Advancing International Human Rights

Law Responsibilities of Development

NGOs: Respecting and Fulfilling the
Right to Reparative Justice for
Genocide Survivors in Rwanda 1st
Edition Noam Schimmel
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Advancing International
Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of
Development NGOs
Respecting and Fulfilling
the Right to Reparative
Justice for Genocide
Survivors in Rwanda
Noam Schimmel
Advancing International Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of Development NGOs
 Noam Schimmel

Advancing
International Human
Rights Law
Responsibilities of
Development NGOs
Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative
Justice for Genocide Survivors in Rwanda
Noam Schimmel
International and Area Studies
University of California, Berkeley
Berkeley, USA

ISBN 978-3-030-50269-0    ISBN 978-3-030-50270-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50270-6

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 In loving memory of Berthe Kayitesi; survivor of the Rwandan genocide
against the Tutsi, human rights advocate, educator and tireless champion of
survivor rights and welfare—an inspiration, friend, and extraordinary
woman of courage, generosity of spirit and resilience
We miss you so very much
And in loving memory of Daphrose Mukangarembe, whose resilience as a
survivor inspired and inspires so many
And in honor of those who risked their lives to rescue Tutsis during the
genocide. You are the guardians of Gihanga and of humanity, and to you
our thanks is infinite.
In memory of the one million individuals who lost their lives in the
Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and the tens of thousands of Hutus
murdered for rejecting genocide and defending freedom and equality for
their fellow Tutsi citizens
Baruhukire mu mahoro n’imigisha
And for the Survivors with Love and Deepest Respect
Turi Kumwe
 To the memory of an extraordinary defender of Tutsis during the genocide
against the Tutsi. A leader in Bisesero, Simeon Karamaga was one of the
leaders of the local Tutsi community who fought back despite daunting odds
against a military and militias equipped with weapons for mass murder
and a ferocious zeal to maim, torture, and murder every Tutsi, loot and
destroy their property, kill their livestock, and erase the memory of their
collective, communal existence and their distinctive culture as cattle-­herders.
For more than two months, Simeon fought the genocidal Hutu army, Hutu
militias, and Hutu civilian accomplices who massacred over 50,000 Tutsis
in that part of Rwanda in the most horrific and brutal ways. Because of
Simeon, hundreds of Tutsis in Bisesero survived the genocide. Because of
Simeon, despite their staggering losses, Tutsis found strength in their capacity
to organize themselves to resist and to strive to protect themselves.
Simeon passed away in May of 2020 as this book was going to press. His
dignity, courage, and self-determination are a great inspiration to survivors
of the genocide against the Tutsi. His defiance of the genocidaires and his
defense of the human rights of his people—of their very lives—was and remains
a clarion call for justice and freedom and for protecting the innocent from
those who prey upon them. Simeon lost his eight children and his wife during
the genocide as he fought for the right of Tutsis to be respected as equals in
Rwanda. His loss is an enormous one for the survivor community. May his
memory and the values he fought for strengthen survivors and contribute to
their continued resilience. The justice that Simeon fought for and his quest for
freedom are not yet won. Simeon’s spirit is unvanquished.
 Acknowledgments

Many individuals in Rwanda and other countries have generously shared

with me their life experiences, perspectives, community development
efforts, educational programs, and business development projects that
empower survivors and enhance their self-reliance and their resilience. I
am grateful to all who recognize the unique needs and distinctive vulner-
abilities of survivors and who honor their human rights and their dignity.
Those individuals and organizations who incorporate them and ensure
their full participation and integration in Rwanda on the basis of equity
and equality and with the aim of enabling and realizing their right to
reparative justice in its many, mutually reinforcing forms are often unsung
heroes. Their work is done humbly, quietly, and with minimal resources
and financial support. It sustains hopes, rebuilds lives, and enables dreams
to become realities.
Taylor Krauss has been an extraordinary friend whose love, altruism, and
generosity have been felt by me in myriad ways and whose kindness as a
friend is protective, gentle, and powerfully present. His depth of care for
survivors is exceptional, and he has devoted his life for over 15 years to
working in partnership with survivors to enable them to share their testimo-
nies of life before, during, and after the genocide through his organization,
Voices of Rwanda. His love for survivors is more than a commitment to
justice; it is an act of solidarity, compassion, and continuous presence and
accompaniment and profound personal humanism of sincerity and humility.
His work is often daunting and difficult. He continues to do it indefatigably
with warmth, tenacity, and great courage in the face of the indifference of

vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

so many to the rights and welfare of survivors and resistance to listen to

them, learn from them, and respect and fulfill their human rights.
Julia Viebach has done ground-breaking work at Oxford University
with Rwandan genocide survivors on the ways in which they commemo-
rate family and friends killed in the genocide. She makes her scholarship
accessible to the public, and in so doing she amplifies the voices of survi-
vors and increases public knowledge and understanding of their experi-
ences and the history of the genocide and its consequences. Her work is
exceptional in its moral integrity and psychological sensitivity and care for
survivors. Its insistence on placing survivors at the heart of research,
knowledge creation, and dissemination is a model of academic excellence
and socially consequential research. I have been very fortunate to learn
from her and with her and I am grateful for the ways in which she works
so respectfully and in mutuality with survivors and for her warmth, friend-
ship, and the conscience and compassion she shows survivors.
Jacqueline Murekatete has worked tirelessly to advance the rights of
genocide survivors through her speaking, advocacy, educational engage-
ment at schools and universities, and her Genocide Survivors Foundation.
Her work has been critical to increasing understanding of the legacy of the
Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and she embodies the extraordinary
resilience of survivors, their desire and capacity for self-reliance and collec-
tive self-determination, and their magnanimity and openness of heart and
spirit. I am always humbled, inspired, and energized by Jacqueline. She is
an ambassador for women survivors with her care, compassion, and grace.
I have had the tremendous good fortune of working with and learning
from survivors in Rwanda, the United Kingdom, and the United States
who inspire me each in their individual ways in how they pursue life with
ethical purpose, generosity of spirit, and bravery in the face of catastrophic
loss, suffering, and injustice. They are my heroes.
I thank all those individuals in Rwanda and in the United States and the
United Kingdom—survivors and their friends and advocates—who over
the course of many years have opened their hearts and their homes to me
with kindness and generosity, sharing their lives, memories, hopes, dreams,
hardships, and heartache with graciousness and magnanimity. Your voices
and visions, perspectives, and experiences have informed this work.
For all who advance the rights and welfare of survivors in Rwanda and
in the diaspora, and for all who stand with survivors even and especially
when that may be difficult and may put your welfare at risk in speaking up
and speaking out for them, thank you for your courage, your solidarity,
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix

and your insistence that justice, dignity, and repair are irrevocable and
essential rights which cannot be compromised, denied, and postponed.
No organization has done more—in partnership with genocide survi-
vors—for genocide survivors than SURF, Survivors Fund, and the agencies
run by and for survivors which it supports, particularly AVEGA, AERG,
and GAERG.1 David Russell and Sam Munderere at SURF and other
friends of SURF and all who fund SURF—especially Britain’s Department
for International Development—are a model for those who seek to sup-
port survivors in dignity, with justice, and in respect for and advancement
of their human rights. I have been privileged to support SURF since 2009
and I recommend that readers familiarize themselves with its extraordinary
efforts and achievements which merit scaling up to reach all survivors in
Rwanda. David and Sam’s contributions over many years to SURF have
impacted tens of thousands of survivors in transformative, healing, and
empowering ways. I cannot thank them enough for their outstanding lead-
ership, indefatigable courage and tenacity, and their compassion for survi-
vors. They are gentle, soft spoken, and humble advocates who are also
incredibly effective and unbowed. They have always been encouraging and
supportive and have shown great generosity for which I am most grateful.
There are specific places in Rwanda, in addition to people, that have
been instrumental in helping me to begin to understand the history of the
Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and its legacy for survivors. Murambi,
Bisesero, Nyamata, and Ntarama in the Bugesera, and Nyanza in Kigali
left indelible marks upon me. They are sights of memory and resistance to
the genocide, and in referring to them I wish to honor the individuals and
communities who were murdered there—alongside those of hundreds of
thousands of others across Rwanda—and as a reminder that each story of
life and death is specific to a particular place and community and that these
places reverberate with memory and with the memory of the survivors.
This book is written with the hope that all who are in the position to
advance the rights and welfare of survivors will finally do so without fur-
ther denial of the rights of survivors and delay: governments, national aid

1
AVEGA stands for Association des Veuves du Génocide (Association of Widows of the
1994 Rwandan Genocide);
AERG stands for Association des Etudiants Et Éleves Rescapés du Génocide (Genocide
Survivors Student Association);
GAERG stands for Groupe des Anciens Etudiants Rescapés du Génocide (Graduate
Student Genocide Survivors Student Association).
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

agencies, the United Nations and other multilateral agencies, religious

organizations, non-governmental organizations, and individuals.
This is your time, this is your test.
For each and every survivor knows that it is the greatest honor to learn
from you, to listen to you, and to act with you to honor the memory of
the individuals, families, and communities you have lost, and to do every-
thing possible to advance your well-being today and to realize your human
rights in partnership with you.
A portion of the initial research for this book was conducted while I was
a fellow and an associate fellow at the McGill Centre for Human Rights
and Legal Pluralism. I would like to thank Dr. Nandini Ramanujam for the
support provided by the Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism at
the McGill Faculty of Law and for her responsiveness, thoughtfulness, and
efforts to include me in the life of the Centre and her support of my aca-
demic research throughout my time at the Centre and beyond. As an
O’Brien Fellow in Residence in the summer and fall of 2014, and as a visit-
ing fellow in the winter and spring of 2015, I was received with generosity
and exceptional hospitality by the Centre. I am very grateful to the faculty
for the sincerity and warmth of their welcome, for the care and support
provided to fellows and their inclusion in the life of the faculty, and for the
gracious and collegial atmosphere so conducive to research, writing, and
exchange the Centre nurtures and sustains and which makes it an aca-
demic community of exceptional quality and integrity of character and
purpose. I am thankful to the Centre for enabling me to remain an associ-
ate fellow, an affiliation I am honored to hold.
Sharon Webb was particularly helpful throughout my time at McGill
and exemplifies the self-effacing, kind, and humane spirit which so defined
my time in Montreal and in Canada. Colleen Shepard was similarly caring
and supportive. I benefited greatly from learning from Professors Payam
Akhavan and Frederic Megret, both of the Centre.
Professor Akhavan provided me the opportunity to audit his course on
International Criminal Law and I was privileged to study with him and
learn from his generous willingness to discuss human rights and share his
life experiences, practical insights, and reflections on international human
rights law. His warmth, openness, humor, and deep personal moral and
practical commitment to human rights are a model of moral integrity and
clarity of purpose. Fred’s ever down-to-earth friendliness, helpfulness in
connecting me to individuals and opportunities, and welcoming spirit
made it easy to settle into Montreal and find myself at home in a new city.
His intellectual verve, ethical insight and rigor, and his genuine interest in
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

my research and efforts to welcome me made my time in Montreal and at

McGill a great pleasure.
Oxford University’s Masters in International Human Rights Law pro-
gram inspired much of the research and writing for this book which incor-
porates my Master’s dissertation. Thank you to its directors, Professors
Andrew Shacknove and Nazila Ghanea, for their outstanding and inspiring
teaching and leadership of a unique program which I am grateful to have
had the opportunity to experience. Their friendship and championing of
their students, humility, generosity in service, and sheer warmth, humanity,
and sincere care for their students both as students and as people were at
the heart of my Oxford experience and make it a great pleasure to return to
Oxford again and again. Thanks also to my cohort for their contributions
to learning and the sincerity and vigor of their commitment to human
rights, accompanied by humility, openness, humor, and inimitable joie de
vivre that made learning with them and from them an enormous pleasure
and a touchstone in my human rights education. I had the good fortune to
be taught by the following faculty members whose classes were central to
my human rights education and who model ethical and scholarly integrity,
dedication to their students, and passionate commitment to human rights
as values, laws, and practice and who each inspired and inspire me: Fareda
Banda of the School of Oriental and African Studies and Oxford, Patricia
Sellers of the International Criminal Court and Oxford, Pablo De Greiff of
New York University and Oxford, Andrew Shacknove of Oxford, and Wade
Mansell of the University of Kent and Oxford. Carolyn Patty Blum of the
Center for Justice and Accountability provided helpful feedback in the early
stages of the drafting of my preliminary research for this book.
The Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, Oxford Faculty of Law,
where I was a research visitor, and Kellogg College, Oxford, where I was
a visiting fellow, provided exceptionally warm, welcoming, and engaging
contexts for research on human rights. I am grateful to each of them for
meaningful and rewarding opportunities for learning in a collegial, com-
munal environment in a spirit of inclusion and egalitarianism. I am always
delighted to return to Kellogg College and the Bonavero Institute and feel
fortunate to have them as communities at Oxford that give me an intimate
home that allows me to partake in the vitality of the university.
Thank you to Taylor and Francis/Routledge for permission to reprint
part of an article of mine published in the Journal of Human Rights,
(Volume 11, 2012) ‘The Moral Case for Restorative Justice as a Corollary
of the Responsibility to Protect: A Rwandan Case Study of the Insufficiency
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

of Impact of Retributive Justice on the Rights and Well-Being of Genocide

Survivors.’ Thank you also to Elgar publishing for permission to reprint
my article in the Cambridge International Law Journal, (Volume 8, 2019)
‘International Human Rights Law Responsibilities of Non-Governmental
Organizations: Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative Justice in
Rwanda and Beyond.’
A portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to
SURF Survivor’s Fund to advance their efforts to secure the rights and
welfare of Rwandan genocide survivors and to other grassroots organiza-
tions working to advance the rights of Rwandan genocide survivors.
Readers are encouraged to visit SURF’s webpage to learn more about
ways of contributing to the realization of the rights and welfare of Rwandan
genocide survivors: https://survivors-fund.org.uk/
I am solely responsible for the contents of this book. None of the argu-
ments it advances necessarily reflect those of the individuals and organiza-
tions I have acknowledged. I take full and exclusive responsibility for the
book’s contents.
Finally, and as always, this book is dedicated with love and gratitude to
the teachers of Newton North High School and the Newton Public
Schools who taught me with great conscience, commitment, creativity,
and a vision of global civic responsibility that transcends boundaries and
borders, real and imagined. When I graduated from Newton North my
US History teacher, David Moore, had the prescience to tell me that I
would probably spend time in Africa and find myself committed to human
rights issues there. Somehow he knew that somewhere in his gut long
before I did. What he and my other teachers probably did not fully know
is just how profoundly their teaching impacted me. I will never be able to
say thank you sufficiently, but that will never stop me from saying thanks.
The extraordinary humanism, respect for diversity, freedom, and equality,
and passion for social justice and the transformative potential of education
of my Newton North and Newton Public Schools teachers is my inspira-
tion and lodestar. It binds my childhood and young adulthood to my
present and my future and it grounds me in hope and gratitude.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Defining Reparative Justice and Global Examples of Its

Implementation 15

3 Treaty Law for States, Soft Law Addressing Non-State

Actors, and the Human Rights Responsibilities of NGOs 37

4 How International Human Rights Law Potentially Applies

to Development NGOs in a Post-Mass Atrocity Context
Working in Partnership with/as Proxies of States 55

5 Rwanda Case Study 71

6 Conclusion107

Bibliography119

Index137

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book asks what are the potential responsibilities to respect, protect,
and fulfill1 international human rights law (IHRL) of a particular class of
non-state actors: non-governmental organizations (NGOs).2 The book
focuses on those NGOs3 pursuing development in a post-genocide
transitional justice context acting simultaneously in partnership with state
governments, as proxies and agents for these governments, and providing
essential public goods4 and social services as part of their development
remit. I define development as a process of expanding realization of social,
economic, and cultural rights addressing food security, economic

1
See UN Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, General Comment 12,
1999, on the respect/protect/fulfill trichotomy.
2
Menno T. Kamminga, “The Evolving Status of NGOs under International Law: A Threat
to the Inter-State System?” in Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford
University Press 2005) 96.
3
This book focuses on development NGOs rather than bilateral and multilateral aid agen-
cies such as USAID, DFID, agencies of the United Nations such as UNDP, UNICEF, and
UN Women, and the World Bank. However, despite this focus, the arguments it advances are
relevant to these agencies as well, although they may have different legal status as agencies of
national governments and of the United Nations, respectively. I focus on NGOs precisely
because they are not direct agencies of national governments and thus are traditionally con-
sidered to be outside the remit of international human rights law. References to NGOs in this
book refer to development NGOs, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
4
Public goods and public services/social services have similar meanings; I use the phrase
public goods which includes the provision of social services such as healthcare and education.

© The Author(s) 2020 1

N. Schimmel, Advancing International Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of Development NGOs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50270-6_1
2 N. SCHIMMEL

e­mpowerment/poverty reduction, healthcare, housing, education, and

other fundamental human needs while integrating these alongside the
expansion of freedoms and protections afforded by civil and political
rights. It uses post-genocide Rwanda as a case study to illustrate how
respect and fulfillment of the international human rights law pertaining to
reparative justice are hindered by failing to hold NGOs responsible for
IHRL. Consequently, this results in discrimination against, marginaliza-
tion, and the disadvantaging of survivors of the Rwandan genocide against
the Tutsi and violations of their human rights.
This book defines reparative justice in accordance with the UN Basic
Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation for
Victims of Gross Violations of International Human Rights Law and
Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law.5 These are cen-
tered upon five principles: restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satis-
faction, and guarantees of non-repetition. This book defines NGOs in
accordance with Menno T. Kamminga’s definition: “NGOs are most eas-
ily defined by explaining what they are not.”

1. private structures not controlled by states

2. they do not seek to overthrow governments by force
3. they do not aim to acquire state power, in contrast to political parties
4. they are not for profit
5. they are not disrespectful of law.6

I argue that many development NGOs in Rwanda, by not adequately

incorporating reparative justice into their development and transitional
justice remit, and not acknowledging and responding to the distinctive
rights and vulnerabilities of genocide survivors, are neglecting IHRL on
the right to reparative justice. They have the capacity to prioritize repara-
tive justice in their programming and in their negotiations with the
Rwandan government of how development aid will be disbursed in
Rwanda, who will be its recipients, and the prioritization of those facing
disadvantage so as not to further marginalize them.

The UN Basic Principles will be analyzed in Chap. 3.

5

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/RemedyAndReparation.aspx
All online documents were accessed in the fall of 2019 and winter of 2020.
6
Menno T. Kamminga, ‘The Evolving Status of NGOs Under International Law: A Threat
to the Interstate System?’
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

I argue, further, that current soft law demands that NGOs should never
enter into a contract for provision of development aid with a sovereign
that knowingly entails—whether by commission or omission—a violation
of international human rights law. This is a significant departure from
prevalent NGO policy which entails substantial compromise of human
rights law, despite rhetorical claims otherwise in guiding principles of
NGO self-accountability. These often collide with the real-world exigen-
cies in which development NGOs must sacrifice some degree of commit-
ment to political and civil rights within IHRL in order to advance social
and economic rights within IHRL, which are generally their focus area,
particularly for provision of public goods such as education, healthcare,
housing, and income generation programs. Such efforts may be done in
ways that undermine the civil and political rights of citizens generally and/
or the civil and political rights as well as the social and economic rights of
individuals and groups of a particular ethnic, social, geographic, or other
background that differentiates them from a favored population group (or
several), and discriminates against them. Although civil, political, eco-
nomic, and social rights are ultimately interconnected and mutually inter-
dependent—and cannot meaningfully be separated both conceptually and
practically into a rigid binary—repressive regimes often favor social and
economic rights and severely limit political and civil rights. Only a com-
prehensive soft law framework within the UN system that addresses the
issues of NGO IHRL responsibilities as they pertain to the full range of
political, civil, economic, and social rights can elucidate the extent of these
obligations in a way that can achieve some degree of uniformity, dissemi-
nation, normalization, and accountability.
Though states are ultimately held legally responsible for the acts of
NGOs this should not prejudice NGOs being held socially and morally
responsible in some capacity and some degree, simultaneously. Absent
such responsibility, this would enable NGO impunity for violations of
human rights, whether through acts of commission or omission. As Adam
McBeth states, “There is no reason that non-State actors should not have
concurrent obligations with states under international law.”7
From the moment that NGOs voluntarily choose to entangle them-
selves in the delicate and often highly fraught dance of negotiation with
states for the freedom to operate and to organize and provide develop-
ment programming which involves all manner of moral and pragmatic

7
Adam McBeth, International Actors and Human Rights (Routledge 2010) 244.
4 N. SCHIMMEL

compromises, I argue that IHRL should inform their activities as a matter

of social and moral responsibility, similarly to how the Ruggie Principles
are expected to inform corporate activities. There is potential for these soft
law moral and social standards to become legal obligations, if they eventu-
ally achieve widespread status and practice as customary international law.
Soft law is not legally binding (unlike treaty law), but creates an aspira-
tional legal framework that can impact policies and behaviors of both state
and non-state actors and encourage them to respect, protect, and fulfill
human rights law with greater commitment and integrity. Chris Jochnick,
of Oxfam America, writes that, “The narrow focus of human rights law on
state responsibility is not only out of step with current power relations, but
also tends to obscure them.”8 This book builds upon this argument, argu-
ing that NGOs have substantial power and influence that should be
wielded with consciousness of and respect for IHRL.
The arguments for the human rights responsibilities of NGO non-state
actors made in this book differ markedly from the arguments about who
is responsible for respecting and fulfilling international human rights law
historically, which have overwhelmingly focused on states. In this regard it
seeks to innovate and push the boundaries of international human rights
law because it believes that the current situation is untenable legally, mor-
ally, and practically.

Not much more than a decade ago the category of non-state actors remained
all but frozen out of the legal picture by international law doctrines and had
received only passing recognition even from scholars. While the case-law of
the regional human rights systems had begun to address some violations
committed by private actors, the resulting jurisprudence was neither system-
atic nor especially coherent.9

But, as Philip Alston argues, ignoring the human rights responsibilities of

non-state actors risks ignoring the realities of the evolving nature of how
and who impact human rights.

Today, however, at least a subset of non-state actors has suddenly become a

force to be reckoned with and one which demands to be factored into the
overall equation in a far more explicit and direct way than has been the case

8
Chris Jochnick, ‘Confronting the Impunity of Non-State Actors: New Fields for the
Promotion of Human Rights’ (1999) 21 Human Rights Quarterly, 56, 59.
9
Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford University Press 2005) 5.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

to date. As a result, the international human rights regime’s aspiration to

ensure the accountability of all major actors will be severely compromised in
the years ahead if it does not succeed in devising a considerably more effec-
tive framework than currently exists in order to take adequate account of the
roles played by some non-state actors. In practice, if not in theory, too many
of them currently escape the net cast by international human rights norms
and institutional arrangements.10

It is precisely this problem of escape from the net of international human

rights norms and institutional arrangements that this book seeks to address
and for which it proposes a correction.
Because, at present, there is little soft law on the IHRL responsibilities
of NGOs, NGOs currently enjoy the freedom to operate in a legal vacuum
where human rights law is not applied to them and there is no commonly
accepted framework for NGO human rights responsibility. Although gen-
erally considered to be benign, and perceived as working uniformly to
advance human welfare and human rights, the reality is far more compli-
cated and mixed, but IHRL has not caught up with this reality.
Human rights failures of NGOs found an extreme and catastrophic
expression in Rwanda in 1990–1994 in the years immediately leading up
to the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi. In his book ‘Aiding Violence,’
the development scholar, Peter Uvin, analyzes how a broad cross-section
of international NGOs submitted to the Hutu supremacist regime that
ruled Rwanda prior to the 1994 genocide.11 Uvin argues that develop-
ment NGOs operating in Rwanda during that period accepted that in
order to gain the assent of the government to undertake development
activities they would need to make a Faustian pact: pursue development
for the Hutu majority at the expense of the human rights of the Tutsi
minority. Uvin illustrates how development NGOs participated in and
supported overtly racist plans and social programs which emboldened the
regime, enabled its structural domination of the Tutsi minority and poli-
cies and practices of discrimination banned in IHRL, and contributed to
the policy, political, economic, and social climate that enabled the geno-
cide.12 He states that, “The international foreign policy community, as
well as the development aid system, totally neglected the Tutsi question

10
Ibid., 6
11
Peter Uvin. Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (Kumarian
Press 1998).
12
Ibid.
6 N. SCHIMMEL

and brought no pressure to bear on the government to allow the return of

the refugees (Tutsis who had fled massacres between the late 1950s and
early 1980s, author’s explanation) or to end discrimination within the
country.”13 Thus, to those who might posit that NGOs need less of a legal
framework to define the scope of their functioning than corporations, his-
tory offers a chastening rebuttal regarding the ease with which the good
intentions of NGOs and public professions of commitment to human
rights can be easily compromised with devastating results for human
rights, human welfare, and human lives.
Indeed, August Reinisch notes that the facile assumptions about NGO
non-state actors of the past which romanticized them and assumed that
they were—by definition—acting in accordance with international human
rights law and human rights responsibilities is no longer assumed, and
rightly so.

Under traditional human rights law, the roles were clearly distributed among
the main players. NGOs and international organizations were keeping an
eye on the human rights performance of states and increasingly also of
TNCs. International organizations and NGOs were the ‘good guys’ and it
was their role to advocate and promote human rights, to campaign for
human rights observance, and to supervise compliance and find viola-
tions. … These roles have been partially reversed today: international orga-
nizations are now increasingly questioned about their human rights
performance. … NGO accountability is another new topic: their activities
are subject to intensified scrutiny, and they are attacked for their lack of
democratic structures and transparency. In some instance they are even
accused of acting contrary to human rights.14

What is emerging is greater understanding that while states have an enor-

mous impact on human rights respect and fulfillment—and primary
responsibility for them—non-state actors also both impact upon human
rights in often dramatic ways and need to assume some responsibility for
this power and influence over human rights outcomes.
Twenty-six years after the conclusion of the Rwandan genocide against
the Tutsi the lack of effective and comprehensive reparative justice for

Ibid., 28. Uvin cites here the scholarship of Brusten and Bindariye, 1997.
13

August Reinisch, “The Changing International Legal Framework for Dealing with Non-
14

State Actors” in Alston, (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford University Press
2005) 62.
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

genocide survivors continues to thwart their human rights, dignity, well-­

being, and possibility for sustained rehabilitation, both as rights-bearing
individuals and as a distinctive community. They merit redress for the dis-
advantages and vulnerabilities that result from their having been targeted
in a genocide.15 The families of survivors were destroyed on a large scale
leaving survivors with few of the human and material resources that imme-
diate and extended families provide that enhance resilience and individual
capacity for rehabilitation. Consequently, many survivors of all ages suffer
from poverty, particularly those in which the primary family breadwinner,
usually the husband/father, was killed.16 Young adults cannot afford edu-
cation and vocational training because of their poverty and responsibilities
to take care of younger siblings and other survivor orphans.17 Many survi-
vors are bereft of housing and property as a result of wide-scale destruc-
tion of property and looting during the genocide and consequently live in
unsafe and inadequate shelter.18 Rape and other sexual violence against
women, including forced pregnancy, and the deliberate transmission of
AIDS were defining elements of the genocide and add enormously to the
physical and mental health burden of female genocide survivors.19 All sur-
vivors, male and female, face a heavy mental health burden because of the
brutal violence they witnessed and experienced during the genocide.20
Despite extensive development aid by a wide range of international NGOs

15
See the annual reports and working papers of the NGO SURF Survivor’s Fund for
details of the scale and scope of these injustices which will be discussed in detail in Chap. 6.
See also SURF’s Annual Reports 2009–2018:
https://survivors-fund.org.uk/about/our-reports/annual-reports/
Eric Stover and Harvey Weinstein, My Neighbor, My Enemy: Justice and Community in the
Aftermath of Mass Atrocity Cambridge University Press (2004).
J. Hatzfeld, The Antelope’s Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide (Farrar, Straus
and Giroux 2007).
Zachary Kaufman, ‘Lessons from Rwanda: Post Genocide Law and Policy’ Stanford Law
and Policy Review (2019).
16
Ibid.
17
Ibid.
18
Ibid.
19
For more on the legacy of sexual violence and its impact on Rwandan genocide survivors
and on trauma generally in genocide survivors see Kaitesi, Zraly, Zraly and Nrayizinyoye,
Schaal and Elbert, and Schaal and Dusingizemungu, as discussed in Chap. 6.
See also Rianne Letschert, Ed. Victimological Approaches to International Crimes: Africa.
(Intersentia 2011).
20
Ibid.
8 N. SCHIMMEL

in Rwanda since the end of the genocide, reparative justice has not fea-
tured substantially and sufficiently in their work.21
There is a growing literature exploring NGO failures of morality and of
practice. This includes critical assessments of well-intentioned develop-
ment aid projects that fail due to a variety of reasons including corruption,
lack of knowledge about and respect for local culture, history, and political
and social dynamics, abusive behaviors and relationships between NGOs
and their beneficiaries including and in particular sexual abuse of women
and children and especially female children, as well as critiques of weak and
mismanaged humanitarian aid interventions. These include the NGO
response to Haiti’s earthquake of 201122 as well as the humanitarian inter-
vention in Goma, Congo, in the immediate aftermath of the Rwandan
genocide against the Tutsi which perpetuated conflict and violence and
left the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus at increased risk of attack from
Hutu supremacists and ignored the rights of Rwanda’s remnant surviving
Tutsi minority within the country’s borders and which received little NGO
support.23 Sixteen years after that moral failure and humanitarian catastro-
phe in Goma, and the denial of essential support to genocide survivors in
Rwanda, genocide survivors in Rwanda still were experiencing discrimina-
tion as Tutsis and as survivors from international NGOs. As Mary Kayitesi
Blewitt, former director of SURF Survivor’s Fund, said in 2006—with
commentary that tragically is as relevant and accurate today as it was
then—“Sadly, little or no help is offered by international humanitarian
organisations to women survivors, and any such efforts are severely

21
Noam Schimmel, ‘International Human Rights Law responsibilities of Non-
Governmental Organizations: Respecting and Fulfilling the Right to Reparative Justice in
Rwanda and Beyond’ Cambridge International Law Journal (2019).
Noam Schimmel, ‘The Moral Case for Restorative Justice as a Corollary of the
Responsibility to Protect: A Rwandan Case Study of the Insufficiency of Impact of Retributive
Justice on the Rights and Well-Being of Genocide Survivors’ Journal of Human Rights (2012).
Noam Schimmel, ‘Failed Aid: How Development Agencies are Neglecting and
Marginalizing Rwandan Genocide Survivors’ Development in Practice (2010).
Anne-Marie de Brouwer, ‘Reparations to Victims of Violence: Possibilities at the
International Criminal Court and the Trust Fund for Victims and their Families’ Leiden
Journal of International Law (2007) 207, 211.
SURF Annual Reports (see note 15 in this chapter).
22
Jonathan M. Katz, The Big Truck that Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and
Left Behind a Disaster, (Palgrave Macmillan 2014). See also Mark Schuller, Killing with
Kindness: Haiti, International Aid and NGOs (Rutgers University Press 2012).
23
Linda Polman, The Crisis Caravan (Picador 2011).
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

limited.”24 Stephen Hopgood, Michael Barnett, Patrice McMahon, Lisa

Smirl, and David Kennedy have written extensively on the human rights
failures of NGOs in humanitarian aid contexts.25 These and other exam-
ples will be discussed in Chap. 5. Developing IHRL for NGOs would
begin to address this legacy of NGO human rights failures.
NGOs are increasingly involved in international affairs, particularly in
the areas of transitional justice and development aid. Their budgets, pro-
grams, and influence have grown in recent decades, and so has their capac-
ity to serve as partners with governments in the fulfillment of human
rights, particularly in the areas of social and economic rights through pov-
erty reduction and community development programs, healthcare provi-
sion, educational and vocational training, and provision of shelter.26 As
Philip Alston states,

Civil society organizations today often have multi-million dollar budgets,

employ very large staffs, and are engaged in a large number of countries. …
Many of them are highly operational and exercise great leverage in commu-
nities in which they oversee the expenditure of huge amounts of aid, provide
a wide range of basic services, or implement major projects.27

24
Schimmel, supra note 21 in this chapter.
25
Lisa Smirl, Spaces of Aid: How Cars, Compounds and Hotels Shape Humanitarianism
(Zed Books 2015).
Patrice McMahon, The NGO Game: Post-Conflict Peacebuilding in the Balkans and Beyond
(Cornell University Press 2017).
David Kennedy, The Dark Side of Virtue: Reassessing International Humanitarianism
(Princeton University Press 2011).
Stephen Hopgood, The Endtimes of Human Rights, (Cornell University Press 2015).
Michael Barnett, Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University
Press 2013).
See also these older works but still trenchant and relevant critiques of humanitarian aid by
Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty: the Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International
Aid Business (The Atlantic Monthly Press 1989), and Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The
Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity (The Free Press, 1997).
26
See, for example, the annual reports of NGOs such as CARE and Save the Children, for
prominent examples. For how NGOs can influence states that violate human rights to
improve their human rights respect, protection, and fulfillment see B. Linsanes, H. Sano and
H. Thelle ‘Human Rights in Action: Supporting Human Rights Work in Authoritarian
Countries’ in Ethics in Action eds D. Bell and J. Coicaud (Cambridge University Press 2007).
http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/annual-report-2012
http://www.care.org/newsroom/annual-reports
27
Philip Alston, in Philip Alston (ed) Non-State Actors and Human Rights (Oxford
University Press 2005) 18.
10 N. SCHIMMEL

They also participate in advancing civil and political rights (though this is
generally a much smaller part of their remit) through workshops and pub-
lic education campaigns.
Although NGOs operate only with the permission of a sovereign gov-
ernment, the power dynamics between NGOs and governments are com-
plex and not unidirectional. A great deal of power resides with NGOs
because of their human and financial resources, their ability to impact
media coverage of a country’s government and its policies, and their rela-
tionships with the governments of the countries in which their headquar-
ters are registered and in which they receive the bulk of their funding.
These countries are overwhelmingly, the United States and Canada, mem-
ber states of the European Union, the United Kingdom, and a handful of
other countries such as Australia, the Gulf States, and Japan and Korea28—
states with considerable economic and political resources and influence.
NGOs, particularly large ones with substantial budgets, have a locus of
influence; they can and often do impact state policy.29 David Karp argues
that “Corporations can be viewed as having a ‘sphere of influence’ and
authority, which is conceptualized in a way that varies according to the
political contexts within which corporations operate.”30 So too, develop-
ment NGOs propose to governments particular development projects,
how they will be organized and implemented, and who will be their ben-
eficiaries. Often, international NGOs are intimately linked with the
national development policies of governments both in design and imple-
mentation, and in the fulfillment of at least some of a state’s social and
economic rights obligations to citizens. As such, they are often imple-
menting partners and subcontractors, working closely together with the
government as agents of its ministries, rather than independently of it,
despite their official status as independent organizations.
This book recalls the comment of the International Court of Justice in
1949 indicating the dynamic nature of international law that hinted at the
possibility of its evolution to reflect practical needs and changing

28
See, for example, the country donors to Oxfam. Page 43 of its 2014 Annual Report.
http://www.oxfamannualreview.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/6182_Oxfam_
ARA_web_final.pdf
A. Alesina and D. Dollar, ‘Who Gives Foreign Aid to Whom and Why’ (2000) 5 Journal
of Economic Growth.
29
David Karp, Responsibility for Human Rights: Transnational Corporations in Imperfect
States (Cambridge University Press 2014).
30
Ibid., 133.
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

socio-political realities: “subjects of law in any legal system are not neces-
sarily identical in their nature or in the extent of their rights, and their
nature depends on the needs of the community.”31 Furthermore, the book
laments the lack a substantive body of soft law and advisory principles to
draw upon to inform NGO policies and practice, in contrast to corpora-
tions, which have an extensive and growing body of soft law to guide their
policy and practice, most notably in the form of the UN Guiding Principles
on Business and Human Rights, known more commonly as the Ruggie
Principles.
The book argues that a similar framework of soft law for development
and humanitarian NGOs acting as state proxies is needed and discusses
what its components might entail. Such a framework would necessitate
intensive cooperation between the United Nations, NGOs, and states
contracting NGOs for provision of public goods, and by the individuals
and communities most directly involved with/receiving NGO aid and
development efforts in a transitional justice context and more broadly.
Human rights NGOs such as Amnesty International and Human Rights
First also have a critical role to play in ensuring that NGOs working as
proxies for national governments delivering social and economic programs
and realizing social and economic rights are held to the highest standards
of human rights accountability. Each of these parties has a stake and a
responsibility in ensuring that the proper human rights law responsibilities
of development and humanitarian NGOs are defined and appropriate
standards set which should be used to establish a framework for NGO
practice. Such a framework would provide a basis to improve the situation
in Rwanda for genocide survivors, create public standards and account-
ability for IHRL, and specifically define reparative justice responsibilities
of development and humanitarian international NGOs in Rwanda to
Rwandan genocide survivors.

Book Outline
Following this introduction, Chap. 2 defines reparative justice in its aca-
demic, legal, and policy permutations. It further situates reparative justice
in the context of Rwanda’s post-genocide history, with particular

31
Alston, (see note 27 in this chapter) 19. See Tams and Sloan for more on the evolution
of international law and the International Court of Justice. Tams C and Sloan J (eds), The
Development of International Law by the International Court of Justice (Oxford University
Press 2013).
12 N. SCHIMMEL

reference to the role of the United Nations and the UN International

Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda regarding reparative justice. It discusses
diverse programs of reparative justice undertaken by governments in dif-
ferent parts of the world in response to mass human rights violations. It
also examines legally binding international law addressing the reparative
justice obligations of states.
Chapter 3 overviews the non-binding but guiding soft law that estab-
lishes responsibility for NGOs to respect and fulfill IHRL and makes refer-
ence to the Ruggie Principles on corporate responsibilities as a potential
model for a framework for NGO IHRL accountability. It also examines
legally binding international human rights law on reparative justice post-­
mass atrocity directed at states. Chapter 4 examines how IHRL regarding
reparative justice may apply to NGO development aid agencies operating
in a transitional justice context. It offers arguments for why NGOs work-
ing with full knowledge of state international human rights law legal obli-
gations in partnership with states as their agents and proxies in the
provision of social and economic rights in the form of public goods have
at least some degree of moral and social responsibility for the respect, pro-
tection, and fulfillment of international human rights law. It discusses
prominent examples of NGO failures to respect and fulfill human rights.
Chapter 5 begins with the case study of the current situation of
Rwandan genocide survivors. It examines the current efforts of community-­
based advocacy and service provision organizations run by and for geno-
cide survivors in Rwanda to advance reparative justice in accordance with
international human rights law.32 It begins with a description of the
community-­ based survivor advocacy organizations who have joined
together to advance a campaign for reparative justice and discusses the
aims of their campaign which initially was welcomed by the Rwandan gov-
ernment but has since been rejected by it. It examines the forms of disad-
vantage and vulnerability that undermine the rights and welfare of
genocide survivors stemming from their historical experiences during the
genocide and its aftermath. It then turns to consider social programs that
have been successful in responding to survivor needs that can inform
32
I refer to these organizations as NGOs for shorthand. The majority are also community
based and grassroots in nature, and in effect are both NGOs and CBOs—community-based
organizations. Most survivor centered NGOs in Rwanda that are operated by survivors for
survivors to advance reparative justice and the rights and welfare of genocide survivors focus
their philosophy, work, and mission in a local, community-based manner. We will discuss
them in Chap. 6.
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

reparative justice efforts in Rwanda and if scaled up would constitute a

significant advance in reparative justice. It explores the history of Rwandan
government reparative justice policy since the genocide and that of the
United Nations, donor states providing Rwanda with development aid,
and international NGOs. It illustrates the lack of adequate concern for and
implementation of reparative justice by all respective parties and the often
fragmented and haphazard social programs that have reached a mere frac-
tion of survivors in need of them. It concludes by reflecting on where
survivors stand in relation to their human right to reparative justice at the
current time, and how advancing reparative justice for genocide survivors
is not only in the interest of genocide survivors themselves but also of
Rwanda as a whole, the Rwandan government, and international NGOs
seeking to advance peaceful coexistence, unity, and development in
Rwanda. Chapter 6 provides a synthesis of the book and concluding sug-
gestions for future legal and policy development on NGO IHRL account-
ability broadly, and, specifically in reference to post-genocide Rwanda. It
considers new programs initiated in 2019 that advance reparative justice
and that serve as models for programs that need to be funded and pro-
vided by all relevant actors, including international NGOs, the United
Nations and its aid agencies, national aid agencies/donor states, and the
Rwandan government in partnership with Rwandan genocide survivors.
 CHAPTER 2

Defining Reparative Justice and Global

Examples of Its Implementation

Reparative justice has been theorized and defined in various ways.

However, as distinct from restorative justice, which often incorporates the
perpetrators of crimes in efforts to reconcile with the victims of their
crimes, reparative justice in international human rights law focuses on the
right to repair and rehabilitation of those whose rights were directly vio-
lated, that is the immediate victim/s survivor/survivors of a crime. There
are many ways of theorizing restorative justice in the context of interna-
tional human rights law in response to gross violations of human rights.
Rama Mani provides a general but useful definition of what she terms
“rectificatory justice,” “rectifying the injustices that are direct conse-
quences of conflict, in terms of abuses committed against civilian non-­
combatants—gross human rights abuses, war crimes, and crimes against
humanity.”1
In the literature on transitional justice in post-conflict/post-mass-­
atrocity societies, the overwhelming emphasis is on restorative justice in
pursuit of broad social goals, particularly enabling social cohesion and
coexistence of diverse social groups and on reconciliation. Wendy
Lambourne, for example, states that “restorative justice may be defined as

1
Rama Mani, ‘Rebuilding an Inclusive Political Community After War,’ (2005)
Development.

© The Author(s) 2020 15

N. Schimmel, Advancing International Human Rights Law
Responsibilities of Development NGOs,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50270-6_2
16 N. SCHIMMEL

justice that restores communities or relationships.”2 Typically, these rela-

tionships refer to those between victims of criminal acts and perpetrators
of those acts and between communities in conflict. The phrase and con-
cept of ‘restorative justice’ originally became prevalent in policy, academic,
and community policing and community development programs in North
American and European contexts referring primarily to misdemeanors and
crimes not entailing significant violence and immense human damage, not
in the context of massive, extreme, and systematic human rights violations
involving rape, torture, and murder. Restorative justice is rarely applied to
the most egregious crimes, which form the bulk of crimes that occur dur-
ing genocide. I use the term ‘reparative justice’ to deliberately differenti-
ate it from the traditional usage of the phrase and concept ‘restorative
justice,’ which should not be conflated with it. Still, as we shall see, in the
concern that restorative justice as originally conceived shows for the wel-
fare of victims it does share at least one major area of commonality with
my theorization of reparative justice in a post-genocide and post-mass-­
atrocity context.
Restorative justice has been criticized for a variety of reasons including
that it is not sufficiently victim/survivor centered, it limits access to judi-
cial justice remedies, it lacks moral accountability, lacks deterrent impact,
creates a false binary with retributive justice, does not show sufficient
sensitivity and responsiveness to the realities and vulnerabilities of women,
and that it confuses and conflates community reintegration of criminals
with ‘justice,’ and creates unfair burdens on communities that are not
always resourced by the state to enable such reintegration successfully and
who may not themselves be ready for such reintegration. Many of these
criticisms are reasonable and often well-founded, although they do not
apply to all cases of restorative justice which need to be assessed in a
context-­specific and case by case way. There are many cases of ethically
sound, socially responsible, and legally reasonable and respectful success-
ful programs of restorative justice globally. However, in theorizing repara-
tive justice I have been informed by these and other critiques of restorative
justice, which I strive to address.3
2
Wendy Lambourne, ‘Transitional justice and peacebuilding after mass violence’ (2009)
International Journal of Transitional Justice.
3
Allison Morris, ‘Critiquing the Critics: A Brief Response to Critics of Restorative Justice’
(2002) The British Journal of Criminology.
Jamie P. Beven et al., ‘Restoration or Renovation? Evaluating Restorative Justice
Outcomes’ (2011) Psychiatry, Psychology and Law.
 2 DEFINING REPARATIVE JUSTICE AND GLOBAL EXAMPLES OF ITS… 17

The phrase ‘restorative justice’ often refers to informal community-­

based responses to crime rather than government-sanctioned legal inter-
ventions.4 It is often applied in juvenile justice contexts in response to
youth crime. Restorative justice, according to John Braithwaite, “has to be
about restoring victims, restoring offenders, and restoring communities as
a result of participation of a plurality of stakeholders.”5 Linda Keller states
that, “Restorative justice tends to be community-oriented, aimed at
restoring society through reconciliation.”6 This emphasis on restoration is
in contrast to the traditional emphasis on punishment in the form of
retributive justice that dominates justice systems in North America, and in
some though not all European countries—where restorative justice fea-
tures prominently in the sentencing norms and prison programs and man-
agement in countries such as the Netherlands and in Scandinavia.7 Repair
of relations between victims and offenders is fundamental to theorizations

Paul McCold, ‘Paradigm Muddle: The Threat to Restorative Justice Posed by its Merger
with Community Justice’; (2007) Contemporary Justice Review.
Gerry Johnstone and Daniel van Ness, editors, Handbook of Restorative Justice
(Willan 2013).
Lode Walgrave Editor, Restorative Justice and the Law (Routledge 2012).
Carrie Menkel-Meadow, ‘Restorative Justice: What is It and Does it Work?’ (2007) Annual
Review of Law and Social Science.
Elizabeth Elliott and Robert Gordon, Editors, New Directions in Restorative Justice
(Routledge 2005).
Sarah Curtis-Fawley and Kathleen Daly, ‘Gendered Violence and Restorative Justice: The
Views of Victim Advocates’ Violence Against Women (2005).
Elmar G.M. Weitekamp and Hans-Jurgen Kerner, Restorative Justice: Theoretical
Foundations (Routledge 2012).
4
Howard Zehr and Harry Mika, ‘Fundamental concepts of restorative justice’ (1998)
Contemporary Justice Review.
5
John Braithwaite, ‘Restorative Justice: Assessing Optimistic And Pessimistic Accounts’
(1999) Crime and Justice.
6
Linda Keller. ‘Seeking justice at the International Criminal Court: Victims’ reparations’
(2007) Thomas Jefferson Law Review 190.
7
Senay Boztas, ‘Why Are There So Few Prisoners in the Netherlands?’ The Guardian
December 12 2019.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/12/why-are-there-so-few-prisoners-
in-the-netherlands
Henrik Pryser Libell and Matthew Haag, ‘New York’s Jails Are Failing. Is the answer 3600
Miles Away?’ The New York Times November 12 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/12/nyregion/nyc-rikers-norway.html
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of An introduction
to the study of fishes
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: An introduction to the study of fishes

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Original publication: Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, 1880

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF FISHES ***
 AN INTRODUCTION
TO THE

STUDY OF FISHES
BY

ALBERT C. L. G. GÜNTHER
M.A. M.D. Ph.D. F.R.S.
KEEPER OF THE ZOOLOGICAL DEPARTMENT IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Carpit aquas pinnis.

EDINBURGH
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1880

[All rights reserved.]

Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
 PREFACE.

The scope of the present work is to give in a concise form an

account of the principal facts relating to the structure, classification,
and life-history of Fishes. It is intended to meet the requirements of
those who are desirous of studying the elements of Ichthyology; to
serve as a book of reference to zoologists generally; and, finally, to
supply those who, like travellers, have frequent opportunities of
observing fishes, with a ready means of obtaining information. The
article on “Ichthyology,” prepared by the late Sir J. Richardson for the
eighth edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” is the only
publication which has hitherto partly satisfied such requirements; and
when I undertook, some years ago, to revise, or rather rewrite that
article for the new edition of that work, it occurred to me that I might
at the same time prepare a Handbook of Ichthyology, whilst
reserving for the article an abstract so condensed as to be adapted
for the wants of the general reader.
From the general plan of the work I have only departed in those
chapters which deal with the Geographical Distribution of Fishes.
This is a subject which has never before been treated in a general
and comprehensive manner, and seemed to demand particular
attention. I have, therefore, thought it right to give nominal lists of the
Faunæ, and the other details of fact on which I have based my
conclusions, although all the necessary materials may be found in
my “Catalogue of Fishes.”
A few references only to the numerous sources which were
consulted on the subjects of Chapters 1–12, are inserted in the text;
more not required by the beginner; he is introduced to a merely
elementary knowledge of facts well known to the advanced student.
With regard to the illustrations, about twenty have been prepared
after originals published by Cuvier, J. Müller, Owen, Traquair,
Duméril, Cunningham, Hasse, Poey, Siebold, and Gegenbaur. A
similar number, representing extinct fishes, have been taken, with
the kind permission of the author, from Owen’s “Palæontology.” My
best thanks are due also to the Committee of Publications of the
Zoological Society, and to the Editors of the “Annals and Magazine
of Natural History,” and of the “Journal des Museum Godeffroy,” for
the loan of woodcuts illustrating some of my papers on South
American fishes and on larval forms. The remainder of the
illustrations (about three-fourths) are either original figures, or formed
part of the article on ‘Ichthyology’ in the former edition of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica.”
London, 3d October 1880.
 CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
PAGE
Fish defined—Ichthyology defined 1

CHAPTER I.
History and Literature 2
Aristotle, 2—Belon, 4—Salviani, 6—Rondelet, 6—Faunists and
Anatomists of the Seventeenth Century, 7—Ray and Willughby, 8—
Artedi, 9—Linnæus, 10—Gronow and Klein, 12—Pupils and
Successors of Linnæus, 12—Bloch, 13—Lacépède, 15—Anatomists
and Faunists preceding Cuvier, 16—Cuvier, 17—Agassiz, 20—J.
Müller, 22—Discovery of Ceratodus, 25—Recent publications on
Fishes, 26—Latest systematic works, 33.

CHAPTER II.
Topographical description of the External Parts of Fishes 35
Form of the body, 35—External parts of the head, 36—Trunk and Tail, 39
—Fins; their structure, position, and function, 40—Skin and Scales, 45.

CHAPTER III.
Terminology and Topography of the Skeleton 51
Axial portion, 51—Vertebra and its parts; terms defined, 51—Skull; bones
topographically enumerated, 53—Bones of the limbs, 59—Synonymic
list of bones, 59.

CHAPTER IV.
Modifications of the Skeleton 63
Branchiostoma, 63—Cyclostomes, 64—Chondropterygians, 66—
Holocephali, 70—Ganoids, 71—Dipnoi, 71—Chondrostei, 74—
Polypteroidei, 77—Lepidosteoidei, 80—Amioidei, 82—Teleostei, 83—
Classification of the bones of the Teleosteous skull according to the
vertebral doctrine, 85—their morphological classification, 86—Limb-
bones of Teleosteans, 92.

CHAPTER V.
Myology 93
 General arrangement of the Muscles, 93—Electric organs, 94.

CHAPTER VI.
Neurology 96
Of Branchiostoma, 96—Spinal chord, 96—Brain, its size, 97—Brain of
Osseous fishes, 97—of Ganoids, 98—of Chondropterygians, 100—of
Cyclostomes, 101—Spino-cerebral nerves, 103—Spinal nerves, 107—
Sympathic system, 108.

CHAPTER VII.
The Organs of Sense 109
Smell, 109—Sight, 111—Hearing; connection of the ear with the air-
bladder, 116—Taste, 119—Touch, 120.

CHAPTER VIII.
The Organs of Nutrition and Digestion 121
Food and mode of feeding, 121—Buccal and abdominal cavities and their
openings, 123—Mouth and tongue, 123—Forms, texture, and
arrangement of teeth, 124—Intestinal tract, 127—Liver, 132—
Pancreas, 133—Spleen, 133.

CHAPTER IX.
Organs of Respiration 135
Respiration, 135—Structure and arrangement of the gills, 136—
Pseudobranchiæ, 140—Accessory respiratory organs, 142—Air-
bladder; its varieties, structure, and functions, 142.

CHAPTER X.
Organs of Circulation 150

CHAPTER XI.
Urinary Organs 155

CHAPTER XII.
Organs of Reproduction 157
Fishes are dioecious, 157—Hermaphroditism, 157—Oviparous and
viviparous fishes, 157—Generative organs of Branchiostoma, 157—of
Cyclostomes; their ova, 158—Female organs of Teleosteans and their
ova, 158—Instances of females taking care of their progeny, 160—
Male organs of Teleosteans, 162—Instances of males taking care of
 their progeny, 163—Generative organs of Ganoids, 163—of
Chondropterygians and their ova, 166.

CHAPTER XIII.
Growth and Variation of Fishes 170
Changes of form of the body or certain parts, normally accompanying
growth, 170—Changes dependent on sexual development, 176—
Secondary sexual differences, 176—Mixogamous, polygamous, and
monogamous fishes, 177—Hybridism as a cause of variation, 178—
Regular and irregular growth of fishes, 178—Leptocephali not a normal
state of development, 179—Changes of colour of the muscles and
external parts; chromatophors, 182—Albinism, 183.

CHAPTER XIV.
Domesticated and Acclimatised Fishes, etc. 185
Domesticated fishes, 185—Acclimatisation of fishes, 185—Artificial
impregnation of ova, 186—Tenacity of life, 186—Reproduction of lost
parts, 188—Hybernation, 188—Useful fishes, 189—Poisonous fishes,
189—Poison-organs, 190.

CHAPTER XV.
Distribution of Fishes in time 193
Oldest fish-remains, 193—Devonian fishes, 194—Carboniferous, 196—
Permian, 197—Triassic, 197—Liassic, 198—Oolitic, 199—Cretaceous,
199—Tertiary, 200—Post-pliocene, 201.

CHAPTER XVI.
The Distribution of existing Fishes over the Earth’s Surface.—
General Remarks 202
Freshwater-, Marine-, and Brackish-water Fishes, 202—Changes of the
habitat of numerous fishes, active, 203—or dependent on geological
changes, 204—Agencies operating upon the distribution of Freshwater
and Marine fishes, 205.

CHAPTER XVII.
The Distribution of Freshwater Fishes 208
List of Freshwater Fishes, 208—Continuous and interrupted range of
distribution, 209—The ways of dispersal of Freshwater fishes, 211—A
wide range of a type is not necessarily proof of its antiquity, 212—Each
fauna is composed of ancient, autochthont, and immigrant species, 213
—Division of the globe into zoological regions; freshwater fishes have
 been spread in circumpolar zones, 215—Cyprinidæ and Siluridæ, most
important families in recognising the zoo-geographical regions, 216—
Division of the faunæ of Freshwater fishes, 217—I. Equatorial Zone,
218—Indian Region, 220—African Region, 227—Tropical American or
Neotropical Region, 233—Tropical Pacific Region, 238—II. Northern
Zone, 240—Europe-Asiatic or Palæarctic Region, 243—North
American or Nearctic Region, 246—III. Southern Zone, with
Tasmanian, New Zealand, and Fuegian Sub-regions, 248.

CHAPTER XVIII.
The Fishes of the Brackish Water 251

CHAPTER XIX.
The Distribution of Marine Fishes 255
Shore-fishes, Pelagic, and Deep-sea fishes, 255—List of Shore-fishes,
257—Oceanic areæ as determined by Shore-fishes, 259—Distribution
of Shore-fishes compared with that of Freshwater-fishes, 260—I. Arctic
Ocean, 261—II. Northern Temperate Zone, 262—Temperate North-
Atlantic, 262—with British, 263—Mediterranean, 264—and North
American districts, 266—Temperate North-Pacific, 268—with
Kamtschatkan, 269—Japanese, 270—and Californian districts, 271—
III. Equatorial Zone, 272—with Tropical Atlantic, 278—Indo-Pacific
Ocean, 278—and the Pacific Coasts of Tropical America, 279—IV.
Southern Temperate Zone, 281—with the Cape of Good Hope, 283—
South Australia and New Zealand, 283—Chile, 288—and Patagonia,
289—V. Antarctic Ocean, 289.

CHAPTER XX.
Distribution of Pelagic Fishes 292

CHAPTER XXI.
The Fishes of the Deep Sea 296
Deep-sea fishes a recent discovery, 296—Physical conditions affecting
these fishes, 297—Characteristics of Deep-sea fishes, 299—Their
vertical and horizontal distribution, 304—List of Deep-sea fishes, 305.
 SYSTEMATIC AND DESCRIPTIVE PART.

First Sub-class—Palæichthyes.
PAGE
First Order—Chondropterygii 313
I. Plagiostomata 313
A. Selachoidei—Sharks 314
Families: Carchariidæ (Blue Shark, Tope, Hammerhead, Hound),
316—Lamnidæ (Porbeagle, Carcharodon, Fox-Shark, Basking-
Shark), 319—Rhinodontidæ, 323—Notidanidæ, 324—Scylliidæ
(Dog-fishes), 325— Hybodontidæ, 328—Cestraciontidæ (Port
Jackson Shark), 328—Spinacidæ (Spiny Dogs, Greenland
Shark), 330—Rhinidæ, 334—Pristiophoridæ, 335.
B. Batoidei—Rays 335
Families: Pristidæ (Saw-fishes), 336—Rhinobatidæ, 337—
Torpedinidæ (Electric Rays), 338—Rajidæ (Rays and Skates),
340—Trygonidæ (Sting Rays), 342—Myliobatidæ (Eagle Rays),
344.
II. Holocephala 348
Family: Chimæridæ, 348.
Second Order—Ganoidei 350
I. Placodermi 351
II. Acanthodini 355
III. Dipnoi 355
Families: Sirenidæ (Lepidosiren, Protopterus, Ceratodus), 355—
Ctenododipteridæ, 359—Phaneropleuridæ, 360.
IV. Chondrostei 360
Families: Acipenseridæ (Sturgeons), 360—Polyodontidæ, 362.
V. Polypteroidei 363
Families: Polypteridæ, 364—Saurodipteridæ, 365—
Coelacanthidæ, 365—Holoptychidæ, 365.
VI. Pycnodontoidei 366
Families: Pleurolepidæ, 366—Pycnodontidæ, 366.
VII. Lepidosteoidei 367
Families: Lepidosteidæ, 367—Sauridæ, 368—Stylodontidæ, 368
—Sphærodontidæ, 368—Aspidorhynchidæ, 369—
Palæoniscidæ, 369—Platysomidæ, 370.
VIII. Amioidei 370
Families: Caturidæ, 371—Leptolepidæ, 371—Amiidæ (Bow-fin),
 371.
Second Sub-class—Teleostei.
First Order—Acanthopterygii 374
I. A. perciformes 374
Families: Percidæ (Freshwater-Perches, Bass, Sea-Perches,
Centrarchus), 375—Squamipinnes (Coral-Fishes), 397—
Mullidæ (Red-Mullets), 403—Sparidæ (Sea-breams), 405—
Hoplognathidæ, 410—Cirrhitidæ, 410—Scorpænidæ, 412—
Nandidæ, 418—Polycentridæ, 418—Teuthididæ, 418.
II. A. beryciformes 419
Family: Berycidæ, 420.
III. A. kurtiformes 424
Family: Kurtidæ, 424.
IV. A. polynemiformes 425
Family: Polynemidæ, 425.
V. A. sciæniformes 426
Family: Sciænidæ (Meagres), 426.
VI. A. xiphiiformes 431
Family: Xiphiidæ (Sword-fishes), 431.
VII. A. trichiuriformes 433
Families: Trichiuridæ (Scabbard-fishes, Hairtails), 433—
Palæorhynchidæ, 437.
VIII. A. cotto-scombriformes 438
Families: Acronuridæ (Surgeons), 438—Carangidæ (Horse-
Mackerels, Pilot-fish, Boar-fish), 440—Cyttidæ (John Dorey),
450—Stromateidæ, 452—Coryphænidæ (Dolphin, Sun-fish),
452—Nomeidæ, 455—Scombridæ (Mackerel, Tunny, Bonito,
Albacore, Sucking-fish), 456—Trachinidæ (Stare-gazer,
Weever, etc.), 462—Malacanthidæ, 467—Batrachidæ, 467—
Psychrolutidæ, 469—Pediculati (Angler, Antennarius, etc.), 469
—Cottidæ (Bull-heads, Gurnards), 476—Cataphracti (Flying
Gurnards), 480—Pegasidæ, 482.
IX. A. gobiiformes 483
Families: Discoboli (Lump-suckers), 483—Gobiidæ (Gobies,
Dragonets), 485.
X. A. blenniiformes 490
Families: Cepolidæ (Band-fishes), 490—Trichonotidæ, 490—
Heterolepidotidæ, 491—Blenniidæ (Wolf-fish, Blennies), 492—
Acanthoclinidæ, 498—Mastacembelidæ, 499.
XI. A. mugiliformes 499
Families: Sphyrænidæ (Barracudas), 499—Atherinidæ
(Atherines), 500—Mugilidæ (Mullets), 501.
 XII. A. gastrosteiformes 504
Families: Gastrosteidæ (Sticklebacks), 504—Fistulariidæ (Flute-
mouths), 507.
XIII. A. centrisciformes 508
Family: Centriscidæ, 508.
XIV. A. gobiesociformes 510
Family: Gobiesocidæ, 512.
XV. A. channiformes 513
Family: Ophiocephalidæ, 513.
XVI. A. labyrinthibranchii 514
Families: Labyrinthici (Climbing Perch, Gourami), 514—
Luciocephalidæ, 519.
XVII. A. lophotiformes 519
Family: Lophotidæ, 519.
XVIII. A. tæniiformes 520
Family: Trachypteridæ (Ribbon-fishes), 520.
XIX. A. notacanthiformes 523
Family: Notacanthidæ, 523.
Second Order—Acanthopterygii Pharyngognathi 523
Families: Pomacentridæ (Coral-fishes), 524—Labridæ (Wrasses,
Parrot-wrasses), 525—Embiotocidæ, 533—Chromides, 534.
Third Order—Anacanthini 537
I. A. gadoidei 537
Families: Lycodidæ, 537—Gadidæ (Cod-fishes, Hake, Burbot,
Ling, Rockling, Torsk), 539—Ophidiidæ (Brotula, Fierasfer,
Sand-eel, Congrogadus), 546—Macruridæ, 551.
II. A. pleuronectoidei 553
Family: Pleuronectidæ (Flat-fishes), 553.
Fourth Order—Physostomi 559
Families: Siluridæ; their skeleton, 559—divided into eight subdivisions
and sixteen groups; Clariina, 563—Plotosina, 563—Silurina, 565—
Hypophthalmina, 566—Bagrina, 567—Amiurina, 567—Pimelodina, 568
—Ariina, 569—Doradina, 572—Rhinoglanina, 573—Malapterurina
(Electric Catfish), 574—Hypostomatina (Preñadillas, Loricaria, etc.),
575—Aspredinina, 580—Nematogenyina and Trichomycterina, 581—
Stegopholina, 581.
Families of Physostomi continued: Scopelidæ, 582—Cyprinidæ (Carps),
587—divided into fourteen groups, viz. Catostomina (Suckers), 588—
Cyprinina (Carp, Crucian Carp, Gold-fish, Barbels, Gudgeons), 589—
Rohteichthyina, 596—Leptobarbina, 597—Rasborina, 597—
Semiplotina, 598—Xenocypridina, 598—Leuciscina (White fish, Tench,
Dace, etc.), 598—Rhodeina, 601—Danionina, 601—
 Hypophthalmichthyina, 602—Abramidina (Bream, Bleak), 602—
Homalopterina, 604—Cobitidina (Loaches), 604.
Families of Physostomi continued: Kneriidæ, 606—Characinidæ, 606—
Cyprinodontidæ, 613—Heteropygii (Blind Fish of the Mammoth Cave),
618—Umbridæ, 619—Scombresocidæ (Gar-pike, Saury, Half-beak,
Flying Fish), 619—Esocidæ (Pike), 623—Galaxiidæ, 624—Mormyridæ,
625—Sternoptychidæ, 627—Stomiatidæ, 629.
Families of Physostomi continued—Salmonidæ: Salmo, difficulty of
distinguishing species, 630; constant specific characters, 635—hybrids,
638—sexual development, 638—migratory species and their retention
in freshwater, 639—Growth of Salmonoids, 641—their domestication
and acclimatisation, 641—species enumerated, 642—Smelt and
Capelin, 646—Coregonus, 647—Grayling, 649—marine genera, 650.
Families of Physostomi continued: Percopsidæ, 651—Haplochitonidæ,
651—Gonorhynchidæ, 652—Hyodontidæ (Moon-eye), 653—
Pantodontidæ, 653—Osteoglossidæ, 653—Clupeidæ (Herrings,
Anchovies, Shads, Mossbanker, Menhaden, etc.), 655—
Bathythrissidæ, 663—Chirocentridæ, 663—Alepocephalidæ, 664—
Notopteridæ, 664—Halosauridæ, 665—Hoplopleuridæ, 665—
Gymnotidæ (Electric Eel), 666—Symbranchidæ, 668—Murænidæ
(Eels, Congers, Murænas, etc.), 669.
Fifth Order—Lophobranchii 678
Families: Solenostomidæ, 678—Syngnathidæ (Pipe-fishes, Sea-horses),
679.
Sixth Order—Plectognathi 683
Families: Sclerodermi (File-fishes, Coffer-fishes), 684—Gymnodontes
(Globe-fishes, Sun-fish), 686.
Third Sub-class—Cyclostomata.
Families: Petromyzontidæ (Lampreys), 691—Myxinidæ, 694.
Fourth Sub-class—Leptocardii.
Family: Cirrhostomi (Lancelets), 696.
APPENDIX.
Directions for Collecting and Preserving Fishes 697
Alphabetical Index 707
 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

According to the views generally adopted at present, all those

Vertebrate animals are referred to the Class of Fishes, which living in
water, breathe air dissolved in water by means of gills or branchiæ;
whose heart consists of a single ventricle and single atrium; whose
limbs, if present, are modified into fins, supplemented by unpaired,
median fins; and whose skin is either naked, or covered with scales
or osseous plates or bucklers. With few exceptions fishes are
oviparous. However, there are not a few members of this Class
which show a modification of one or more of these characteristics, as
we shall see hereafter, and which, nevertheless, cannot be
separated from it. The distinction between the Class of Fishes and
that of Batrachians is very slight indeed.
The branch of Zoology which treats of the internal and external
structure of fishes, their mode of life, and their distribution in space
and time, is termed Ichthyology.[1]