Rwanda Genocide

This paper focuses on the social life of women after the 1994 genocide which took place in the East African country, Rwanda. Prior to the colonial era and genocide, the Rwandan population consisted of the Hutu (~85%), the Tutsi (14%) and the Twa (1%), where the Tutsi were generally regarded as the higher class of citizens while Hutus were regarded as the lesser. Tension in Rwanda began in the wake of decolonization in the 1950’s and by the 1990’s, the ethnic conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda brought on a genocide (Burnet, 2012, p. 4). Within the short period of April 6th and July 4th 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in a genocide organized and perpetuated by the state’s authorities, wiping out approximately
Within this process they often took on roles not entirely limited to, but associated with care-giving and peace building. My interest in this subject matter stems from my background in studying gendered experience in society, particularly the roles women play in society and the social structures which assign them. Also, a review of previous literature suggests that many understandings of life in post-genocide Rwanda often lacks sufficient focus on gendered experiences, which I believe is essential to understanding social life in post-genocide Rwanda, particularly the reconciliation process. Drawing from anthropological and social investigations into the social life in post-genocide Rwanda, in the following essay I will discuss Rwanda’s reconciliation/ social reconstruction process. Particularly my focus is to explore women’s role within the process, as well as their experiences. From this, I will identify the essentialist assumptions of women that are evidently embedded within this process. Further, I will discuss the impact of these assumed roles on women and the potential consequences they may pose for the social life of women in post-genocide Rwanda. The unique perspective of ethnographic approaches to investigating social life for everyday women reveals essentialist
29). This is especially inadequate when we consider the ways in which the social divisions that underline conflict situations are deeply intertwined and cross-cut by gender divisions (Byrne, 1996, p. 29). These realities are often overlooked because they typically take place in the private sphere, but they are non-the-less important and should thus be investigated ethnographically. In obtaining knowledge of life stories, ethnographic approaches allow us to gain access to the perspective, values, definitions of situations, and social learning processes of men and women within their social setting (Hilker, 2014, p. 355). In this way we can understand gendered experiences beyond how gender identities are increasingly politicized in the wake of conflict (Byrne, 1996, p. 31). In investigating the roles women play in the reconciliation process in post-genocide Rwanda using ethnographic approaches, we can obverse patterns of reinforced ideals of