BACKGROUND As a consequence of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, prevalences of mental disorders are elevated in Rwanda. More knowledge about determinants of mental stress can help to improve mental health services and treatment in the east-central African country. The present study aimed to investigate actual rates of mental stress (posttraumatic stress disorder, syndromal depression and syndromal an...

Following the 1994 Rwandan genocide, many defendants on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) testified on their own behalf. This article analyzes transcripts of their testimonies to learn (1) how defendants discuss the grave crimes of which they are accused, and (2) how their explanatory styles allow them to rationalize their actions and negotiate their tarnished ident...

During the 1994 conoict in Rwanda, rape occurred on a massive scale in the genocide that claimed the lives of between 500,000 and one million Rwandans. Réne Degni-Segui, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Rwanda, as appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Commission, estimated that between 250,000 and 500,000 rapes occurred in total. He elaborated that “[r]ape was s...

This article traces the rise of humanitarian interventionist ideas in the US from 1991 to 2003. Until 1997, humanitarian intervention was a relatively limited affair, conceived ad hoc more than systematically, prioritized below multilateralism, aiming to relieve suffering without transforming foreign polities. For this reason, US leaders and citizens scarcely contemplated armed intervention in ...

Sexual violence greatly varies across and between different wars, and this paper examines the extent to which this also holds true for genocide. Specifically, it attempts to address why there was relatively little sexual violence against the Jews in Nazi Germany and during the Holocaust. By drawing upon theories concerning the escalation of war into genocide and ethnic cleansing, and the variou...

A new tool is presented for facilitating greater objectivity in the chaotic field of genocide studies: first, assembling the available factual data about any event of mass murder systematically; second, contextualizing each of our judgments of the nature of the crime as a choice being made by a given scholar or institution (e.g., a specific court), but not as “God’s word.” The Worksheet for Des...

The question of how countries deal with the material and symbolic legacies of totalitarian rule, genocide, and civil war in their immediate pasts is spawning a growing body of research on recent national and regional cases — post-apartheid South Africa, postcommunist central and eastern Europe, and post-dictatorial South America — as well as on the ‘classic’ instances of postwar Japan and Germa...

In all large-scale genocides, rescuing occurs alongside killing. Some members of the aggressors’ ethnic group even risk their own lives to save members of the targeted group. Killing and rescuing occur closely together, and even the same persons may engage in both behaviors—killing on one occasion and rescuing on another. This article examines such cases—where the same individuals kill and resc...