Discuss The Causes Of The Rwandan American War

Improved Essays
The State of Affairs in Africa has always created stereo-types as a doomed continent with unavoidable tribal conflict and ethnic cleavages. It’s hard to understand why there were so many wars and instability in Africa in the late 90’s. Over the last four decades, nearly twenty African countries in the Sub-Saharan Africa area have experienced at least one form of war. The biggest and deadliest war was the Rwandan genocide. Most of the wars occurred because of influences Europeans had on African leaders and other ethnic rivalries.
To fully understand the divisions that led to the unthinkable, one must understand what Rwandans were prior to these events. Several centuries ago, three ethnic groups came into habit what is called Rwanda. “The

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In his examination of security threats and violence in Africa, Mangala (2010:88) defines conflict as a ‘dispute or incompatibility between two or more opposing sides... It becomes a destructive force where the capacity to mediate incompatible interests breaks down and those interests are pursued through violence, either at a community, national, or international level’. One of the most prevalent forms of violent conflict in Africa affecting states and civilians are civil wars. Collier & Hoeffler (2004:565) define civil wars as ‘an internal conflict with at least 1,000 combat-related deaths per year’. The greed vs grievance debate examines factors within these categories which drive civil wars.…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Dbq Rwanda Genocide

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The Rwandan genocide resulted from a complex mixture of political, social, and economic factors. However, by virtue of the capitalist system in Rwanda, profit production was a highly motivating incentive. Even before colonization, Rwandan societal divisions between Hutu and Tutsi were based on wealth as opposed to race. The implication of this is that affluence, prosperity and status had been intertwined for a long portion of Rwandan history and that established the underlying competition between the haves and have nots. Those who were prosperous had usually been Tutsi, who owned more land and thus more crops and the lower class had consisted of Hutus, who owned less land and thus less crops, until the 1959 revolution.…

    • 1127 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rwandan Genocide Doc 1

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After the Holocaust, the world had promised that they would “never again let anything like this happen.” In the spring of 1994, all hell broke loose as one million people died in the Rwandan Genocide. What happened to the promise to never let another genocide occur again Racism, competition of land between Hutu and Tutsi, and denying the situation in Rwanda as genocide, the killings occurred and continued for 100 long days. However, that all happened because of European colonization in Africa. Doc 1, by Gerard Prunier, states how the Belgians divided Rwanda people based on physical features.…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Bobby Chavez-Gates Coach Smith AP Human Geography 11/28/17 The Battle of the Mirror: Rwanda War Ethnicity refers to how one identifies themselves based on their cultural tradition and values. Race is the grouping of people based on similar physical traits, such as hair and skin color. Often times, complex and numerous ethnicities exists within the same land and even race; these differentiations assist in promoting discrimination, tensions, and sometimes war. Rwanda, in the mid 1900s, was a prime example in which the same people lived within the same region, yet hatred festered due simply because of how one identifies themselves.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Rwandan genocide was a one hundred day slaughter of the Tutsi population. There were a number of factors leading up to this event and why nobody stopped the killings include worldly indifference, lack of information, fear of intervention, and the absence of resources and knowledge for help. In April 6th, 1994, an airplane holding President Habyarimana was shot down killing him and the rest of it’s passengers. Habyarimana was of the Hutu population and the Hutus believed that a member of the Tutsi population had to do with this killing.…

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Rwanda is made up of two main native groups, the Hutus, and the Tutsis. The Tutsis have always been in a position of power even though they only made up 15 percent of the population. The Germans claimed Rwanda in the a scramble for Africa and they recognized the power the Tutsis had and gave them a higher status. When the belgians ended up owning Rwanda after World War I, they separated these two groups even more “by requiring members of the two groups to carry cards identifying them as Hutus or Tutsis”. When Rwanda wanted to claim independence, civil conflict occurred between the two native groups as to which one would hold the power.…

    • 1300 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ultranationalism In Rwanda

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “In their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.” Kofi Annan, a diplomat who served as a Secretary -General of the United Nation. Both himself and his department won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2001 but he later quit his position at UN when he became frustrated at the lack of intervention that was desperately needed in both Rwanda and Syria. Ultranationalism can be viewed through the scope of genocide in Rwanda and how the devastating event greatly impacted the lives of civilians. Rwanda is a small country in the heart of Africa and consists of three major ethnic groups: Hutu (85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%).…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Back in 1994, Rwanda faced its darker period of time in its history. A horrifying and historical genocide took place over three months on Rwandan soil. The horror and brutality of that act has been compared to what happened in Nazi Germany over World War II. About one million Rwandan people got literally exterminated by their countrymen because of their ethnic group given by Belgian colonizers over occupation (1916-1962). Nevertheless, that tragedy could have been lower and prevented if some countries would have intervened and did not think to their own interests first.…

    • 324 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The world’s reaction to the Rwandan genocide in 1994 is widely considered as one of the biggest failures of humanity and the UN, hundreds of thousands of innocent lives were lost over the course of the 100 day mass killing. The response has been described as” too little, too late” as an earlier intervention could have saved many more lives, which brings the question why did the world wait? Why did we fail all of these innocent people? The answer lies within the structure of our world’s political system and the different ideals and definitions of key concepts by different states. While no one state can be blamed completely for the lack of aid, the Rwandan genocide brought forward the need for a more comprehensive action plan for intervention…

    • 1831 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Rwandan genocide occurred in 1944. The Belgians were the ones who initially created a strong divide between the Tutsi and the Hutu, the two African groups living in Rwanda. In the 1930s, Belgium, the current ruling power, defined specific physical characteristics to differentiate between the Tutsis and the Hutus. The Tutsis were perceived as the superior group in comparison to the Hutus, so the Belgians saw them as partners in enforcing Belgium law. In 1933, the Belgians mad identity cards that showed which ethnic group a person belonged to.…

    • 655 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Reconciliation In Rwanda

    • 1968 Words
    • 8 Pages

    The Government’s Failure to Facilitate Reconciliation in Post-Genocide Rwanda After the genocide of 1994, Rwanda had strict ethnic divides between the Hutus, Tutsis, and Twa. Some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, and the population was torn apart without much guidance to initiate the healing process. Despite implementing various legal and cultural efforts to help the country recover, the Rwandan government did not do enough to help said process; there are still societal divides and forced isolations left in the wake of the genocide. The International Court Tribunal of Rwanda (ICTR) was inefficient and wasted both time and money in trying perpetrators of the genocide; its incompetence prolonged the freedom the criminals enjoyed…

    • 1968 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rwanda was a country divided between 1990 through 1995, for genocide was prepared and committed here in this small African country. It all started when in 1990, Belgium gave up control of the now diamond-less country, the only reason Belgium kept hold of this otherwise useless country. People were classified into 3 groups, 85% Hutu, 14% Tutsi, and then 1% Twa (http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm). Hutus were the lowest class and watched as the Tutsis got all the praise and good lives. Since the Tutsis looked more like Europeans than the Hutus, the Belgians treated them so much better than the Hutus.…

    • 1264 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays
    • 1052 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Essay On Rwanda Genocide

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The failure of the UN to act upon the reports of genocide in Rwanda caused an innumerable amounts of killing and anarchy. The problems started with the Belgium’s discrimination between the two populations. Going as far as to hire scientists to prove the Tutsi superiority, they only enabled the already present racism between the two groups. Then the Hutu population decided to act. After the president was shot down, supposedly by Hutu extremists, the anarchy began.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Causes and Effects of the Rwandan Genocide The word ‘genocide’ originates from the Greek word ‘genos’ meaning tribe or race, and the Latin word ‘cide’ meaning killing (Cook 4). The Rwandan Genocide stands one of the worst massacres of its kind and one of the bloodiest wars in the history of the world (Cook 88). The genocide predominantly involved the slaying of the people of the Tutsi ethnic tribe. In just one hundred days, an approximately 800,000 Tutsis had been killed by the people of the Hutu ethnic tribe (Barnett 4).…

    • 1074 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays