ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the complex ways in which ethnic violence and its legacy impact upon intimate relationships. It describes the social history of the Rwanda genocide and war from the perspectives of people in ethnically mixed families, and challenges presented to them in post-genocide Rwanda. The chapter discusses the public narrative of ethnic identity that renders invisible the ‘mixed’ dimension of the identity of individuals and family units. It explores the genocide and war from the perspective of people of mixed ethnic heritage, and elaborated on the intimate burden that they carried and the challenges that they face in post-genocide Rwanda, where they are caught in-between the national politics of ethnicity. The predicament of inter-ethnic families is similarly complicated the justice sector and the justice narrative in which rescapes and genocidaires confront each other. Because of their positionality, families of mixed ethnic backgrounds are caught in-between the justice sought by the rescape side and the punishment on the genocidaire side.
