Academic literature on the topic 'Transitional justice Rwanda'

The Rwandan genocide triggered a vast number of criminal and quasi-criminal prosecutions. Rwanda therefore constitutes an example of a robust and rapid implementation of criminal accountability for atrocity. Rwanda, moreover, departed from other countries – such as South Africa – by eschewing a truth and reconciliation process as part of a transitional justice process. This chapter unpacks three levels of judicialization that promoted criminal responsibility for atrocity in Rwanda: the ICTR, specialized chambers of national courts, and gacaca proceedings. The ICTR indicted roughly 90 individuals, the national courts convicted in the area of 10,000 defendants (with some proceedings remaining ongoing), while approximately one million individuals proceeded through gacaca. The ICTR and gacaca proceedings have been concluded for several years already. This article summarizes these proceedings, discusses the outcomes and assesses their impact. In addition, this article examines how these three layers of judicialization interfaced with each other.

In 1994, Rwanda suffered one of the worst genocides in history. It is estimated that up to 1,000,000 people were killed in the 100 days of mass slaughter. In 2019, 25 years after the atrocities, Rwanda and Rwandans are still involved in transitional processes aimed at rebuilding the country, handling the past crimes and, ultimately, achieving reconciliation. In the first part of the paper the significance of the reconciliation is elaborated. Reconciliation is often presumed to be one of the main goals for transitional justice and an essential element for rebuilding peace and security in post-conflict countries. It is also the process during which victims and perpetrators attain or restore a relationship and heal their trauma. In the second part of the paper, the importance of local tradition and cultures for transitional justice is discussed. The attention is paid to gacaca courts, reconciliation villages and umuganda, and to their roles in achieving reconciliation in Rwanda.

ABSTRACTIn this article, I argue that the praise of legal and political analysts who perceive Rwanda'sgacacacourts as a model of locally grounded and culturally relevant transitional justice is unfounded without consideration of the broader power dynamics in which justice is delivered. Drawing on life history interviews with 37 Rwandan peasants resident in the south-west of the country, I argue that the claims of the Rwandan government that itsgacacacourts are promoting peace and reconciliation must also assess the impact of local justice mechanisms on those subject to its demands, namely ordinary people. In the case of Rwanda'sgacacacourts, local-level analysis illuminates a darker and largely unexamined aspect of transitional justice – the playing out of local power dynamics and the social and political inequalities masked by the pursuit of justice and reconciliation. My study cautions against a wholesale endorsement of thegacacacourts as an effective and legitimate form of transitional justice. Instead, it is a mechanism of state power than works to reinforce the political power of the ruling RPF and to ply international audiences with the idea that Rwanda is ‘a nation rehabilitated’ from ‘the scourge of genocide’.

The article examines how reconciliation is perceived at the individual level. This particular case study analyses what types of reconciliation practices exist in Musha village and whether or not the inhabitants see it as effective ones. In an attempt to investigate the reconciliation definition from the local people’s perspective and to observe their community-level experiences, ethnographic fieldwork in Rwanda has been conducted. This study reveals that locals understand reconciliation in the same way as the government authorities proclaim. Data gathered during this field trip indicate the significance of reconciliation as controlled by the national government. As a consequence, the people are not able, and at the same time, are not really concerned about rethinking reconciliation in other possible ways. Furthermore, this concludes the fact that the central authorities have become able to peacefully construct the narrative of forced reconciliation, while social exclusion in the country still robustly prevails.

Abstract:In institutionalizing gacaca, the Rwandan government has launched one of the most ambitious transitional justice projects the world has ever seen. But gacaca is controversial, and its contribution to postconflict reconciliation is unclear. Through public opinion surveys, trial observations, and interviews, this study provides a window into how gacaca has shaped interethnic relations in one Rwandan community. Although gacaca has brought more people to trial than the ICTR, transnational trials, and the ordinary Rwandan courts combined, gacaca exposes—and perhaps deepens—conflict, resentment, and ethnic disunity. Lies, half-truths, and silence have limited gacaca's contribution to truth, justice, and reconciliation.

AbstractThis article discusses the Rwandan Law 18/2008 on genocide ideology in the light of international human rights standards. In order to put the genocide ideology law into context, it sketches a brief overview of the post-genocide scenario. Because of the influence that provisions restricting freedom of expression aimed at fighting negationism might exert on testimonies during genocide trials, it pays particular attention to the transitional justice strategies adopted in Rwanda. Finally, it assesses the law on the genocide ideology against the background provided by the measures implemented in some European countries to deal with the phenomenon of negationism.

AbstractThis article investigates the violent aftermaths of Rwanda's 1994 Genocide and Liberation war by analyzing its Gacaca Courts, which framed themselves as a “traditional” mechanism of transitional justice. These specialized genocide tribunals, in operation between 2002 and 2012, authorized laypersons to sentence their neighbors to up to life in prison. They passed judgment on almost two million cases, at an official conviction rate of 86 percent. I argue that through their practice, “genocide” came to be constituted as a crime whose contours extended far beyond the boundaries of any international legal definition. It included a wide range of acts, utterances, and inner states, as potentially infinite manifestations of a boundless criminal interiority named “genocide ideology,” the necessary ‘driving force’ behind acts of genocide. Within Gacaca, genocide ideology was constituted as the continuing destructive potential of Hutu to menace or even disrespect innocent Tutsi, who were constituted as metonymic of the “new” state. The paranoid hermeneutics of those trials led them to project such an interiority within ‘others,’ imagined as constantly on the verge of erupting into insurrectionary violence, threatening the state's very foundation. The figure of the “Hutu” was transformed into a negative political category operating as a spectral threat haunting the New Rwanda. Gacaca led to a realization throughout the vast population that it marked as “Hutu” that the crime of genocide could potentially inhabit any and perhaps even all of them, thereby producing a generalized fear and pervasive silence.

ABSTRACTThe modernised tradition of the Gacaca courts has become the key mechanism for dealing with the past in Rwanda. The process needs to establish accountability for all acts of genocide and to foster reconciliation. Nevertheless, popular narratives and survey results reveal that a widespread ‘crisis’ accompanied the initial stages of the Gacaca process. We argue that a problematic quest for the truth is short-circuiting reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda. Truth-telling is the cornerstone of the transitional justice framework due to the design of the Gacaca tribunals. On the basis of twenty months of fieldwork in Rwandan villages, we locate tensions at different levels. The Gacaca system is a distinctively modern phenomenon despite its traditional appearance. The state-sanctioned speaking of the truth according to a prosecutorial logic runs counter to the core values of the customary institution and established societal practices. This friction is further enhanced by the underlying Judeo-Christian model of truth-telling introduced with the Gacaca system in a socio-political environment mediated by a culture of deceit and dominated by a war victor. In such a socio-cultural context, communication serves the interests of the power holders (national and local), and not necessarily the interest of truth-telling and justice.

This thesis examines the practices of international, national, and localised criminal courts in post-genocide Rwanda. It argues that, although the courts are compatible in law, an interpretive cultural analysis shows that they have often competed with one another. The research draws on interviews conducted with judges, lawyers, and a group of witnesses and suspects from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the national Rwandan courts, and the gacaca community courts. The courts’ judges and lawyers have interpreted Rwanda’s transitional justice processes very differently. The ICTR has been principally concerned with developing international criminal case law. The national courts purport to have focused on domestic legal reform, while personnel inside gacaca view these local courts as having provided an account of the events and causes of the genocide. This thesis argues that the different interpretations offered within Rwanda’s post-genocide courts illuminate divergent legal cultures inside the institutions, leading to failures in effective cooperation and evidence gathering. The courts have pursued diverse means to try to establish their legitimate authority. However, among a group of Rwandan citizens, the practices of one court were routinely used as the basis to criticise the actions of the others, raising challenges for the legitimacy of transitional justice in Rwanda. The potential for similar competition between domestic and international justice processes is apparent in the current practice of the International Criminal Court (ICC). However, this competition can be mitigated through more effective communication between different justice systems which respond to the needs of the affected populations, fostering a legal culture of complementarity.

Over the last two decades, following a long history of mass violence in Burundi and Rwanda, transitional justice (TJ) efforts were deployed in the two countries. Observing, particularly after the 1994 Rwandan genocide, that cycles of violence had devastated these two nations, a number of international organisations encouraged and financed socio-political and judicial responses with the aim of building sustainable peace in the region. The gacaca courts have been at the centre of the TJ process in Rwanda, and the negotiations over a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) remain the key focus in the Burundian TJ process. The local contexts have not been the sole influence on the design and implementation of the initiatives: the consolidation of TJ as a field of practice on a global level has also been of paramount importance. Under scrutiny in this thesis is the ‘battlefield' in which TJ practitioners argue about the past, a battlefield created by the frictions between the universal TJ discourse, the resulting technocratic aid practices and the often silenced, but highly politicised negotiations and implementation on the ground. My research establishes that while TJ practitioners disseminate a positive discourse designed to help societies emerging from violence, their practices are actually embedded in trenchant hierarchical structures and tensions from the violent past. I argue that their efforts, delivered through performative and technocratic work, too often ignore the hierarchical social and political structures in which they operate. Furthermore, the assumption that their technical work can fix dysfunctional states results not only in a silencing of the social and political dynamics in play, but also demonstrates a form of imperialism and colonialism, leading to the reproduction of multi-layered unequal structures, paternalistic behaviours towards beneficiaries, privileging of implementers over supposed beneficiaries, and the repetition of counter-effective practices. These efforts and silences have the potential to exacerbate the issues rather than to alleviate them. This analysis engages with two academic debates: first, the questionable capacity of ‘professionalised' and ‘universalised' TJ mechanisms to deal with past crimes; and, second, whether aid practices can effectively contribute to ‘sustainable peace', ‘development' and ‘democracy' in post-conflict contexts. My analysis is driven by the following research questions: Why is the role of practitioners and their everyday crucial to understanding TJ processes? How does the professionalisation of aid and TJ shape the practices of TJ in Burundi and Rwanda? How and why do frictions between academic theory, policy discourse and everyday practice of TJ impact on outcomes on the ground? In conclusion, my research illustrates the way in which TJ professionalised practices constitute a battlefield, with “ongoing struggles in the battle for the nature and direction of the transition” being a metaconflict ‒ a “conflict about what the conflict is about”, in which TJ victors tilt all transitional mechanisms “towards an end point for transition that approximates” to their “battlefield goals” (Bell 2009). Within these everyday battles, TJ practitioners are playing a crucial role in the implementation of TJ. Through the dissemination of their expertise, they act as ‘brokers' and ‘translators' of the TJ toolkit approach. They, particularly the most powerful practitioners, produce interpretations and offer “scripts into which others can be recruited for a period” (Lewis and Mosse 2006, 13). As Norman Long (1992, 275) points out in looking at development actors, their professional practices constitute a “knowledge battlefield” in relation to “the issues of conflicting loyalties, of negotiation over ‘truth' claims, of battles over images and contesting interests.” Describing how TJ practitioners work around policy and practice in Rwanda and Burundi, I demonstrate how the gacaca law and the Burundian TRC law, and their policy frameworks and implementing activities, have all been created around the same global discourse. But the actual negotiations of specific prescriptions and implementation have led to very different practices being moulded around different dynamics of power by actors and organisations involved in these processes. Whereas these dynamics are but natural, silencing them behind technocratic knowledge, however, has severe implications. In contrast to most of the TJ literature making reference to civil society and international donors, my research underlines the role and consequences of their everyday politics, through which the directions of the TJ agenda are decided and implemented. Building on social anthropology and development studies, I underline the entanglement formed between TJ and aid, and bring attention to unattended effects of TJ practices, including how power has a play in policy implementation and how unequal relations are reproduced. Doing so, I expand the critical TJ scholarship and the calls for ‘localising transitional justice', as well as developing the understanding of the limitations of TJ processes in Rwanda and Burundi.

Le génocide des Tutsi du Rwanda est singulier au regard des génocides du XXème siècle. Il l’est par le nombre de ses victimes, par sa rapidité, ses modes d’exécution et surtout par le nombre de ses auteurs. Ce sont plus d’un million de Rwandais (Hutu) qui ont pris part directement aux massacres. La sanction de ces crimes de masse dans une société en quête de reconstruction soulevait d’innombrables difficultés notamment dans l’appréhension d’une criminalité collective en termes de responsabilité individuelle. L’ampleur et le paroxysme atteint dans ce drame a nécessité un traitement spécifique. Trois instances de justice ont été activées de manière concomitante : les juridictions classiques rwandaises (relayées par des juridictions coutumières dites Gacaca), le Tribunal international créé par le Conseil de Sécurité des Nations Unies et enfin les juridictions nationales étrangères en application du principe de la compétence universelle. L’intérêt scientifique de notre démarche réside justement dans l’étude de ce traitement juridictionnel multiniveaux. Deux questions se posent : quelle est la pertinence de ce modèle de justice 20 ans après le drame rwandais ?Quel bilan provisoire peut-on tirer de tous les jugements rendus par ces différentes juridictions ?
The Tutsi genocide in Rwanda is singular in consider genocides of the XXth century. It is true by the number of victims, the speed and methods of implementation and, above all the number of the authors. These are more than one million Rwandan (Hutu) who participated directly in the massacres. Punishment of the massive crimes in a society in search of reconstruction, run into problems of group crime and individual responsibility. The scale and the speak of human tragedy needed specific treatment. Rwandan ordinary courts (replace by customary Courts called Gacaca), International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (created by United Nations Security Council) and lastly, national foreign jurisdictions are also begin simultaneously in application of the principle of universal jurisdiction. The interest of our scientific approach lies in the study of multilevel constitutionalism. This raises two obvious questions: What is the relevance of this justice model twenty years after the Rwandan tragedy? What has been the interim review of all the judgments handed down by the different jurisdictions?

Includes abstract.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 103-114).
Rwanda is seeking to address genocide and it consequences through one of the most comprehensive, and arguably innovative, set of transitional justice measures yet developed. This study provides a critical analysis of this 'Rwandan approach' to transitional justice with a focus on the key claim by Rwandan authorities, but often made in other contexts too, that transitional justice furthers postconflict reconciliation. The central objective is to analyse critically the implications and consequences of the Rwandan transitional justice programmes for reconciliation in a post-genocide society.

International crimes prosecutions have become more common since 1993, both domestically and at international courts and tribunals. The advance of this norm confronts realist state interests causing debate about the norm's status. Kathryn Sikkink views a norm as cascading when enough states adopt it to cause international influence, without domestic pressure, to procure levels of conformity. This thesis considers the degree of conformity by observing the level of case selection independence to determine whether this norm is cascading. By identifying the jurisdictional and functional elements of case selection independence, I develop a framework for observing the interface between politics and law. While Sikkink errs towards the quantity of international crimes prosecutions, I focus on the quality. This project examines case selection independence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and the International Criminal Court, in Uganda. The project considers whether case selection has become more or less independent at these courts - whether the norm of international crimes prosecution has cascaded or contracted. In observing the various case selection independence elements I attempt to explain the observed cascades and contractions at each court. I then consider whether a cascade or contraction occurred during the period of the courts' collective design and function. The research qualitatively observes a cumulative justice contraction. The research observes a combination of factors affecting case selection independence, including shifts in power dynamics between and among weak and powerful states, increasing state sophistication in international court engagement, a shift in jurisdiction triggering actors and forums, and realist state co-option of norm entrepreneurs via endearing explanation of independence-diminishing policies.

For the past two decades, statebuilding has been the object of a growing attention from practitioners and scholars alike. ‘International statebuilding’, as its dominant approach or model guiding the practices of national and international actors, has sparked numerous discussions and debates, mostly around its effectiveness (i.e. if it works) and deficiencies (i.e. why it often fails). Surprisingly, little efforts have been made to investigate what international statebuilding, in the multiple ways it is mobilized by various actors, actually produces on the political dynamics of the ‘fragile’ contexts it is supposed to support and reinforce. Using an instrumentation perspective, this dissertation addresses this gap by exploring the relationship between the micro-dynamics of the uses of international statebuilding instruments and the fragility of contexts. This exploration is articulated around five essays and as many angles to this relationship. Using the case of Hamas, Essay I explores the European Union’s (EU) terrorist labelling policy by questioning the nature and modalities of the enlisting process, its use as foreign policy tool and its consequences on its other agendas, especially its international statebuilding efforts in Palestine. Essay II examines a Belgian good governance incentive mechanism and sheds the light on the tension between the claimed apolitical and objective nature of the instrument and the politicization potential embedded in its design and modalities, naturally leading to a convoluted implementation. Essay III analyses the localization dynamics of transitional justice in Burundi and unveils the nature, diversity and rationale behind transitional justice subversion techniques mobilized by national and international actors, which have produced a triple form of injustice. Essay IV widens this scope in Burundi, developing the argument that the authoritarian trend observed in the 2010-2015 period did not only occur against international statebuilding but also through self-reinforcing subversion tactics of its appropriation. Finally, essay V deepens the reflection on appropriation by attempting to build a theory of regime consolidation through international statebuilding subversion tactics. Overall, the incremental theory building reflection of the essays converges towards the assembling of a comprehensive framework of the in-betweens of the normative diffusion of liberal democracy, the inner-workings of its operationalization through the resort to the international statebuilding instrument and the intermediary constraints or objectives of actors not only interfering with its genuine realization but also contributing to its antipode of regime consolidation, conflict dynamics and authoritarianism.
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This study deals with the problem of transitional justice in post-genocide Rwanda in the light of South African experience. Transitional justice, a kind of justice pertinent to societies in transition from dictatorship to democracy where the new democratic regime faces the challenge of how to redress the abuses of the past, varies according to each case. While South African transitional justice has taken a form of mixed memory and punishment with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the case of Rwanda still presents a number of difficulties. First and foremost, unlike South Africa, Rwanda is a case of genocide and so far there is no agreement about how to think of and understand this genocide. Of the three different sources considered in this study, Adedeji and the Human Rights Watch Report argue that genocide was planned in advance, while Mamdani contends that it was a result of the failure of governmental forces to win the war and the advancement of the rebels, and nothing as such was planned before. . Besides the genocide, the continuation of human rights violations and the lack of will to change, the lack of democracy, the continuation of international support despite the lack of transparency in governance, along with other elements, hold Rwanda in the pretransition stage. In this study, I examine the close links between transitional justice and Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I raise the question of what it would mean for Rwanda to have a successful Truth and Reconciliation Commission; given the history of genocide, and I discuss the failure of the Commission in Arusha. For transitional justice to take place in Rwanda, every form of armed struggle must stop so as to allow Rwandans (all conflicting parties involved) to take the genocide seriously and face its entire truth with courage and honesty. The truth of genocide would clarify the misconception of Rwandan history and would allow Rwandans to change their mentality and belief that ethnic majority means necessarily political majority and to embrace a more transethnic political identity. Then the establishment of a judiciary system capable of dealing with the abuses of the past would be possible. This new democratic regime, which would be democratically organized when all these requirements are met, would determine what kind of transitional justice would be pertinent to the Rwandan case.
Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

Dissertação de mestrado em Relações Internacionais (Estudos da Paz e da Segurança), apresentada à Faculdade de Economia da Universidade de Coimbra
No seguimento de experiências de violência extrema, no contexto de regimes políticos autoritários e violações sistemáticas de direitos humanos, algumas sociedades são confrontadas com questões relativas ao legado desse passado de violência, cujo impacto se faz sentir diretamente ao nível dos seus processos de (re)conciliação e reconstrução pós-conflito: o que será lembrado e esquecido, na construção da memória e verdade(s) sobre o conflito, e na transmissão do conhecimento às gerações futuras? O que deve acontecer aos indivíduos que planearam e aos que exerceram a violência? Que tipo de crimes serão julgados? Que tipo de processos judiciais e mecanismos de reparação serão estabelecidos e com que propósitos? Como é que uma sociedade pode (re)estabelecer os seus laços sociais intra-comunitários e até que ponto é que indivíduos que se percecionam mutuamente como inimigos alguma vez se poderão reconciliar? Estas são questões relacionadas com o fenómeno de justiça de transição, que se tem vindo a estabelecer enquanto norma global para as sociedades lidarem com o passado. A justiça de transição não só é uma área pouco teorizada como a sua teoria e prática dependem, em larga medida, de pressupostos adquiridos e partilhados com o modelo liberal internacional de construção da paz (peacebuilding). Esta dissertação procura problematizar mais especificamente um destes pressupostos, a dicotomia “vítimaperpetrador” e os processos de categorização inerentes ao modelo dominante de justiça de transição, em geral, tal como este é pensado e implementado ao nível internacional e nacional. Com base no estudo de caso do Ruanda, o nosso objetivo é demonstrar as insuficiências e limitações desta visão dicotómica para interpretar dinâmicas profundas de conflito considerando, ao invés, a diversidade de experiências de violência e vitimização que esta dicotomia exclui e refletindo sobre o seu impacto nas perspectivas de (re)conciliação pós-conflito, em particular da sociedade Ruandesa. De forma a atingir o objetivo a que nos propomos, a análise desta dissertação será orientada pela seguinte pergunta de partida: de que forma, no contexto de sociedades pós-conflito, como o Ruanda, pode uma narrativa de vitimização dominante ser desafiada por excluir uma diversidade de experiências de vitimização e violência, e que repercussões pode esta contestação originar para as perspectivas de (re)conciliação nesta sociedade? A nossa análise estará alicerçada em três hipóteses: (i) a dicotomia “vítima-perpetrator” é um elemento fundamental das iniciativas de transição pós-conflito apoiados pela ONU e implementados no contexto de intervenções internacionais; (ii) o Ruanda no pósgenocídio é caracterizado por uma narrativa nacional dominante de vitimização, baseada numa dicotomia “vítima-perpetrator” que é insuficiente para compreender a diversidade de experiências de violência e vitimização vivida por diferentes grupos sociais, excluindoas e deslegitimando-as; e (iii) os processos de justiça de transição orientados segundo esta dicotomia provocam novas formas de re-vitimização, por um lado, invisibilizando e deslegitimando certas experiências de violência e vitimização e, por outro lado, tomando estas categorias socio-políticas como absolutas, limitando assim a agência política dos indivíduos e a sua (re)integração social, colocando em causa o processo de (re)conciliação em sociedades divididas em geral, e na Ruandesa em particular. A validação destas hipóteses será baseada numa abordagem qualitativa à investigação, com base na interpretação qualitativa de informação textual recolhida através de fontes primárias e secundárias, e também na análise de discurso. O enquadramento teórico e conceptual com base no qual articularemos a nossa crítica combina contributos teóricos de duas disciplinas distintas mas complementares: a psicologia social, mais precisamente o trabalho de Carlos Beristain sobre a abordagem psicosocial, e a teoria das relações internacionais, especificamente a vertente mais crítica da abordagem construtivista. Da nossa análise decorreu a validação das nossas hipóteses iniciais, sendo que demonstrámos assim como a dicotomia “vítima-perpetrator” se tem tornado um elemento fundamental nas iniciativas de justiça de transição apoiadas pela ONU; discutimos e detalhámos as narrativas dominantes de justiça de transição e vitimização estabelecidas no Ruanda e as suas dinâmicas de exclusão e, por último, refletimos sobre como os processos de justiça de transição orientados por esta dicotomia promovem processos de revitimização e limitam as perspectivas de longo prazo de reconciliação em sociedades divididas, como exemplificado pelo Ruanda no pós-genocídio.
Following experiences of extreme violence, in the context of authoritarian political regimes and systematic human rights violations, societies are faced with questions regarding the legacy of that past of violence, which directly impact on the processes of (re)conciliation and post-conflict rebuilding: what will be remembered and forgotten, in the construction of memory and truth(s) relating to the conflict, and in the transmission of knowledge to younger generations? What should happen to those individuals who planned and those who enacted the violence? What will be the range of crimes under investigation? What kind of judicial processes and mechanisms for reparations will be established and with what purposes? How can a community (re)establish its social intra-community ties and to what extent and in which way can individuals who perceive each other as enemies ever reconcile? These questions fall within the scope of the phenomenon of transitional justice, which has been establishing itself as a global norm on how societies should deal with the past. Not only is the field of transitional justice under theorized but its dominant discourse on theory and praxis relies heavily on core assumptions taken for granted, many of which borrowed from liberal peacebuilding. Our dissertation seeks to problematize one of these, in particular, the “victim-perpetrator” dichotomy and the categorizing inherent to the dominant transitional justice model thought of and implemented at both international and national levels. Drawing on Rwanda as a case study, this dissertation will aim at demonstrating the insufficiencies and limitations of this dichotomised view in understanding deeper conflict dynamics, by looking into the diversity of violence and victimhood experiences that this dichotomy excludes and by reflecting upon its impact on the prospects of post-conflict (re)conciliation, specifically with regards to contemporary Rwandan society. In order to achieve our proposed aim, the analysis in this dissertation will be guided by the following research question: In what way, in the context of a post-conflict society such as Rwanda, can an established dominant victimhood narrative be challenged for excluding the diversity of victimization and violence experiences, and what repercussions may that dispute have on the prospects of (re)conciliation in this society? Our analysis will be grounded on three working hypotheses: (i) the dichotomy “victim-perpetrator” is a fundamental element in UN-sanctioned post-conflict transition Initiatives implemented in the context of international interventions; (ii) post -genocide Rwanda is characterized by a national dominant victimhood narrative, based on a “victim-perpetrator” dichotomy which is insufficient to understand the full diversity of violence and victimhood experiences from different social groups, therefore excluding and delegitimizing them; and (iii) transitional justice processes framed by this dichotomy promote new forms of victimization, on the one hand, by making invisible (and, therefore, illegitimate) certain experiences of violence and victimhood and, on the other hand, by essentializing these sociopolitical categories, which ends up limiting individuals’ political agency and social reintegration, hindering the reconciliation process in divided societies and, particularly, in Rwanda. The validation of these hypotheses will be based on a qualitative research approach, in this way relying on the qualitative interpretation of textual (qualitative) data collected both from the literature and from primary evidence as well as discourse analysis. The theoretical and conceptual framework supporting our critique combines contributions from two distinct but, complementary fields of study: social psychology, in particular the work of Carlos Beristain on the psychosocial approach, and international relations theory, drawing on the more critical strand of constructivism. Our discussion successfully validated our three initial hypotheses, therefore asserting how the “victim-perpetrator” dichotomy has become a fundamental element in UN-sanctioned transit ional justice initiatives; discussing and detailing the dominant transitional justice and victimhood narratives in Rwanda and their dynamics of exclusion and, finally, reflecting on how transitional justice processes framed by this dichotomy promote re-victimization and hinder long-term reconciliation in divided societies such as post-genocide Rwanda.