Respected and beloved Africanist and human rights campaigner Alison Des Forges died last week in the plane crash near Buffalo. Best known for her indefatigable work on Rwanda, Des Forges not only is one of the foremost experts in the world on that country’s 1994 genocide, but she continued to reveal the complexities of that situation with her vigilance when the Tutsi genocide victims became genocidaires in a component of the events in Rwanda that most overlook or ignore in favor of a cleaner narrative. It is nearly impossible to convey how much she will be missed.
