The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis: Identity, Violence and Power - Jean-Pierre Chretién and Richard Banégas (eds)

The Recurring Great Lakes Crisis is an edited volume comprising individual case studies that examine aspects of historical and on-going violence in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Congo-Kinshasa. The purpose of the volume is to “lead to a better understanding of the changes in the perceptions of violence which constitute one of the most serious obstacles to lasting peace” (1). The case studies encompass a diverse array of aspects of each of the conflicts, from the role of the Catholic Church in Rwanda since 1957, to the political and social problems created by the label “disaster victims” in Burundi after the 1993 crisis, to the “ethnic” conflict between the Wahendu and Walema in the Ituri district of Congo between 1999 and 2003. Most case studies resulted from field research carried out by the contributors in the Great Lakes region between 2000 and 2002