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Article Excerpt
Introduction
THE GENOCIDE OF THE RWANDAN TUTSIS SERVES TO REMIND US OF THE ETHNIC, political, and economic conditions that are typical for postcolonial states. Ethnic identities are often magnified, if not manufactured, by occupying forces or national elites during the colonial period. Once independence has been obtained, ethnic identities are often internally enhanced for the political purposes of the new ruling regime. Like their colonial forebears, the rulers of the new regime often employ the strategy of pitting one ethnic group against the other ("divide and rule"), particularly through their military, human rights, and macroeconomic decisions. Additionally, they often form one-party states that perpetuate conditions of governance similar to those experienced under colonial rule. In turn, these states reproduce or exacerbate the political, economic, and ethnic crises originally resulting from colonial exploitation of regional and national resources (Chossudousky, 1995; Chossudousky and Galand, 1996).
These political conditions contribute to the instability felt throughout postcolonial environments. The new regimes monopolize existing resources, leaving subordinate populations in socioeconomic conditions analogous to (or worse than) those characterizing colonial rule. Widespread inequities of access to social, political, and economic capital are perpetuated by these new social arrangements. The histories of postcolonial states frequently degenerate into civil wars or other internecine conflicts that undermine the fragile forms of social organization built out of the anomic social rubble of colonial decampment. In the most extreme cases, such as Rwanda, genocides arise. Even though the previously oppressed Hutus gained political positions of power, they were not content to allow the perceived and actual injustices of the past to remain there. As global and local economic situations grew problematic, the Hutus used their new authority to orchestrate widespread efforts to eliminate all Tutsi rivals.
Scholars have written about the Rwandan genocide from a number of disciplinary perspectives. We add to the extant literature by adopting an approach that focuses on human rights and highlights the role played by international finance institutions in setting the stage for genocide. In doing so, we begin with a review of criminological literature that focuses on issues of state criminality and "crimes of globalization" (Friedrichs and Friedrichs, 2007). This review is followed by a brief description of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international human rights. We then apply an integrated theory of organizational crime (Rothe and Mullins, 2006) to explain the conditions fostering the Rwandan genocide, including the roles of the World Bank, IMF, and other international finance lenders to show how they bear some culpability for the disaster due to their policies and development demands that altered Rwanda's social, economic, and political structures. We conclude with a discussion of how and why international financial policies for postcolonial states should be dictated by human rights concerns and consideration of the social, cultural, and economic needs of a state and its citizens rather than the exigencies of "free trade," capital mobility, and global capital accumulation.
State Crime and Crimes of Globalization
The subfield of state crime is an outgrowth of Sutherland's (1939, 1949) call to expand the purview of criminology to crimes of the powerful, but its origins are often traced to the "Presidential Address" delivered by William Chambliss at the 1988 Meetings of the American Society of Criminology. Chambliss (1989, 1995) demonstrates that states can play a crucial role in organizing and supporting activities that violate domestic and international laws, such as piracy and smuggling, when doing so fulfills their broader political and economic objectives. His "structural contradictions approach" emphasizes that when presented with "unsolvable" problems, states can be enticed to violate the law to meet broader goals. Criminologists, particularly critical criminologists, have seized upon and extended Chambliss' insights, broadening and enriching understandings of state crime (see Barak, 1991; Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1993; Kramer, 1995; Ross, 1995; Tunnell, 1993). In the process, these criminologists have examined crimes tacitly supported or organized by a sovereign polity, as well as illegal actions committed by states themselves.
With the publication of more case studies and theoretical papers, the subfield broadened its analysis of state criminality to include actions committed by governments that violated domestic, international, or human rights laws (see Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1998; Kauzlarich, Matthews, and Miller, 2001; Mullins and Kauzlarich, 2000; Ross et al., 1999; Ross, 2000a), as well as incidents of states or state agencies that failed to take obligatory actions (Barak, 1991; Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1998; Kauzlarich, Mullins, and Matthews, 2003). Definitional debates continue (see Rothe and Friedrichs, 2006), but the idea of state criminality is firmly entrenched in the field.
The concept of "crimes of globalization" (Friedrichs and Friedrichs, 2007; Friedrichs, 2004) is the newest addition to the list of forms of crime with a cognate relationship to crimes of the state. Informed by Falk's (1993) observation that globalization is driven by the interests of capital over people, "crimes of globalization" refer to mass harms of people, especially within developing countries, that arise as latent consequences of the development and expansion of global capital. According to Friedrichs and Friedrichs (2007:18), crimes of globalization have characteristics of "state crime, political crime, white-collar crime, state-corporate crime, and finance crime," but do not fit neatly into any of these categories. Specifically, these crimes "involve cooperative endeavors between international financial institutions, transnational corporations, and state or political entities that engage in demonstrably harmful activities in violation of international law or international human rights conventions." (1)
Friedrichs' approach highlights the role of international financial institutions, transnational corporations, and states in the context of criminogenic tendencies within globalization. Friedrichs and Friedrichs (2007) examined the role of policies put forth by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization in developing states that result in socially harmful practices and human rights violations. The policies and practices of these international finance institutions can have dramatic societal effects, as reflected in the "structural adjustments" imposed on countries such as Argentina, Senegal, and Rwanda, which destroyed the way of life of large numbers of indigenous peoples (Rothe and Friedrichs, 2006).
International finance institutions may not intend to do harm. Indeed, they claim that their central mission is to alleviate economic and other forms of suffering. But the privileging of transnational corporate interests and the interests of powerful states, coupled with the arrogance with which these institutions implement a "top down" form of globalization, results in immensely harmful consequences that conflict with the ideology and promotion of human rights. Moreover, since international financial institutions work closely and cooperatively with high-level government officials in developed and developing countries, the crimes of globalization they facilitate are inevitably intertwined with crimes of the state (Ibid.).
Criminologists face the challenge of examining and explaining how these different cognate forms of crime interact and have reciprocal influences. Following Friedrichs' (2004) call to criminologists to engage with the literature of globalization, Rothe, Muzzatti, and Mullins (2006) conducted research that explored the interrelations between international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank, legacies of colonialism, and foreign policies that set the stage for atrocities, state victimization, and state crime. In turn, they provided an illustration of how and why the sinking of the Senegalese ferry Le Joola was a crime of globalization. Most crucially, Rothe, Muzzatti, and Mullins (2006) demonstrated why scholars need to examine the domination of Western capitalism and international finance lenders and institutions and their criminogenic effect on "developing" states.
We hope to extend the focus and insights of criminological analysis by examining the role played by international finance institutions in the Rwandan genocide. In doing so, we incorporate the concepts of crimes of collusion between the state and organizations (Kramer and Michalowski, 1990; Kauzlarich and Kramer, 1998), including organizations such as the IMF and the World Bank. To date, these interconnections have been largely ignored in the literatures on state crime, genocide, and human rights. They have also been ignored in the growing literature on Rwanda and its genocide. An examination of the collusion between the Rwandan government, the IMF, and the World Bank is important for its etiological contributions and because some scholars identify these organizations as key mechanisms for mitigating state and international criminal acts. For example, in the context of state crime among advanced industrialized democracies, Ross (2000a: 4) points out that controls of state crime can be either internal or external to the state. External controls provide "powers of review or sanction" by domestic organizations (e.g., external review boards, extra-agency competition, public opinion, and the media) and/or international organizations (e.g., the media, the World Court of Justice, and the United Nations). Ross suggests that these supra-national structures are central for keeping states in line. Yet, not all commentators concur. Barak (2000:...
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