Peacebuilding

This study focuses on revival of Orchestre Impala, a popular band from the Habyarimana era of the 1970s-80s. The authors hope that this musical revival signals a politics of cultural healing in Rwanda, and coming to terms with the cultural past. This example shows how popular music can contribute to peace-building in post-genocide Rwanda, and perhaps elsewhere.

This paper highlights the unsuccessful mediation attempts leading up to the Arusha Accords; the successful mediation of the Arusha Accords by a highly skilled Tanzanian diplomat, Ami Mpungwe; and the violence following the breakdown of the Accords after the suspicious death of President Habyarimana. The role of regional organizations and other international actors in the pre-Arusha mediations and the Arusha process itself is analysed. Finally, the author highlights the misperceptions arising from a serious lack of intelligence information and the tragedy of peace-keeping forces whose weak mandate and lack of materiel made them impotent to stem the horrendous violence.

This article is a report on some of the workshops held by the Alternatives to Violence Project, a reconciliation effort based on restorative justice practices that operates in Africa to heal communities affected by genocide and civil instability. These workshops sought to bring together residents of two towns, one on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the other on the border of Rwanda, with a historically complicated and adversarial past.

The main aim of this paper is to try and bring to the fore the complexities behind the conflict in Rwanda with a focus on the need to link disarmament to the entire post-conflict confidence building and reconciliation process now underway. The paper first assesses the impact of the 1994 genocide and then reviews the various post conflict approaches currently being implemented in Rwanda. It concludes by proposing that there is a need to make these structures compatible with disarmament as prevention against possible recurrence of the conflict.

Conflict is an inevitable part of our daily lives, resulting from complex and often litigious society. Effective alternatives are highly needed to deal with conflicts. This study was designed to seek how to establish a conflict resolution and mediation centre in Kigali with the aim of contributing to the search of peaceful and durable solutions to conflicts occurring between individual and community members in Kigali. The study examined the nature, causes, extent and consequences of conflicts in Kigali and the ways to deal with them.

This thesis analyses the policy and traditional practice of umuganda, which is a Rwandan word for community work. The main purpose of the thesis is to investigate how to enhance the efficiency of the policy and practice of umuganda in fostering development and peace in Rwanda. The study focuses on how the practice of umuganda has been understood and implemented throughout the historical period of Rwanda, namely, the pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial periods until the genocide and then the post-genocide period.

This thesis is aimed at contributing to the lack of knowledge in the field of peacebuilding from below, notably regarding the mechanisms to be used in order to overcome the painful past between conflicting parties. The study makes this contribution through an empirically based exploration of the relational outcomes resulting from conflicting parties’ memberships of the same cooperative organization after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Since the end of the cold war, the international community has taken an active role in seeking to resolve civil conflicts around the globe. However, in countries like Rwanda and Angola, many more lives were lost during civil conflicts after the peace agreements failed than the years of war that preceded them. This paper looks at peace agreements that are ultimate indictment of a peacemaking process undermined by tragically mistaken assumptions.

The major aim of this article is to demonstrate how storytelling can be used to work through intractable conflicts in intergroup activities. It begins by defining the concept of working-through, then widening it to apply to traumatic social events. To Reflect and Trust (TRT) group, in which the storytelling technique was first used, is discussed and we see how it was later applied in a year-long Jewish-Palestinian student workshop held at Ben Gurion University in 2000-2001.