ABSTRACT

Rwanda is a small landlocked state in the Great Lakes region of Africa, immediately to the north of Burundi. Rwanda has boundaries with Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After World War I, the country came under Belgium as a League of Nations mandate and a UN trust territory. In the massacre of Hutus in Burundi, there was violence in 1972 and 1973 which ended in a coup by the military under Juvenal Habyarimana. Political reform had been delayed from 1990 by an invasion in that year of the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front (FPR). On 8 November, the UN Security Council established an International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) for Rwanda, but the first trial did not take place until 3 January 1997. Violence continued throughout 1998 and 1999 and so far the FPR has failed in its attempts at national reconciliation. Guerrilla attacks continue and it appears that their only objective is to make Rwanda ungovernable.