Why does mass-violence happen at all? This paper takes the first steps to establish a model to answer this question and explain extreme mass-violence as a phenomenon. This paper seeks to fill a gap in the field of research, in which models exist to explain the phenomenon of violence, with cases of genocide being seen as problems or exceptions, and as such researched as individual cases rather than as part of a wider phenomenon. This paper uses a selected part of the writings of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer to establish the basis for a model to explain extreme-cases of mass-violence. The Five-Pillar Model includes 5 social elements - (1) Culture Industry (2) Mass-Media (3) Propaganda (4) Dehumanization (5) Ideological Awareness. When these pillars all reach a high enough level of severity, conditions enable elites to use scapegoating - to divert revolutionary attention to a specific puppet group, resulting in extreme mass-violence. The Five-Pillar Model is then used to analyze an empirical case - Cambodia 1975-1979 and shows how these pillars all existed in an extreme form in that case. This paper presents scapegoating as a possible explanation for the Cambodian case.

Challenges to the legitimacy of established collective memory can prove so inflammatory that mass violence, ethnic cleansing and even genocide have followed in their wake. However, if few doubt that the ethno-nationalist memory wars during the 1980s collapse of Yugoslavia contributed to the real wars and ethnic cleansing witnessed in the 1990s, no previous research has been able to explain why this is so. This paper pinpoints the determinant variable and causal link between attacks on memory and subsequent mass violence (or a lack thereof). It uses a theoretical model that ties together memory, legitimacy and power to compare the cases of West Germany’s 1968 student movement and Serbia’s 1986-1989 anti-bureaucratic revolution before establishing that the level of prior state repression is one factor that determines whether memory challenges will turn violent. The paper recommends further theory building over the permeable boundary that separates state and civil society, particularly in terms of how accessible state functions are to those social movements that seek to challenge and delegitimise memory.

The present thesis explores the politics of reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda by focusing on one of its little-studied aspects— the government-led project of ‘unity building.’ To uncover the type of unit(ies) that are actually produced (not just officially envisioned), the analysis operates at three interconnected levels— i) at the level of the discourse of unity and reconciliation (studying its proper logic in addition to the ways in which it is shaped/structured by other discourses, such as security or prosperity/development); ii) at the level of concrete strategies and policies; and finally iii) at the level of ‘enaction’ through a score of official (and purportedly ‘local’ and ‘traditional’) activities. Many of the activities considered here have received no in-depth study. The official activities are explored both in toto and through an in in-depth analysis of one key exemplar – the ingando camps – transitory and transient spaces of re-education/sensitisation and reintegration tailored for selected segments of the population. The thesis demonstrates the ways in which the process of kubaka ubumwe / unity-building is profoundly politicised. Detailed attention is paid to exposing the way in which i) political dynamics affect the very conception of ‘unity’ and ‘reconciliation;’ ii) the manner in which power and the state mould unity and reconciliation activities, determining what can be achieved through them (or not); and finally iii) the ways in which the government appropriates the whole unity-building process for other than stated aims. The research shows how unity is shaped to imply consent, homogeneity and non-dissension, thus serving specific governmentality goals in the highly controlling environment of the authoritarian state (producing docile and legible subjects). Furthermore, the thesis shows how the process of unity and reconciliation is subsumed to the broader social engineering project of the state aimed at shaping citizens’ ‘mentalities’ and at their transformation into ‘perfect development subjects.’

This is the history of a turbulent borderland in a time of transition. Colonialism redefined the meaning of borders in Burundi, and in the traumatic shift from colonial rule to Independence it became dangerous to live on the frontier. Responding to Newbury’s plea to ‘bring the peasant back in’ to the written history of the Great Lakes region, the thesis takes a micro-history approach, viewing the tumultuous events of the 1960s and 1970s from the perspective of the hills and the homestead. The border with Rwanda, as experienced in the two communes of Kabarore and Busiga, is tested as the point of encounter between society and state in this crucial time. It reveals the function and dysfunction of political linkage, and the tensions of being a citizen and a subject in the margins of a political community ruled by suspicion and paranoia. The themes - dissent, collaboration, elimination, repression - link this local history to the flow of national politics and the making of a new African state. Taking as its scope the pivotal period from decolonisation to the military state’s ‘selective genocide’, enacted against its Hutu population, the thesis identifies ‘vigilance’ as the most productive concept by which to study concepts of governance, political community and political linkage in the Great Lakes at the vital point of transformation. A communicative act that blends the stance of the citizen and the subject to shape a means of cautious cooperation and mutual recognition between people and state, vigilance also proved the destructive weapon that violently distilled the population into a subjugated peasantry beneath a bloodied state. The interaction on the border reveals these vital issues in acute contrast, opening the door to their examination elsewhere. This thesis studies the border; its conclusions may be chased far beyond it.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis examines prosecutorial challenges of the International Criminal Court (ICC/the court) in relation to the dwindling legitimacy prosecuting under Article 5 of the Rome Statute and other relevant international law principles. The study attempts a prognosis of the future shape of ICC prosecutions in light of the challenges and proposes reforms to the operations of the Court and its constitutive instrument to improve the dispensation of justice. The focus of the study is substantive international criminal law, developments in relevant case laws of international courts and tribunals, structure and procedures of the ICC and relevant principles within the context of elements of the Crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the Crime of aggression. The thesis further evaluates the role of the Court as it ensures international cooperation with domestic efforts to promote the ‘Rule of law’, uphold the principles of international humanitarian law, human rights law and combat impunity being the first permanent treaty-based international criminal court with the intent and purpose of ending impunity for perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community and thus contributes to the prevention of such crimes. Additionally, the International Criminal Court advances international criminal justice, particularly with regard to victims by providing not only legal justice but also participation in the process and restorative justice to rebuild the society after mass violence. The thesis is an analysis of the prosecutorial challenges at the International Criminal Court, using its legal framework and jurisprudence to establish facts and reach new conclusions.

Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003. Through an analysis of the Iraq’s engineered genocides against Kurds during the years of Saddam Hussein’s regime, this work aimed to reveal the weakness of the current political and social situation in Iraq. The purpose was to offer an overview of the dangers posed by the current difficult coexistence between the Federal Government in Baghdad and the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil. The birth of a new political system after the fall of Saddam's regime meant that every institutional power had to be built from scratch in a political and social reality new to most Iraqis. This process of renovation, already witnessed in Europe after World War II, in particular in Italy and Germany, implied the writing of a new constitution and of a new set of legal frames with the purpose to give the country a strong and reliable democratic base. In the case of Iraqi Kurds, who suffered discrimination, death and, ultimately genocide, it is important to revisit their recent past in order to feel they are an integral part of the new country born after the last Gulf War in 2003. Despite the international interest in the Kurdish case, Kurdish people did not have the opportunity to see the ones responsible of the crimes committed against them brought to international justice, as happened in the past in the case of Rwanda and Bosnia. The execution of Saddam Hussein in 2006 meant that the charges against him and his commanders related to the Kurdish case were not discussed in court preventing Kurdish people not only from obtaining the justice they were entitled to but, most importantly, from gaining access to the truth about the massacres and human rights abuses carried out by Saddam's regime between 1963 and 2003.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Technology: Public Management (Peacebuilding), Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / One of the major issues following the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 was what to do with the huge number of people (around 100 000) accused of crimes during the genocide. Western legal approaches dealt with a handful of such cases at huge expense but the vast majority of the accused languished in prison. The government decided to employ a modified version of Gacaca - the traditional way of dealing with disputes and lower level crimes at community level. Using a qualitative research methodology and employing focus groups and individual interviews as data collection tools, this research investigate perceptions about the operation of Gacaca in three Rwandan communities, with particular reference to truth, justice, forgiveness and reconciliation. The research suggests that in the three communities, Gacaca was seen as bringing the truth out into the open and to provide a measure of justice, although limitations were noted in both of these respects. Given the enormity of the genocide crimes, however, there seemed to be little progress in the areas of forgiveness and reconciliation. / M

1 Summary This thesis deals with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals and their interpretation of the crime of genocide. There are two United Nations courts: The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. These ad hoc Tribunals were the first international Tribunals since the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. They were established by Security Council Resolutions in accordance with Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter as subsidiary organs of the Security Council. The Tribunals were the first international bodies which, after almost 50 years of existence, interpreted and applied the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which was adopted by United Nations General Assembly in 1948. Their practice has shown the whole world that individuals can be charged with the crime of genocide and consecutively sentenced. The purpose of this thesis is to briefly describe the historical development of the international criminal justice until the establishment of these two United Nations International Criminal Tribunals, characterize both Tribunals and find out how they interpret the crime of genocide and the contribution of their case law to the international criminal law. The thesis is divided into five chapters. The...