ABSTRACT
In considerable measure, genocide studies emerged both intellectually and institutionally from Holocaust studies. A factor in launching genocide to the forefront of international political debate and in establishing genocide studies as an academic field was the unfolding of conflicts in Europe and Africa following the end of the Cold War in 1989–91. Thousands of foreign troops were on the ground in the capital city, Kigali, and elsewhere when the genocide broke out, and hundreds more highly trained and well-armed soldiers followed. A number of the genocide's leaders have since been tried and convicted, and several International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda decisions, notably the landmark Akayesu judgement of 1998, have substantially advanced international legal thinking on genocide. The crises in the Balkans and Rwanda, and those that broke out within a few months of each other in Kosovo and East Timor in 1999, made “genocide” a buzzword in international political discourse for the first time since 1948.
