This thesis interrogates a well-established consensus that the mass killings that erupted in Rwanda in 1994 upon the aerial assassination of President Habyarimana were the result of a planned and controlled genocide of Tutsis by Hutu extremists. It concludes that this dominant narrative is flawed and argues instead that the killings had a ‘bottomup’ character, were neither planned nor controlled, and were conducted in anarchic conditions. An historical background addresses the question of how ethnic identity formation relates to the 1990-1994 war. The war is reconstructed by means of a logical chronological narrative. Interviews of key individuals involved, checks of court records, and a critical survey of English and French literature has yielded, it is hoped, a more rigorous, reflective and nuanced approach toward the dynamics of the war. Claims for genocide planning and implementation are shown to be problematic. In place of a conspiracy of Hutu extremists, the thesis emphasises linkages between RPF strategy and conduct with various forms of Western intervention as salient forces generating conditions conducive to civilian slaughter. The material and ideological links between the protagonists of the Rwandan war and regional and international actors are situated within the context of the immediate post-Cold War period. A comparative study of genocide concludes that the number of genocides in the twentieth century should be restricted to three: the Nazi holocaust, the genocide of the Armenians, and the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples in German South-West Africa.

Many government (and donor) policies in post-genocide Rwanda have been justified in the name of "reconciliation". Yet, reconciliation is almost never defined - in the Rwandan context, or in the literature. This thesis unpacks this nebulous concept by analysing the discourses and expectations of different constituencies - the RPF government, a group of non-govemment elites, the Top Five donors to the country, and respondents from two rural communities. Despite great variance in personal circumstance, significant areas of consensus are found. For example, establishing degrees of responsibility - and punishment - for the genocide was broadly welcomed. However, one way in which this was implemented, through a government prisoner release programme that amounted to "institutionalised forgiveness", was not widely supported. An in-depth study of the rural communities is also undertaken to unearth what factors had an impact on the reconciliation process. Based on these data, three explanatory factors are posited for patterns of reconciliation and non-reconciliation, or, as per the definition of grassroots respondents, for coexistence and non-coexistence. First, at the individual level, life stories since 1994 mattered more in explaining behaviours and attitudes today than experiences during the genocide. Second, the level, depth, breadth and type of social interactions were equally influential, reinforcing the validity of Sociology's "Contact hypothesis". Third, the RPF's top-down style is associated with a negative impact, suggesting the government's strategy is self-defeating. Indeed, the imposition of "mandatory" reconciliation behaviours contradicted one of the pillars of the RPF reconciliation strategy, i.e. the promotion of independent thinking in order to rout out an alleged Rwandan tradition of obedience. Overall, the thesis debunks several misconceptions about reconciliation and about Rwandan politics and society. For example, ethnic heritage did not have an explanatory or predictive quality; more important were class distinctions or, as respondents put it, distinctions between "high" and "low people".

This thesis reassesses of the role of the UN Secretariat during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. On the basis of new archival materials, it focuses on the decision-making processes in New York while also highlighting the effects of those decisions in the field. By looking at the contribution of each of the bureaucratic units involved in the tragic events of 1994, the thesis carries out an institutional anatomy of the Secretariat's contribution to the Rwandan operation.

Since the end of the 1994 Genocide, Rwanda has been carrying out an experiment of reconciliation; an enduring process both enabled and complicated by the arrival and increase of local and international tourism to the national genocide memorials. Focusing on a less Western-centric approach towards memory, peace, heritage and (dark) tourism theory this study seeks to establish how the production and consumption of Rwanda’s memorialscape is negotiated and contested. The aim of the research is to reveal wider impacts of such visits by exploring tourists’ motivations, their site encounters and personal contemplations. In addition, memorial location, design and structure will be critically examined. The study embraces a qualitative research approach with complementing methods of participant observation, semi-structured interviews and the distribution of diversity surveys, as well as a diarist account. Fieldwork was carried out over a period of nine months and incorporates elements of ethnographic methodology conducted during Rwanda's 20th annual commemoration period. The latter puts focus on local remembrance culture presented by Rwandans living in the country today, as those directly affected by present-day memorialisation practices. In essence, the thesis demonstrates that the development of national and international tourism at difficult heritage sites can potentially serve as a positive contributor to the symbolic reparations needed by societies recovering from conflict. However, in order for these spaces to fulfil wider educational purposes, graphic sites in particular need to enhance visitor experiences by reassessing site features in terms of contextual change, self-reflexivity, awareness raising and civic engagement.

During the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, acts of extreme violence were committed against women. This thesis aims to explore how Rwandan women genocide survivors respond to and communicate such a traumatic experience. From a perspective of trauma theory, it engages with the published testimonies of Rwandan women survivors, seeking to understand how the genocide is remembered in both individual and collective memory and the challenges Rwandan women face in the ongoing process of surviving trauma. Exploring the ways in which Rwandan women position themselves as witnesses, the first chapter addresses the crucial questions of who is a witness and who has the right to speak about a traumatic historical event. It distinguishes between different categories of witness and looks at the levels of witnessing in Rwandan women’s testimonies, as well as considering the role of the reader-witness in the act of testimony. Responding to an imperative of memory, the women are speaking on behalf of other survivors and honouring the memory of the victims. At the same time, the experience of genocide is shown to be deeply individual, and the second chapter provides a detailed analysis of the narrative strategies Rwandan women adopt to communicate the particularity of their experiences. Through a range of ‘translation’ techniques, the women reconstruct their individual chronologies and challenge the notion of the unsayability of trauma. However, the extremity of what the women have lived through can be incomprehensible to the reader, who is often unwilling to hear the story. One of the ways in which cross-cultural communication can be achieved is through collaboration, a process which is examined in the third chapter. The collaborator plays a complex role in the production of the testimonies, functioning not only as empathic listener, but also as writer, editor, and mediator of the story. This chapter draws out the problems associated with collaboration and also highlights its potential value for the Rwandan women as it is ultimately through the collaborator that they are able to convey their story to a Western audience. Gaining access to the Western publishing industry is just one of the many obstacles the women must face in communicating their stories, and the majority of survivors continue to be silenced. The role of silence both within and surrounding Rwandan women’s testimonies is the focus of the fourth chapter, which looks at the physical manifestations of silence within the narratives as well as the silencing of survivors in Rwanda and across the diaspora. The silencing of survivors’ stories has strong implications for the recovery of the individual, often preventing her from moving from surviving to living, a notion that is examined in the final chapter. Testimony is shown to play a central role in this transition. Yet, in the face of the politically motivated processes of national reconciliation, justice and commemoration, Rwandan women struggle to regain control over their narratives. This final chapter emphasises the importance of the community in helping women to reclaim their voice and tell their stories on their own terms. Overall, women remain marginalised figures in the writing of history, and this thesis seeks to underline the necessity of developing new ways of listening to the diversity of Rwandan women’s voices, in order not only to gain greater insight into how traumatised individuals remember but also to hear the challenge they pose to conventional Western modes of responding to trauma.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair described the UK’s response to the Rwandan genocide as “We knew. We failed to act. We were responsible”; this thesis sets out to explore these three claims. The thesis, which draws on newspaper archives, oral history interviews and government documents obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act, as well as British and US official documents already made public, begins by exploring Britain’s knowledge and understanding of events in Rwanda in the build-up to, and during the first few weeks of, the genocide. It then moves on to review how the government responded and, by drawing on various theories of bystander intervention, to build up a multi-factor assessment of what influenced that response. The thesis finishes by addressing the question whether the British government, or indeed any other British foreign policy actor, bears responsibility for the crisis. It therefore looks at the Rwandan crisis from the perspective of various influences on foreign policy: the media, public opinion, Parliament and NGOs, as well as exploring the response of John Major’s government. The thesis concludes that media coverage of the genocide led to a significant misunderstanding of the crisis; this misunderstanding influenced the public response and shaped discussion within Parliament and government. In terms of official response, whilst it has to be acknowledged that the government initially failed to correctly identify the events in Rwanda as genocide and consequently delayed their response until the majority of killings had ended, the thesis shows that rather than failing to act the British government was in fact a leading aid donor to Rwanda and a leading provider of troops to the UN peacekeeping mission serving in Rwanda. This aid did come too late to prevent or halt the genocide, but did save many thousands of lives in the immediate aftermath.

In the 1994 Rwanda genocide, an estimated 800,000 people were brutally murdered in just thirteen weeks. This violence affected all Rwandans, but women experienced the genocide in very specific ways. They were frequently raped, tortured and physically mutilated. Yet, because of their sexual value, the number of women who survived the genocide far outweighed the number of men, leaving them largely responsible for rebuilding Rwandan society. While it may seem abhorrent to suggest that anything good could result from such tragedy, evidence from the women’s testimonies analysed for this research project suggests that this is a reality. Traditionally, the study of psychological trauma has been pervaded by an illness ideology with an emphasis on its pathological consequences. Throughout history and across cultures, however, the notion of positive changes resulting from human suffering has been recognised in literature and philosophy. Positive change following trauma, or posttraumatic growth, refers to the tendency of some individuals to establish new psychological constructs and build a new way of life that is experienced as superior to their previous one in important ways. Little research has been carried out on the concept of posttraumatic growth in other cultures and, to date, no research into posttraumatic growth has been carried out in Rwanda. However, empirical research in other contexts suggests that efforts to harness and promote posttraumatic growth may not only enhance health and well-being but also reduce future need for formal mental health services. Through a discursive analysis of Rwandan women survivors’ testimonies, this thesis reveals that, although there are countless tales of horror, pain and loss, there are also many stories about strength, recovery and growth. The thesis examines the impact of external factors, such as victimisation, stigmatisation and gender, which appear to encourage personal strength among these women, but have also gravely damaged their interpersonal relationships. It also examines the impact of the genocide on religious beliefs and demonstrates that individual interpretations of trauma within a religious framework can provide existential reassurance. However, because of Rwanda’s history of theocratic leadership, religious interpretations can also give spiritual credibility to ideologies which have a negative impact on group identity. The final part of the thesis examines processes of growth at the collective level, exploring the impact of the genocide on these women’s group identities both as survivors in Rwandan society and as Rwandans in an international society. It suggests that for growth to take place at the collective level, survivors require access to a platform from which they can develop counter ideologies and pursue their collective needs for agency on the one hand, and communion on the other. Drawing on the findings of this research, the concluding chapter offers culturally-informed advice to trauma practitioners, policy makers and non-governmental organisations as to how posttraumatic growth might be facilitated in the socio-political climate of Rwanda.