For more than a century, Hutu and Tutsi in Africa’s Great Lakes region have been described as two distinct ethnic groups, and sometimes even as separate races. The identities existed before European colonial rule, but they did not always carry the rigid meaning they acquired later. Colonial rule, particularly in Rwanda and Burundi, changed how they were classified and understood, helping turn social distinctions into fixed ethnic categories.
Those identities were later drawn into struggles over political power, land and belonging. The consequences are still felt today, particularly in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where questions of identity and citizenship remain tied to conflict. By the early 1990s, tensions between Hutu and Tutsi had become central to Rwanda’s political crisis.
In 1994, they culminated in the genocide against the Tutsi. Between 800,000 and one million men, women and children were massacred during the 100 days that followed, primarily Tutsi civilians and moderate Hutu, according to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Hutu ethnonationalist leaders, government forces and militias, including the Interahamwe, were among those responsible.
The killings followed years of political tension and a civil war between Rwanda’s Hutu-led government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi-led rebel movement headed by Paul Kagame. On the evening of April 6, 1994, a rocket attack brought down a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira as it approached Kigali. Both presidents were killed.
The following day, killings began across Rwanda. The genocide ended in July, when the RPF defeated the government and took control of the country. But the violence did not stop at Rwanda’s borders.
Burundi had experienced its own cycles of political violence involving Hutu and Tutsi since independence. The crisis deepened in October 1993, when President Melchior Ndadaye, a Hutu and Burundi’s first democratically elected president, was killed during a military coup attempt. A United Nations fact-finding mission documented the coup and the violence that followed.
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