This document provides an overview of a 6-day lesson plan on the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Day 1 introduces definitions of genocide and discusses historical examples. Students are assigned to research the Rwanda genocide. Day 2 discusses the origins of the conflict between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda due to colonialism. Day 3 involves watching the film "Hotel Rwanda" and discussing it. Day 4 examines the role and failures of the UN in responding to the genocide. Day 5 reviews statistics on the genocide and its cultural implications. Day 6 discusses using truth and reconciliation efforts to promote peace after the genocide.
6. Objectives:
⢠Students will have a clear understanding of
genocide.
⢠Students will be able to recognize the origins
and causes of genocide.
⢠Analyze the implication of genocide globally.
⢠To understand the intervention and role of the
United Nations in genocide.
⢠To appreciate lessons learned from genocide
in terms of human dignity, the rule of law, and
tolerance
7. Day 1
⢠Class Activity: Pretest, Definition and
discussion of genocide.
⢠Why genocide originated: Colonialism,
Nativism, Ethnic cleansing, Religious
intolerance, Racism, and Economics
⢠Examples of historical origins of genocide:
Nazi, Biafra, Sudan, Liberia, and Rwanda.
⢠Assignment: research genocide in Rwanda
8. Pretest
⢠What is genocide?
⢠Where can it occur?
⢠Who does it involve?
⢠Name a people who has suffered genocide.
10. Day 2
⢠Analytical Reasoning: The Rwanda Genocide. 1994.
⢠Preamble.
⢠Day 2. The Origins of Rwanda Genocide.
⢠Rwanda is a land-locked country in Central Africa with a
population of 7.3 million.(Show Map.) Their language is Rwanda but
they also speak English, French and Swahili. They were colonized by
Belgium before they gained their independence in 1962.There are
three ethnic groups in Rwanda:
⢠a) The Hutus who are approximately 85% of the population
⢠b) The Tutsis who are approximately 14% of the population
⢠c) The Twa who are approximately 1% of the population.
11. Continued
⢠The conflict of citizenship and indigeneity was
really between the Hutus and the Tutsis.
⢠Causes of Genocide:Colonialism by Belgium
⢠Racism and Indigeneity
⢠Privileged Citizenship
⢠The Plane Crash that killed President
Habyarimana
⢠Search for Justice as an Act of Revenge,
Retribution and Ethnic Cleansing.
12. Continued
⢠Colonialism:
⢠Class test (Take Home) a) What is Colonialism?
Identify three countries that were former
colonies in the continents of Africa, Asia and
the Americas.
⢠b)Who are the Hutus and the Tutsis?
13. Continued
⢠Colonialism severed the socio-cultural links that bound the
Rwandan people as an entity. The Belgian political rulers in
a bid to maintain a power strong-hold on the country,
introduced a deep racial divide between the Hutus and the
Tutsis. They identified the Hutus as of the Bantu race and
ancestry and so were indigenes and owners of the land
while the Tutsis were a Hamitic race who migrated from
Ethiopia so were aliens. The colonialists using racial
difference favored the Tutsis who were thus associated
with privilege and power. Colonial divisiveness was thus the
initial cause of conflict and rivalry between two hitherto
ethnicities who co-habited before the advent of the
colonialists.
14. Continued
⢠Racism and Indigeneity:
⢠The country in the Belgian Reform of the thirties had
three levels of population: the natives/indigenes or the
Hutus, the aliens or the Tutsis and the settlers or the
Belgian colonists. Such a divide led to civil strife so that
when the Belgians left, issues of race and indigeneity
rendered governance difficult. There were massacres
but not genocide. Some Tutsis fled to Uganda a
neighboring country and there formed the RPF Rwanda
Patriotic Front led by Mr.Kagame and continued the
struggle for a full and participatory citizenship.
15. Continued
⢠Privileged Citizenship:
⢠The privileged citizenship of the Hutu over the
Tutsi helped to ignite the Revolution of 1959
whose aftermath caused dis-affection and
unrest in the polity.
⢠The Plane Crash that killed the Hutu President
Habiyarimana:
16. Continued
⢠On April 6th1994, the plane carrying President
Habiyarimana and other dignitaries was shot
down. The crash was blamed on the Tutsi
leader Mr.Kagame then in exile in Uganda. Mr.
Kegame denied the charge. The Hutu
population still held Kegame and the Tutsis
accountable.
⢠Search for Justice as an Act of Revenge,
Retribution and Ethnic Cleansing:
17. Continued
⢠Class Discussion:
⢠Do you consider the genocidal impulse an
admissible form of settling political disputes?
In other words,Discuss whether the quest for
power and control justifies genocide and
manâs inhumanity to man. Give reasons for
your answer.
⢠.
19. Day 4
⢠Intervention of the United Nations
⢠What is the UN, itâs purpose, what did it do,
and what could it have done during the
Rwandan genocide?
⢠Student Activity - Three panels will be
formed to brainstorm possible actions that
could have been taken by the United Nations
20. continued
What is the UN, and what is its purpose.
⢠The United Nations is an international organization founded
in 1945 by 51 countries. The Organization can take action
on a wide range of issues, and provides a forum for its 192
Member States to express their views, through the General
Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social
Council and other bodies and committees.
⢠The purpose of the UN is to maintain international peace
and security, to take effective collective measures for the
prevention and removal of threats to peace.
⢠To achieve international co-operation in solving
international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or
humanitarian nature.
21. Continued
⢠In March of 1998, President Clinton issued the "Clinton apology."
"We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the
United States and the world community did not do as much as we
could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred" in
Rwanda.
⢠This implied that the United States had done a good deal but not
quite enough. In reality the United States did much more than fail
to send troops. It led a successful effort to remove most of the UN
peacekeepers who were already in Rwanda. It aggressively worked
to block the subsequent authorization of UN reinforcements. It
refused to use its technology to jam radio broadcasts that were a
crucial instrument in the coordination and perpetuation of the
genocide.
22. Continued
⢠Three of the five permanent members of the UN had
reasons not to prevent the genocide. The US had nothing
to gain, and France and China were supplying the
government with arms.
Most other countries had no investments or anything to
gain from helping Rwanda, so little was done.
⢠And even as, an average, 8,000 Rwandans were being
butchered each day, U.S. officials shunned the term
"genocide," for fear of being obliged to act. The United
States in fact did virtually nothing to "try to limit what
occurred." Indeed, staying out of Rwanda was an explicit
U.S. policy objective.
23. Day 5
⢠Rwanda and Genocide: What are the statistics,
and the cultural implications?
25. During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, ID cards
were death warrants for many Tutsis.
âJerry Fowler/USHMM
26. Continued
⢠The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass
murder of an estimated 800,000 people. Over the
course of approximately 100 days from the
assassination of Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6
through mid-July, at least 800,000 people were
killed, according to a Human Rights Watch
estimate. Other estimates of the death toll have
ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000 (a
commonly quoted figure is 800,000) or as much
as 20% of the country's total population.
27. Who was murdered?
Who were the murders
⢠The assassination of Habyarimana in April 1994 was
the proximate cause of the mass killings of Tutsis and
pro-peace Hutus. The mass killings were carried out
primarily by two Hutu militias associated with political
parties: the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi.
The genocide was directed by a Hutu power group
known as the Akazu. The mass killing also marked the
end of the peace agreement meant to end the war, and
the Tutsi RPF restarted their offensive, eventually
defeating the army and seizing control of the country.
28. The Murders
⢠Numerous elite Hutu politicians have been found guilty
for the organization of the genocide. The Rwandan
Military and Hutu militia groups, notably the
Interahamwe, systematically set out to murder all the
Tutsis they could capture, irrespective of their age or
sex, as well as the political moderates. Hutu civilians
were forced to participate in the killings or be shot and
were instructed to kill their Tutsi neighbors. Most
nations evacuated their nationals from Kigali and
abandoned their embassies in the initial stages of the
violence.
29. Women Killers and Child Accomplices
⢠By September 1995, several hundred of the
10,000 inmates in Kilgaliâs central prison were
women. Rakiya Omar of the African rights told
an Associated Press journalist that some âwere
actively involved, killing with machetes and
gunsâ while others âacted in support roles
allowing murder squads access to hospitals and
homes, cheering on male killers, stripping the
dead and looting their houses.â
30. Women Killers and Child Accomplices
⢠Women killed a few, but mainly waited for
Tutsi women crossing the river with a kid on
the back, so they would take the kid and
throw it in the water.
⢠Reference: McDowell, â342 Women
Implicated in Genocide.â
31. Aftermath
Approximately two million Hutus,
participants in the genocide, and the
bystanders, with anticipation of Tutsi
retaliation, fled from Rwanda, to Burundi,
Tanzania, Uganda, and for the most part
Zaire. Thousands of them died in epidemics
of diseases common to the squalor of
refugee camps, such as cholera and
dysentery. The United States staged the
Operation Support Hope airlift from July to
September 1994 to stabilize the situation in
the camps.
32. Day 6
⢠Truth and reconciliation as a global paradigm for post-
genocide RwandaTruth and Reconciliation Committee.
⢠Truth and Reconciliation Committee.( Please see what I
wrote in Day 6) This is a continuation.
⢠In July,1994, the RPF captured Kigali the capital of
Rwanda and the Tutsis took over government. Two
million Hutus fled to the Republic of the Congo for fear
of retaliation. The threat of war and reprisals haunted
both the Tutsi-led government and the fugitive Hutu.
How can lasting peace be achieved?
