Drawing upon interviews conducted with 24 Kibuye-based survivors, as well as GOR officials from around Rwanda, the paper argues that survivors — while appreciative of any effort to memorialize the 1994 genocide — are negotiating psychological and spiritual distress as a result of their inability to definitively identify and rebury the remains of their missing loved ones with respect. This distress, in turn, makes it difficult for them to envision a stable future for their communitythat includes multi-ethnic collaboration. For this reason, the paper asserts that the international community, in collaboration with the GOR and survivor communities around Rwanda, should pursue new humanitarian exhumations. These exhumations should be mandated to positively identify the anonymous victims of the 1994 genocide and return any identified remains to their surviving families for reburial

Jessee, Erin

English

Enlighten

Promoting Reconciliation through Exhuming and Identifying Victims in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

This discussion paper provides an overview of three different phases of exhumations that have taken place in Rwanda following the 1994 genocide. Drawing upon qualitative data resulting from interviews with 24 survivors from Kibuye, as well as meetings with Rwandan government officials, aid workers and other relevant experts, the paper argues that previous efforts to exhume and rebury the anonymous victims of the genocide with respect have failed to adequately address the harms affecting survivors. In particular, survivors desire new exhumations that prioritize locating and providing definitive identifications of the victims, after which point the remains should be returned to survivors to rebury in the manner of their choosing. This discussion paper represents an important first step toward bringing exhumations into conversation with transitional justice discourses and advances an ongoing conversation regarding the state of social reconstruction in post-genocide Rwanda

University of Strathclyde Institutional Repository

Promoting reconciliation through exhuming and identifying victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide

This policy brief considers the past, present and future of forensic exhumations in Rwanda in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. Past exhumations conducted by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) at the request of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) were short-lived and controversial, from the perspective of both the international community and the communities that hosted the investigations. There is, however, widespread support among survivors for renewe