Remaking Rwanda: State Building and Human Rights After Mass Violence(Critical Human Rights)

In the mid-1990s, civil war and genocide ravaged Rwanda. Since then, the country’s new leadership has undertaken a highly ambitious effort to refashion Rwanda’s politics, economy, and society, and the country’s accomplishments have garnered widespread praise. Remaking Rwanda is the first book to examine Rwanda’s remarkable post- genocide recovery in a comprehensive and critical fashion. By paying close attention to memory politics, human rights, justice, foreign relations, land use, education, and other key social institutions and practices, this volume raises serious concerns about the depth and durability of the country’s reconstruction. Edited by Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf, Remaking Rwanda brings together experienced scholars and human rights professionals to offer a nuanced, historically informed picture of post-genocide Rwanda—one that reveals powerful continuities with the nation’s past and raises profound questions about its future. “Remaking Rwanda is an ambitious book, a rich and varied compilation that demonstrates the full complement of approaches, methods, and concerns informing the study of post-genocide Rwanda.” —Lee Ann Fujii, author of Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda.

About the Author :
Scott Straus is associate professor of political science and international studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda. Lars Waldorf, senior lecturer in international human rights law at the Centre for Applied Human Rights at the University of York, is coeditor of Localizing Transitional Justice: Interventions and Priorities after Mass Violence and Disarming the Past: Transitional Justice and Ex-Combatants.

Review :
"Remaking Rwanda is an ambitious book, a rich and varied compilation that demonstrates the full complement of approaches, methods, and concerns informing the study of post-genocide Rwanda."--Lee Ann Fujii, author of Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda "An important contribution to scholarship both on Rwanda and on human rights. Many of the chapters, by leading and emergent Rwanda scholars, directly challenge received wisdom about governance in post-conflict-states, and raise serious questions about the impact of a range of transitional justice measures on longer-term peacebuilding."--Chandra Lekha Sriram, author of Peace as Governance: Power-Sharing, Armed Groups and Contemporary Peace Negotiations "There is still a steady flow of books about the Rwandan genocide of 1994. But Rwanda's present circumstances have been largely neglected. This edited volume is perhaps the first serious attempt to assess contemporary politics in Rwanda over the course of the last decade."?--Foreign Affairs "This is a mandatory book on current Rwanda--by far the best informed treatment written so far. It is a book that nobody who works in Rwanda--in development, diplomacy, information technology, health, education, etc.--should neglect: it will allow them to understand far more about this fascinating country than they could get from any other source. In short, it is a must-read for all."--Peter Uvin, H-Africa "This rich array of careful scholarship provides a valuable, multifaceted view of a country still struggling with the aftereffects of genocide and civil war. It offers an important corrective to the naively rosy picture of Rwanda that too often prevails in the American media."--Adam Hochschild, author of King Leopold's Ghost "This volume is compulsory reading for anyone interested in comprehending some of the contemporary debates about Rwanda and human rights."--Georgiana Holmes, The Round Table