<p>The aim of this thesis is to analyze the relationship between the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia and the national reconciliation process. A qualitative method involving secondary source analysis as well as field study interviews is being used. The point of departure is a theoretical framework of reconciliation assembled from different sources, as there seems to be no coherent and widely accepted framework available for use. An analysis model is constructed, focusing on the concepts of justice and truth. The findings indicate that reconciliation is nowhere near fulfillment, although a few steps towards national reconciliation have been taken. The Cambodian process of reconciliation is only at its earliest stages. Furthermore, the findings suggest that there is a strong relationship between the tribunal and the reconciliation process, inasmuch as the tribunal is perceived to have positive effects on reconciliation, and that continued reconciliation would not be possible without the tribunal. The tribunal is not the only part in reconciliation though, it is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for continued reconciliation. The tribunal can not bring reconciliation close to fulfillment on its own, other mechanizms must be involved in order to do so.</p>

<p>The International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur (Commission) began its work in October 2004 and provided its final report only three months later on 25 January 2005.2 There, it concluded, inter alia, &ldquo / that the Government of Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide&rdquo / and that at least the central Government authorities did not act with genocidal intent.3 However, these findings would not exclude the possibility that the atrocities committed by individuals against victims were carried out with the specific intent to destroy and therefore could possibly fulfil all necessary requirements of the crime of genocide.</p>

The 1933 genocidal attacks on Assyrians in the Simele region defined the birth of the nascent Iraqi nation and identity. Iraq has ever been in the spotlight of ethnic and cultural strife, especially concerning Sunni-Shia animosity, and more recently in dealing with the Kurdish people and Iraqi Kurdistan. In most cases, however, the Assyrians are completely neglected from scholarship concerning Iraq and its peoples. This work reinserts the Assyrian people into the fabric of Iraq and discusses the violent and non-violent suppression of Assyrian identity and culture through genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Three fundamental factors emerge from this reinsertion with respect to Iraq and genocide. First, this approach introduces an often-neglected element in Iraqi studies: the inclusion of minorities, or micro-minorities, within the existing discourse on Iraqi studies. Second, it contributes to genocide studies by examining the impact of the non-physical, or cultural, aspect of genocide. Further, it discusses the importance of the Assyrian case in Iraq for understanding Iraqi history, and serves as a case in point of scaling suffering and for understanding how and why a hierarchy of genocide exists.

This thesis discusses how certain societies (Germany, Israel, and Argentina) that have been involved in two documented cases of genocide in the 20th Century -- one that was the source for and falls within the United Nations Treaty definition of genocide (the Holocaust), and one that does not (the Dirty War in Argentina) --have dealt with these events in their recent past. In dealing with these issues, the thesis employs the analysis of genocide developed by the Argentine scholar, Daniel Feierstein, who has proposed that all genocides progress through a series of steps that first create what he calls a "negative otherness" to the victims of the genocide, that then isolates and debilitates the victim group, and that ultimately leads, as a penultimate (not final) step, to the physical annihilation of the victims of the genocide. Feierstein's most novel and provocative contribution to the study of genocide, however, is his concept that there is an additional and final step -- which he calls the threat of “symbolic realization” -- that will actually take place in society after the killing or physical annihilation has been completed and the historical order of things has been restored. In Feierstein’s view, the purpose of genocide is to use the technologies of power of the state against the victim group in order to permanently change social relations within the state by excluding and then annihilating the victims of the genocide. For this reason, Feierstein argues that, unless the post-genocide society continues to confront the causes and reality of the genocide as a present and ongoing political and social dynamic in the society, so that the memory and cultural and social presence of the victim group is preserved in an immediate way, the genocide will be realized on a symbolic level in the sense that the change of social relations that the perpetrators of the genocide intended will in fact occur. In the analysis that follows of the issues of assigning culpability, providing reparations, and constructing memorials in post-genocide societies, the thesis argues that, whether consciously articulated or not, what drives the bitter controversy and debates over these matters in post-genocide societies is an underlying fear on the part of victims and victim groups that the significance of what they have suffered and why they have suffered will be lost and forgotten (symbolically realized, in Feierstein’s terminology) in the state's efforts at reconciliation precisely through the process of assigning guilt, awarding reparations, and constructing memorials. Going a step beyond where Feierstein leaves off, the thesis suggests, however, that this sort of symbolic realization is, in fact, an inevitable and unavoidable consequence of the process of writing the history of the genocide (or any event) and the detachment, analysis, contextualization, reductiveness, and simplification that history requires.

The 1933 genocidal attacks on Assyrians in the Simele region defined the birth of the nascent Iraqi nation and identity. Iraq has ever been in the spotlight of ethnic and cultural strife, especially concerning Sunni-Shia animosity, and more recently in dealing with the Kurdish people and Iraqi Kurdistan. In most cases, however, the Assyrians are completely neglected from scholarship concerning Iraq and its peoples. This work reinserts the Assyrian people into the fabric of Iraq and discusses the violent and non-violent suppression of Assyrian identity and culture through genocide, cultural genocide, and ethnic cleansing. Three fundamental factors emerge from this reinsertion with respect to Iraq and genocide. First, this approach introduces an often-neglected element in Iraqi studies: the inclusion of minorities, or micro-minorities, within the existing discourse on Iraqi studies. Second, it contributes to genocide studies by examining the impact of the non-physical, or cultural, aspect of genocide. Further, it discusses the importance of the Assyrian case in Iraq for understanding Iraqi history, and serves as a case in point of scaling suffering and for understanding how and why a hierarchy of genocide exists.

Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide stipulates the definition of the crime. A key element of genocide is the criterion of “intent”; this requisite must be met in order to determine criminal liability. Even though “intent” is a paramount element of the crime neither definition nor guidance regarding its interpretation is provided for under Article II, this void of interpretation is absolute throughout the Genocide Convention. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to examine this void in the provision. In order to fulfill the purpose of this thesis the following research questions have been regarded: How is the requisite intent defined in relevant preparatory work of Genocide Convention? How is the requisite intent interpreted in relevant case law and judicial doctrines and are these interpretations in line with the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention? Is the definition and interpretation of the requisite intent in the abovementioned legal sources consistent with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention? We found that in the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention, the requisite intent has not been labeled. However, the Drafters definition of intent is in accordance with international criminal law’s definition of specific intent. Also, the case law and judicial doctrines that we have examined all fall within either the purpose-based or the knowledge-based approach. Both approaches acknowledge that a perpetrator needs to possess an inner aim or desire to meet the level of intent required for the Crime. Notwithstanding, the knowledge-based approach holds that “policy or plan” is part of the Crime whereas the purpose-based approach rejects it and consequently the application of genocidal intent is distinctively different. With regard to preparatory work, the purpose-based approach is in line with the definition of the Drafters whereas the knowledge-based approach is not in its literal meaning. However, the Drafters did not explicitly reject the knowledge-based approach in the preparatory work of the Genocide Convention. We have concluded that the purpose-based approach is not consistent with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention. We hold that the knowledge-based approach is in line with the object and purpose of the Genocide Convention, and hence this approach upholds the goal of preventing and punishing genocide. Moreover, the method for this thesis is in accordance with the method in international law for interpretations of international treaties; the Vienna Convention on the law of Treaties. Hence, the selection, systemization and interpretation of legal sources are in line with the Vienna Convention.

Situated within the fields of diplomatic history and comparative genocide studies, this thesis examines the German colonial period from the standpoint of German-British relations before, during and after the Second Boer War in British South Africa (1899-1902) and the Herero and Nama War in German South West Africa (present-day Namibia, 1904-1908). I contend that German and British diplomatic efforts at cordiality functioned as a means of tacitly condoning each power’s humanitarian abuses—or at least “letting them slide”—for the sake of stability both on the European Continent and within the colonies. Despite activism against reported maltreatment and violence—even among citizens of “the perpetrating power” and among those of “the observing power”­—neither the German nor the British government was willing to chastise the other openly, for fear of alienating a key ally. Only with the advent of the First World War, when the former allies became enemies, did an explosion of criticism of each other’s maltreatment of their colonial subjects erupt. In the wake of German defeat, the British victors reaped the spoils of war—including the ability to shape perceptions of what had happened nearly two decades before in the African colonies—and succeeded in expropriating the German overseas territories in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. From this narrative the following conclusion emerges: German and British official responses to humanitarian concerns in the colonies were dictated not by morality or compassion but rather by realpolitik expediency. And, as often in history, the one-sided narrative that emerged from this rather hypocritical series of events continues to skew perceptions of both British and German colonialism today. Thus, as a whole, this thesis poses broad theoretical questions regarding the politicization of morality and the social construction of genocide classifications, as well as the extent to which changing perceptions of violent conflicts have played a role in how the international community has categorized these conflicts through legal means in the wake of the Holocaust.

<p>This dissertation examines a series of novels by Aminata Zaaria, Ken Bugul, Gaston-Paul Effa, Boubacar Boris Diop and Yolande Mukagasana. At the heart of my study is a problem that haunts much literary production and literary criticism about post-colonial Francophone African writing: the layers of distance and misunderstanding that often exist between readers and writers. Several of the authors in this study express frustration at the limited expectations that readers have of them, complaining that readers outside of the continent continue to read their novels solely in order to gain a grasp of socio-political "realities" of Africa. I propose a return to a select group of author's largely semi-autobiographical texts in order to better understand each writer's individual literary projects within the interdisciplinary framework of trauma studies. Interviews that I conducted with Senegalese and Cameroonian publishing directors, psychologists, sociologists and authors themselves offer an analysis of these texts within the context of broader social debates. </p><p> My first chapter focuses on Zaaria's La Nuit est tombée sur Dakar (2004) and Bugul's Le Baobab Fou (1983) and Cendres et Braises (1995) in order to examine intergenerational Senegalese semi-autobiographical representations of prostitution. My study ultimately finds that neither Senegalese society nor Zaaria and Bugul's narratives evidence healing through writing. Rather, both present literature as a "default" chosen because the authors found no one with whom they could initially share their stories face-to-face. Chapter Two hones in on Bugul's relationship with her mother, a painful theme revisited from one end of Bugul's semi-autobiographical oeuvre (Le Baobab Fou, 1982) to the other (De l'autre côté du regard, 2002). Chapter Three examines the trauma of parental loss in Gaston-Paul Effa's semi-autobiographical works, from Tout ce bleu (1996) to a more recent novel (Nous, les enfants de la tradition, 2008) in order to examine the evolution of Effa's personal identity quest and his extensive self-analysis over time in light of the author's permanent exile in France. My fourth chapter begins with a study of genocide survivor Yolande Mukagasana's recent narrative entitled N'aie pas peur de savoir (1999) in order to examine author/reader relationships in light of the often inconceivable trauma of genocide. I then move on to consider the ethics of speaking "for" genocide survivors by analyzing the well-known Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop's Murambi, le livre des ossements (2000) and the related Fest'Africa project. I end Chapter Four with a critique of Etoke's Melancholia africana: l'indéspensable dépassement de la condition noire (2010) in order to question whether or not sweeping theories of the various traumas experienced by members of Africa and its diaspora are in fact helpful in every context. Finally, I end my study with Effa's Voici le dernier jour du monde, which exhibits the interplay between autobiography, biography, fiction and the issue of literary violence. </p><p> I ultimately argue that a major difference between the "talking cure" of psychoanalysis and the process of seeking healing through literary narratives involves the question of audience. In the case of Sub-Saharan African literature, the author/reader relationship does not necessarily provide a safe space akin to the doctor/patient model in Freud's "talking cure." Therefore, I ultimately call for a closer analysis of the myriad ways by which authors are seeking healing and answers outside the realm of literature.</p> / Dissertation

<p>This thesis aims at finding the reasons for the genocide in Rwanda, not only in the history of the country, but also the reason why the international institutions failed to prevent it. The thesis begins with a historical background of Rwanda where key actors in the conflict are presented and in the end presents an explanatory model which is based upon the facts gathered during the thesis. The model aims at explaining why the genocide happened and it is built up of layers. These layers have their background in Rwanda’s history and also international institutions, such as the UN. The layers of importance which led to the genocide are: Rwanda’s colonial past, the Arusha Accords and the mandate of UNAMIR (failure of the United Nations), a uni-polar world, increasing poverty, and the assassination of President Habyarimana. There were few available strategies in the standard arsenal of international political means that could have been used to stop the genocide, both before it broke out, but especially after it had begun.</p> / <p>Uppsatsen ämnar hitta de bakomliggande orsaker till folkmordet, inte bara i Rwandas historia men också varför internationella instutitioner, så som FN, inte bidrog till att förhindra folkmorden. I det fortlöpande arbetet med uppsatsen har en modell utvecklats vilken ämnar förklara vad som hände, och som är byggd på den information som framkommit under arbetets gång. Modellen bygger på ett flertal lager av händelser. Dessa lager bygger på händelser som inte bara rör Rwandas historia utan också på vad de internationella institutionerna bidrog med i konflikten. De identifierade lagren som ligger till grund för konflikten är Rwandas koloniala bakgrund, Arusha Accords och mandatet för UNAMIR, en unipolär värld, ökande fattigdom samt mordet på President Habyarimana. Det fanns få tillgängliga politiska strategier som kunde ha använts för att stoppa folkmordet.</p>

This study explores the power of ethnonationalist conflict-generated diasporas (CGD) as external actors in homeland conflict by exploring the nature of their political engagement on a transnational level using Internet Communication technologies (ICTs), with Rwanda as a case study. Virtual ethnography was chosen as the research methodology to explore the online activities of Rwandan CGD using social media (social networking sites) to form virtual transnational networks for political purposes. Diasporic online formations and activities were mapped in order to gain increased insights into ways that CGD use social media to engage in homeland conflict, and the effect their engagement has on the conflict cycle in the home country. Results of the study revealed that Rwandan CGDs demonstrate attitudes and motivations to act in ways that are consistent with other case studies of CGD, including exhibiting an enduring commitment and loyalty to co-ethnics, a romanticized conceptualization of homeland and a myth of return home. The results also revealed Rwandan CGDs' strong propensity to use social media to engage in homeland conflict on a political level through the development of a large and dense transnational network used for a range of political purposes, including the dissemination of genocide denial and propaganda consistent with the pre-genocide propaganda campaign. Implications for peace-building and conflict analysis are discussed.