This traces the UN’s involvement in Rwanda from the build-up to the genocide to the creation of the tribunal and the archive. It examines why, having been willing to stand by during the genocide, an international court came to be seen as a solution to the genocide, and what this reveals about the politics and purpose of the archive. I argue that the introduction of the legal terminology of ‘genocide’ during the violence was a key turning point in the UN’s intervention, as the violence became something that targeted the international community as a whole. The chapter also offers a brief overview of the ICTR and the archive, and here shows that, at the start of the tribunal, a very broad set of strategies underpinned the archive and emphasised the tribunal’s role in determining individual responsibility, establishing the truth, providing a space for victims to testify and reconcile with their pasts, and contribute to the development of international criminal law and international peace and security.

Chapter 4 explains how an initially defensive alliance between the post-liberation elites of the region developed into a more philosophical, aspirational and militarised one, focused – putatively – around promoting regional liberation projects. The chapter demonstrates how summitry around support for the South Sudanese SPLM/A during this period provided a space for the four movements to share ideas on promoting wider regional transformation, most notably in Zaïre – a notion that spoke to their shared heritage as liberation movements and shared understanding of violence as an effective reform mechanism. The chapter cautions, however, against understanding the four elites’ involvement in the Zaïre/Congo wars as motivated by a coherent understanding of, and commitment to, regional liberation. The Horn movements’ engagement took place at a much more theoretical and superficial level than those of the Great Lakes, and elites in Addis Ababa, Asmara and Kampala took a quite different view on legitimate ways to promote liberation in Zaïre to counterparts in Kigali. The chapter also reflects, then, on the challenges encountered by post-liberation movements in reframing their country’s place in regional security frameworks, and in reimagining struggle era ideational frameworks in a new context.