The masculine logic of DDR and SSR in the Rwanda Defence Force

Since the 1994 genocide and civil war, the Rwandan government has implemented an externally funded Demobilisation, Demilitarisation and Reintegration (DDR)/Security Sector Reform (SSR) program culminating in the consolidation of armed groups into a new, professionalised Rwanda Defence Force (RDF). Feminists argue that DDR-SSR initiatives that exclude combatant women and girls or ignore gendered security needs fail to transform the political conditions that led to conflict. Less attention has been paid to how gendered relations of power play out through gender sensitive DDR and SSR initiatives that seek to integrate women and transform hyper-masculine militarised masculinities. This article investigates how Rwanda’s DDR-SSR program is governed by an oppressive masculine logic. Drawing on critical studies on men and masculinities and feminist work on peacebuilding, myths and the politics of belonging, it is argued that Rwanda’s locally-owned DDR-SSR program places the military and militarisation at the centre of the nation-building program. Through various ‘boundary construction’ practices, the Rwandan government attempts to stabilise the post-1994 gender order and entrench the hegemony of a new militarised masculinity in Rwandan society. The case study draws on field research conducted in 2014 and 2015 and a discourse analysis of RDF historical accounts, policy documents and training materials

A future without forgiveness: beyond reconciliation in transitional justice

This article questions the promotion of reconciliation in transitional justice contexts. The article puts forward a critique of reconciliation in practice and questions mainstream definitions of reconciliation. The principle that these forms of reconciliation are desirable is also questioned. It is argued that examples of genuine reconciliation are difficult to find, that the promotion of reconciliation is frequently emphasised at the expense of substantive societal change, that emphasis on reconciliation (narrowly defined) risks taking agency away from those affected by conflict and that emphasis on reconciliation may obscure injustice and may promote acceptance of the status quo. The article suggests that reconciliation is not a necessary condition of, and should be de-emphasised in, transitional justice and, if it is promoted at all, that a different, less prescriptive notion of reconciliation is necessary

Resistant acts in post-genocide Rwanda

Performances of justice and human rights have served as international platforms for truth-telling and nation-building both in the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa, and genocide in the case of Rwanda. There are moments of overlap between actual court proceedings, which can in their own right be deemed as a performance, and the use of theatre for dialogic negotiations between past atrocities and present juridical systems for reconstruction.1 Within the messy context of post-conflict reconstruction, speech often falters. Articulations of identities and speech acts become disjointed between personal and collective memories and identities; but are forced into the construction of juridical speech in the case of Rwanda’s gacaca courts. This essay will analyze how micro and macro sociopolitical dynamics are articulated in the gacaca courts used to adjudicate crimes linked to the 1994 genocide against Tutsi during which over 1 million Tutsi and Hutu moderates were massacred. I will illustrate how these different levels of power interact with each other through social performances (Alexander, 2011) and to extend the concept of faltered speech as artistic resistance (Scott, 1990)

Human Rights Frameworks and Women's Rights in Post-transitional Justice Sierra Leone

The end of transitional justice in Sierra Leone coincided with an increase in women's human rights activism. Reasons for this included an increase in the level of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), and the ineffectiveness and insensitivity of the human rights laws of the country. To the women's rights activists, SGBV and its associated inequalities before the law, irrespective of the context, were incompatible with the universal tenets of human rights. Within the purview of feminist legal theory, women's rights were understood to be not just about the codification of rights and responsibilities, but also about recognizing the familial, social, cultural, political, and economic ramifications of gender inequality on the incidence of violence and discrimination experienced by women who seek redress from, or are in conflict with, the law. This theory also understands, in context-neutral terms, women's rights to be about the reconfiguration of the institutions and policies created to protect the inalienable rights and agency of women