DEVELOPMENT REPORT - A Voice for the Victims: Alison Des Forges and the

Genocide in Rwanda

Broadcast date: 3-9-2009 / Written by Jerilyn Watson

From http://www.unsv.com/voanews/specialenglish/

This is the VOA Special English Development Report.

Alison Des Forges was an American-born human rights expert and historian. She was one of fifty
people killed in a plane crash on February twelfth near her hometown of Buffalo, New York. She was
sixty-six years old.

For almost twenty years, until her death, Alison Des Forges was senior adviser to the Africa division
of Human Rights Watch. In nineteen ninety-four, she did her best to warn the world that Rwanda
was sliding into genocide.

She was in the United States when the killing began. But she was
able to persuade diplomats to move some people out of the most
threatened area.

She spent the next four years documenting the events and the
world's failure the intervene. She wrote a book, published in
nineteen ninety-nine, called "Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide
in Rwanda."

Alison Des Forges Members of the ethnic Hutu majority killed Tutsis and moderate
Hutus. By some estimates, around eight hundred thousand people
were killed; Alison Des Forges felt more sure saying at least half a million. She talked with people on
both sides: those who organized the killings and those who were targets.

She had a doctorate in history which she received from Yale in nineteen seventy-two. She wrote her
dissertation paper on Rwanda. Almost thirty years later, she received a MacArthur Fellowship for her
work on the genocide that took place there.

It began in April of nineteen ninety -four after a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi,
both Hutus, was shot down. The killings ended three months later after Tutsi rebels fighting a civil
war defeated the Hutu government.

Alison Des Forges demanded justice for the genocide victims. She appeared repeatedly as an expert
witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. But she also called attention to thousands
of killings by the rebels in reaction to the genocide.

She became unpopular with the former rebels who now lead the government. Late last year, she was
banned from the country she loved after Human Rights Watch criticized Rwanda's legal system.

Most recently, she worked on a report about killings in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Alison Des Forges often worked with members of the International Crisis Group. The group which
works to prevent conflicts remembers her as someone who always spoke for the victims.

And that's the VOA Special English Development Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. I'm Steve Ember.