On 2 April, 2024 Human Rights Watch made part of its Rwanda Archives public in digital form.
Human Rights Watch has been documenting and exposing human rights violations in Rwanda since the early 1990s. Its senior adviser in the Africa division, Alison Des Forges, one of the world’s foremost experts on Rwanda, dedicated her career to the struggle for human rights in the Great Lakes region of Africa, and to Rwanda in particular. In the period leading up to the 1994 genocide, she worked tirelessly to alert world powers to the impending crisis in Rwanda. Few would listen. By the time the genocidal forces had unleashed their sinister program and the world had awakened to the full horror that was unfolding in Rwanda, it was too late. The killings in Rwanda increased as a civil war in Burundi waged on. The violence in Burundi, also based on ethnic divisions between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, lasted from 1993 until 2005.
Des Forges’s efforts did not stop when the genocide ended. She continued to painstakingly gather information on the killings, rapes, and other horrific crimes, which she compiled into what has become one of the main reference books on the Rwandan genocide: “Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda”, a 500-page account of the genocide published jointly by Human Rights Watch and the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) in 1999.
Des Forges testified as an expert witness in 11 trials at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Arusha, Tanzania, as well as in domestic court proceedings involving Rwandan genocide suspects in several countries.
Des Forges campaigned vigorously for justice for the genocide until her tragic death in a plane crash in the US on February 12, 2009. She also documented human rights abuses by the new government of Rwanda after the genocide and advocated for accountability for all abuses, past and present.
Thirty years after the genocide, Human Rights Watch has begun the process of digitizing and making available some of Des Forges’s archives. The documents summarized below are some of those that remained in Human Rights Watch possession after Des Forges’s death and help shed light on efforts by Des Forges and others to warn about, and then attempt to stop, the genocide. These are just a selection of the many documents in the archives; others will not be published at this time for a variety of reasons. The private exchanges, letters, statements, and reports below do not purport to be a comprehensive account of the work of Human Rights Watch and others at the time, as it is likely documents are missing from the archive.
See also: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/awards/F42005AB-6691-4C7F-BA0D-1999D2279EA2
https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/04/02/human-rights-watch-rwanda-archives
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 