongue. This emphasises the tragedy of the millions of human beings who, through the ages, have perished and even ceased to exist as peoples, because of peoples inhumanity to others. It also says that we, ourselves, can never be fully human if any people is wiped off the face of the earth, because each one of us is a particle of the complete whole. By inscribing these words on our Coat of Arms we make a commitment to value life, to respect all languages and cultures and to oppose racism, sexism, chauvinism and genocide. "

The last known person to speak the /xam language was elderly Hendrik Goud who died in the mid-1980s. One women who perished in the destruction of the Khoisan people was Saartjie (Sarah) Baartman (1787 -1816). In 1810 she was taken to London by a ship's doctor who hoped to profit from putting her on exhibit. Soon she was sold to a Frenchman, and died in Paris in 1816. For over 150 years after her death until 1974, a parts of her body were on display at the Musée de l'Homme (Museum of Mankind) in Paris. In 2002 her physical remains were repatriated to her homeland, where on August 9 her remains were buried in Hankey, near the Gamtoos River in the Eastern Cape, South Africa.

South Africa became a party to the Genocide Convention on December 10, 1998.

Notice: Kinyarwanda Language homepage. Secondary pages in Kinyarwanda include artictles 2 and 3 of the 1948 Genocide Convention Itsembabwoko Amasezerano ( Amasezerano mpuzamahanga agamije kuburizamo umugambi wo gukora itsembabwoko kandi agamije no guhana icyo cyaha ), Amagambo y'ingenzi (Key words and phrases) and Kinyarwanda Links.