Human Rights A Day

Rwandan mayor takes brunt of international tribunal’s first genocide conviction. Although the United Nations Genocide Convention was established in 1948, not until 1998 did an international tribunal identify a criminal genocide. That finding stemmed from an April 1994 massacre of 800,000 mostly Tutsi Rwandans. Seven months after that atrocity, the UN Security Council responded by establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, whose purpose was to prosecute people responsible. The first round of prosecutions, held between 1995 and 1999, put seven people on trial and handed down the first conviction on September 2, 1998 – against the former bourgmestre (mayor) of Taba, Jean-Paul Akayesu. Akayesu claimed he was powerless to stop the massacre, but Judge Laity Kama ruled that he was "individually and criminally responsible for the deaths” of the 2,000 Tutsis killed in his town. His conviction of nine counts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes marked the tribunal’s first genocide findi