Ubunyarwanda and the Evolution of Transitional Justice in Post-Genocide Rwanda: “To Generalize is not Fresh”

Abstract

Conversations around transitional justice often focus on concepts of victimhood and perpetration. Such has been the case in Rwanda in the decades following the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. However, even as Rwandans continue to observe state-led transitional justice reforms which divide them into victims and perpetrators, they simultaneously draw on state discourses of unity to carefully critique and re-work the language and practices which produce such divisions. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, Berman illustrates how a new generation of Rwandan youth is transforming political genocide ideology by creatively engaging the discourse of ubunyarwanda (Rwandanness) to forge inclusive post-genocide politics.