Conflicts – Wars – Peace in the Great Lakes region

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the Great Lakes region, especially the countries of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DR Congo), Rwanda and Uganda, have become one of Africa’s main crisis areas. The nearly four-year war in Rwanda, which began on the 1st October 1990 with the attack of the Rwandans from Uganda, ended in 1994 in a genocide with hundreds of thousands of deaths.
Due to political and military conflicts in Rwanda, many people, especially the Batutsi population, fled to the neighboring countries of Burundi, Congo, Uganda and Tanzania in 1959 and the 1960s. In Burundi, in 1972 and the following years, serious conflicts continued, during which a large number of people, especially the Bahutu, were murdered, most of them fled to the neighboring countries of Rwanda, Tanzania, DR Congo.

In the DR Congo, where hundreds of thousands of people fled from Rwanda in June 1994, wars involving neighboring states had been fought for years. To this day, there are countless militias and armies fighting with each other. The entire region, especially the east of the DRC, is destabilized by these conflicts. The civilian population in particular is suffering – several million people have died or been displaced. To this day, people are murdered almost daily in eastern Congo and girls and women are brutally raped. ->> OENZ
Humanitarian, security and development problems as well as the exploitation of natural resources have turned into complex conflict and violent structures.

In the 1990s, numerous international and national organizations were established with the aim of contributing to the formation of peace, legal resolution, conflict prevention and the healing of survivors. At United Nations level, there were numerous regulations to prevent genocides in the future. Since then, various universities and NGOs (non-governmental organizations) worldwide have been working scientifically or practically in the Great Lakes region.

In our offline library and publications, you will find several hundred releases on the Great Lakes Region, particularly dating back from 1990.

Here you will find a selection of institutions, which are currently active in the region.

Status December 2020