About Alison
human rights activist
Internationally-known human rights activist Dr. Alison L. Des Forges was a victim of the crash of Flight 3407 on February 12, 2009. Alison worked to improve public education in Buffalo and was for the last twenty years Senior Advisor to the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch. As a historian she was one of the world’s leading experts on Rwanda. Her book, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, is a landmark account of the 1994 genocide. Her tireless efforts to awaken the international community to the horrors of that event earned her a MacArthur Foundation Award in 1999.
witness to rwandan genocide
Des Forges left academia in 1994 in response to the Rwandan Genocide, to work full-time on human rights. She was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999, and became the senior advisor at Human Rights Watch for the African continent. Des Forges is thought to have been the most knowledgeable American on the genocide as it was unfolding. She was on the phone to Monique Mujawamariya in Rwanda in April 1994 when Mujawmariya apologised for putting down the phone as she did not want Des Forges to hear her die. Mujawmariya lived, but her reports meant that Des Forges was one of the first outsiders to observe that a full-blown genocide was under way in Rwanda, and afterwards led a team of researchers to establish the facts.[7] She testified 11 times before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and gave evidence about the Rwandan Genocide to panels of the French National Assembly, the Belgian Senate, the US Congress, the Organisation of African Unity, and the United Nations.[3]
She wrote the 1999 book Leave None to Tell the Story, which The Economist[7] and The New York Times[1] both describe as the definitive account of the Rwandan genocide. In the book, she argued that the genocide was organized by the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government at the time, rather than being a spontaneous outbreak of tribal conflicts.[4]
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tragic end
After Alison Des Forges’ sudden and untimely death on February 12, 2009, memorial gatherings were held around the world to mourn her loss, to express gratitude to her, and to talk about ways to continue her work.
Human Rights watch
She worked at Human Rights Watch on behalf of the peoples of central Africa, eschewing power politics and economic and cultural relativism, she believed strongly that justice is not only possible it is also the only sound basis for reconciliation. In her last days she was working with others on several projects, including persuading the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to prosecute members of the current Rwandan government who committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during their rise to power in the name of the victims of genocide.
“There was no one who knew more and did more to document the genocide and to help bring the perpetrators to justice.”