Let’s Be Friends: The United States, Post-Genocide Rwanda, and Victor’s Justice in Arusha

Join us for a presentation by Luc Reydams, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Notre-Dame (Indiana, USA); Fellow of the Nanovic Institute for European Studies; Senior Fellow Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies; and Professor of Law, Catholic University of Lublin (Poland).

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide. Luc Reydams, a political science Professor at the University of Notre-Dame and a specialist of Sub-Saharan politics, will discuss how the evolving relationship between Kigali and Washington contributed to consolidating victor’s justice in Rwanda and perpetuate seemingly endless war in the Great Lakes region. This workshop is open to all and will be followed by a Q&A period.

Abstract

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda completed the trial phase of its mandate without prosecuting anyone from the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front. This article examines whether the ICTR was doomed from the start to be a court of ‘victor’s justice.’ I explore the issue by re-examining the politics of its creation. Interviews with (former) US and UN ambassadors and hundreds of declassified diplomatic telegrams (‘cables’) and intelligence reports of the US Department of State shed new light on this process. My analysis concentrates on the strategy of the RPF vis-à-vis the international community and the responses of the United Nations and United States. I argue that understanding the evolution of the relation between Washington and Kigali – from an early, almost accidental support of the RPF to nearly unconditional backing – can help explain RPF impunity. I do not suggest that Washington planned to shield Kagame from international prosecution, or that the US was the only Security Council member to embrace him. However, once Washington entered into a partnership with the ‘new’ Rwanda, it was committed to moving forward – and this implied burying the past and oftentimes also ignoring the present. The result was victor’s justice in Arusha – and seemingly endless war in neighboring Congo.

Sponsored by the Canada Research Chair in the Law of Human Rights and Legal Pluralism and by the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism.