Gendering Rwanda Genocide and Post-Genocide

In his chapter, Adam Jones addresses genocide as multi-dimensional crime. He describes two broad typologies of genocide – ‘gendercide’, and ‘root and branch genocide’, which are ‘distinguished by the different operations of the gender variable in each’. As Jones outlines, the Rwanda genocide evidenced broad range of gendered aspects – from leveraging ethnicized gender tropes, through the sometime employment of gender-based genocidal approaches (execution, rape), to the economic and social consequences (planned or not) that are the legacy of gendered genocide. ‘The “gendering” of a given genocide’, he concludes, ‘therefore encompasses the cultural configurations that influence the mobilisation of perpetrators and the targeting of victims, as well as the sexed bodies that are damaged or destroyed in genocidal campaigns’.