Alison Des Forges: A Legendary American Woman

Last week when a commuter plane crashed in icy weather near Buffalo, New York, a tiny American lady with silver hair was among 50 people killed. Mrs Alison Des Forges, 66, was a rare scholar and human rights activist. She had issued a timely warning of the massacre in Rwanda, that later turned into one of the biggest modern genocides.

As it is there are few outsiders who know about life (or take any interest) in African countries. “Mrs Alison Des Forges was steeped in Rwanda’s turbulent history, having written her doctoral thesis about it in 1972. And she had a better sense than most of the evil that was brewing two decades later,” says The Economist in a moving tribute to her memory.

“She had spent years in Rwanda, investigating political violence for Human Rights Watch. She knew that a 1993 peace accord between the Hutu-dominated government and a Tutsi-led rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), was written in water, and that Hutu military leaders were mulling mass killings to avoid sharing power. She knew something terrible was afoot.

“She made calls, sent faxes and frantically gathered information. By April 17th she was convinced that a full-blown genocide was under way. She was one of the first outsiders to say so. But everyone who mattered ignored her. Africa specialists at the State Department wept with her when she described what was going on, but who listens to Africa specialists?…

“In some ways, she was old-fashioned. Whereas other human-rights activists fuss about an ever-lengthening list of socio-economic ‘rights’ (subsidised housing, fair trade, and so forth), Mrs Des Forges stuck to the basics, such as the right not to be murdered.

“She took extraordinary risks, rushing to the scenes of massacres and questioning killers when their blades were barely dry. She left out none of the ghastly details: the wives forced to bury their husbands before being raped; the baby thrown alive into a latrine.” More here…

Des Forges graduated from Radcliffe College in 1964 and received her PhD from Yale in 1972. She began as a volunteer at Human Rights Watch, but was soon working full-time on Rwanda, trying to draw attention to the genocide she feared was looming. Most recently, Des Forges was working on a Human Rights Watch report about killings in eastern Congo.

Des Forges leaves a husband, a daughter, and a son, three grandchildren, a brother and a sister-in-law. The staff of Human Rights Watch expressed their deepest condolences to her family and friends. More here…