Women and the Rwandan Genocide: Agency, Culpability and Evasion

当我们考虑卢旺达种族灭绝时，我们想知道怎么会有这么多普通人对他们的邻居犯下如此可怕的暴力行为。我们会想到女性被谋杀或性侵犯，幸存者的余生都在处理善后事宜。这种性别上的二分法出现在大多数关于种族灭绝的史学中。我想超越目前的研究，质疑为什么女性肇事者没有为自己的罪行承担责任。一些女性是如何逃脱惩罚的？对今天的卢旺达来说，种族灭绝的肇事者继续生活在他们的社区里意味着什么？该项目将使用媒体报道、法庭记录和采访来解决这些问题。这项研究还将具有更广泛的意义，它将讲述关于妇女在历史上的暴力行为的机构和罪责的辩论，以及关于过渡时期司法的有效性和陷阱的不断发展的文献。

When we consider the Rwandan genocide, we wonder how so many ordinary men could have committed such horrendous acts of violence against their neighbours. We think of women being murdered or sexually assaulted, and survivors spending the rest of their lives dealing with the aftermath. This gendered dichotomy is present in most of the historiography on the genocide. I want to go beyond the current research, and question why female perpetrators were not held accountable for their crimes. How were some women able to escape punishment? What does it mean for present-day Rwanda that perpetrators of the genocide continue to live within their communities? This project will use media reports, court transcripts and interviews to address these questions. This research would also have wider significance, speaking to debates over the agency and culpability of women in violence throughout history and to a developing literature on the effectiveness and pitfalls of transitional justice.