Global Policy Forum

By Rodrique Ngowi

Seven years after more than half a million people perished in the genocide that also shattered Rwanda's economy, the small central African nation is still trying to figure out how to deal with the aftermath and prevent a repeat of the horror.

Survivors of the 100-day government-orchestrated slaughter recently invited Jews, American Indians, Aborigines, Bosnians and Armenians to their capital city to learn from their experiences. The Rwandans discovered that learning how to prevent genocide may, at least in part, come from insights gained from studies in public mental health.

Genocide, the wholesale attempt to wipe out an entire people, is often preceded by such warning signs as delegitimization, dehumanization, scape-goating and devaluing of potential victims. Peering into the minds of potential perpetrators of genocide may help to prevent it, said Reva Adler, a public health specialist at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

Strengthening the rule of law and democracy are the most effective safeguards against genocide, the foreign participants said at a conference organized by the New York-based Group Project For Holocaust Survivors and Their Children and IBUKA, a coalition of Rwandan associations of genocide survivors. Conventional methods of preventing genocide involve diplomacy, military intervention and mobilizing military allies. "But these are all very late-stage primary interventions," Adler said, "mobilized when things look bad."

Public health scientists "believe that it is possible to study the minds of people before they commit genocide and understand what they are thinking and change it," she said.

Adler proposes logging episodes of violence in societies at risk and analyzing what type of violence is being perpetrated, then interviewing people who commit violence to figure out what is on their minds when they do it. The next step is to "design intervention that would make it clear that although they think they are going to gain esteem, power and protection from violence, in fact something else is going to happen — they are going to get hurt, go to jail and will look stupid," she said.

The approach has worked in prisons and schools in the United States, Adler said, and mental health experts have found that people's attitudes and behavior do change. By combining what was learned from studying perpetrators of genocide during World War II and interviewing individuals in societies at risk of erupting into mass killings, scientists expect to find a health intervention that actually changes public attitudes, Adler said.

Rwanda is struggling to reconcile its society, reconstruct its shattered economy and bring to justice those involved in the genocide organized by the extremist government of the Hutu majority then in power.

The slaughter of minority Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus was triggered by the mysterious shooting down of the plane carrying Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana to Kigali on April 6, 1994. The genocide ended July 4 when Tutsi rebels led by now President Paul Kagame captured Kigali and formed a government made up of both Tutsis and Hutus. At least 120,000 Rwandans are imprisoned in Rwanda awaiting trial on charges connected with the genocide. Another 51 have been detained by a U.N. tribunal in neighboring Tanzania on charges of masterminding the mass killings.

A U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda when the genocide began was withdrawn by the Security Council despite pleas from its Canadian commander. Council members, including the United States, refused to call the mass killings a genocide until several months later.

Promoting tolerance and mobilizing international public opinion are good preventive measures against genocide, said Jerry Fowler of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. "(But) building a society based on the rule of law and respect for human rights for all without regard for group identity is the best and first measure toward preventing genocide," he said.

In an effort to foster good relations and prevent the country's Hutu majority from feeling that they are marginalized, the Tutsi elite that wields considerable power in the government has appointed Hutus to key posts.

The government has also set up the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission and is seeking to encourage all Rwandans to heal by speeding up trials of genocide suspects through a traditional community-based justice system known as "gacaca."

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