As with the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, and the judicial statements and rulings of the ICTY, the Rwandan genocide and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) advanced the understanding of the nature and use of rape and sexual violence in war. It was another example of a ‘new war’, where tactical rape and sexual violence received attention from public media and the international community to a degree not previously common. Civilians were again targeted as genocide erupted within national borders. Again, international intervention took place within a context of a new understanding of the limits on sovereignty.

The ICTR was another tribunal deliberately established as an ad hoc entity, limited to extending judgements on existing international humanitarian norms and laws; when it considered tactical rape and sexual violence, it had to do so as a contravention of established international humanitarian law. In many areas the ICTR failed to perform well and failed survivors and victims of tactical rape and sexual violence. However, it produced what is arguably the most significant case in international law regarding rape and genocide, despite many reservations and a lack of substantive progress since. The conflicts and genocide in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda occurred very close together in time and in a similar context of approaches to humanitarianism. The international community reacted in both arenas with ad hoc tribunals, but Rwanda and the ICTR exemplified a different form of conflict, a different culture, a different way of using tactical rape and sexual violence, this time in an African state.

Key events in the Rwandan conflict

The genocide in Rwanda was not spontaneous. It was one phase in a long-running series of historical and political events. From the 14th century, the population of Rwanda had been a mix of majority Hutu, minority Tutsi and a very small number of Twa. Belgian colonisers introduced ethnic identity cards in 1926, which became compulsory, and so ethnic identity was fixed from birth. In 1959 a violent incident set off a Hutu uprising in which hundreds of Tutsi were killed, and 130,000 displaced and forced to flee to the Belgian Congo, Burundi, Tanganyika and Uganda. Rwanda was declared a republic in 1962, with a Hutu president.