Conspiracy to commit genocide as understood through jurisprudence of the international criminal tribunal for Rwanda

Abstract

ln 1995, following the atrocious crimes committed in Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council, with Resolution 955, established the international Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in an effort to hold the alleged perpetrators of these crimes accountable. One unique tool that has been used by the ICTR is the crime of conspiracy to commit genocide lnvestigations by the office of the prosecutor of the ICTR have been carried out on the premise that the atrocities committed in Rwanda constituted one overarching and interconnected crime of genocide.2 lt is believed that for the Rwandan tragedy to have taken place in the presence of a government, its armed forces and an entrenched civil administration, there must have been either a conspiracy of silence or a conspiracy of participation to allow perpetrators to kill.