Alison Des Forges
Alison Des Forges, who was killed in the plane crash outside Buffalo last night, was the leading American voice for human rights in Rwanda. She had done her academic work on Rwandan history (referenced by Philip Gourevitch in his masterful 1995 piece on the Rwandan genocide in this magazine); she worked as a researcher on Rwanda for Human Rights Watch in the years before 1994; when the genocide began, she alerted the world to the danger that threatened Rwandans like her friend Monique Mujawamariya, who managed to escape Hutu killers partly through Des Forges’ efforts on her behalf; in the early weeks of the genocide she lobbied the Clinton White House, unsuccessfully, to intervene (according to Samantha Power’s “A Problem from Hell,” Clinton’s national security advisor, Anthony Lake, replied to Des Forges’ urgings, “Make more noise!”); she later documented the genocide as extensively as any other writer, in her 1999 book Leave None to Tell the Story; and she didn’t hesitate to criticize the post-genocide government of President Paul Kagame when it violated Rwandans’ rights.
I spoke with Des Forges several times by phone when I was preparing to go to Rwanda in 2001. She was tirelessly generous in offering me contacts and advice, down to tips on pronouncing polysyllabic Rwandan names. She spent a few hours hunting down documents for me in her home office, in Buffalo, which, from her description, was a deeply cluttered trove of invaluable records—one that should now be collected and housed somewhere for the use of others who want to follow her efforts. Apparently, anything Des Forges did that was connected with Rwanda, she did with all her might. And she managed to do it without the self-righteous territoriality that is the occupational vice of human-rights experts. Her attachment to the country and its people seemed neither saintly nor professional, but entirely human.