Genocide in rwanda

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Anthropology

Document 1

The conventional explanation of the Rwanda genocide requires further explanations since it lacks subjective explanations as well as meanings provided by the people engaged in genocidal execution. The structural violence is a situation whereby the poor are denied dignified and decent life since their elementary mental and physical aptitudes are constrained by exclusion, hunger, disparity, and poverty. Structural violence may take four forms including direct or classical violence, repression, poverty, and alienation. The second category comprises a denial of integrity and dignity, emotional and mental harm and destruction of a person’s spiritual and psychological sense. Violence can also be described as insults to elementary human rights, further particularly to life thus depressing needs satisfaction level below the potentially possible. The lack of access to health, education, basic needs, and information was also the root of structural violence.

Sign up to view the full document!

Moreover, condescending state and authoritarian led to structural violence. The ignorance, despair, frustration, cynicism, and anger increased the potential acute for the violence. The Rwanda society was categorized by the rising segregation along ethnic regional and social lines as well as structural degradation. Rwanda was the most equal amid middle and low-income nations in the world according to World Bank Data, 1994. In the 1980s, the wealthy farmers bought the land from poorest although it was prohibited to own more than three hectares. This made farmers unable to circumvent law through selling and buying in black markets. This contributed to the land inequality where 43% of the farm families be deficient in the least land for existence thus lived in a condition of undernutrition.

Sign up to view the full document!

Therefore, it made approximately half of the Rwandan families live in acute poverty. The land was bought by wealthy people with money earned as aid agency wages. This policy also led to the marginalization of the mainstream of Rwandans since opportunities for health care, education and commerce were only in urban areas. Semi-educated youths were prohibited from leaving rural area forcing them to stay without hope in their miserable plots. Inequality increased greatly as a result of the economic crisis to the majority while the minority had new opportunities. The Rwandan genocide was as a result of a desire for elites to stay in power. The explanation for the genocide fails to justify since it is the profound social root upon which processes of hate propaganda and pressure for democratization rests.

Sign up to view the full document!

From $10 to earn access

Only on Studyloop

Original template

Downloadable