Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda

* Winner of the African Studies Association’s 1999 Herskovits Award
* A boldly critical look at structural violence relating to the 1994 Rwanda genocide

Aiding Violence expresses outrage at the contradiction of massive genocide in a country considered by Western aid agencies to be a model of development. Focusing on the 1990s dynamics of militarization and polarization that resulted in genocide, Uvin reveals how aid enterprises reacted, or failed to react, to those dynamics. By outlining the profound structural basis on which the genocidal edifice was built, the book exposes practices of inequality, exclusion, and humiliation throughout Rwanda.

This book explores the contradiction of massive genocide in a country considered by Western aid agencies to be a model of development. Focusing on the 1990s and the dynamics of militarization and polarization that led to genocide, the author studies how aid enterprises reacted, or failed to react, to those dynamics. Uvin goes on to discuss the profound structural basis upon which the genocidal edifice was built.

Development in Practice - Anne Lloyd-Williams

Everyone involved in development should read this book. Fort those with some d of Rwanda, reading it is nothing shore of a cathartic experience. Much of what Peter Uvin has distilled so carefully and passionately from the Rwandan experience is also painfully relevant for other parts of the world This remarkable book states what is rarely stated about the symbiotic relationship between development aid and the ruling class, and about the consequences of this relationship on a society driven by wide-scale and acute inequality of opportunity. It also raises a profound issue of general development aid's lack of ability to involve, and benefit, the 'ultra-poor'.

Peter Uvin is the Henry J. Leir Professor of International Humanitarian Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He received his doctorate in international relations from the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, University of Geneva. He has been a Research Associate Professor at the Watson Institute of International Affairs, Brown University, and has taught at New Hampshire College and the Graduate School of Development Studies, Geneva. For the last 20 years, he has worked periodically in Africa as a development practitioner and consultant, recently collaborating with UNDP, the OECD, and Belgian, Dutch, Danish, and British bilateral agencies. His book, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda, won the 1999 African Studies Association Herskovits Award for the most outstanding book on Africa.