Helen Hintjens

• PhD Politics
• Professor (Assistant) at International Institute of Social Studies The Hague (EUR)

This book brings together chapters by experts in the field of conflict, peace, security and development, and case studies of research by doctoral and masters students involved with development in a practical way. The study is organised around two ways of explaining violent conflict - resource-based and identity-based approaches. Authors come from a...

This chapter explores examples of how pro-asylum advocates challenge the harsh measures used to punish those who try to enter or reside in the EU illegally, taking examples from The Netherlands and the UK. We explore organized resistance to the ‘3-Ds’, which are so typical of EU-wide migration policies: destitution, detention and deportation. Toget...

When the journal Ethnicities was launched in 2001, the first issue included an article by this author, which examined the politics of 'race' and identity as central ingredients in the Rwanda genocide of 1994. This current article considers how political identities have been reconstructed since the genocide, especially from above. History, law and p...

Global governance in an era of human rights is beset by a number of unavoid- able paradoxes. One is that as more states are increasingly held accountable for fulfilling legal obligations towards citizens, the same states are also obliged to collude in economic and financial deregulation processes that undermine and challenge both state sovereignty...

Any adequate account of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda must acknowledge manipulation by external forces, domestic pressures and psychological factors. Even so, the nature of the Rwandan state must be seen as absolutely central. The genocide took place under the aegis of the state, and Rwandans were the main actors involved. Both precolonial legacies a...

This chapter considers how simulating the Rohingya crisis online, through role play, involving real individuals, led participants to construct their own experience-based knowledge of the Rohingya crisis. We suggest this kind of learning can go beyond the usual knowledge of formal academic writing and reports, associated with classroom-based learni...

This concluding chapter revisits the three main themes: the politics of death, art and refuge. Artistic nomadism, a concept inspired by late Congolese-Belgian cultural critic Felix Kaputu, is presented as an integrative concept to help us think about what it means to decolonise the contemporary art world. I reflect on organised denial and what this...

In this chapter, I consider some examples of undocumented people engaging in self-advocacy, drawing on cases from Scotland and The Netherlands. These more hopeful stories around undocumented people advocating for their own rights show what is possible. Whilst living without status for years can erode prospects for the future, failed asylum seekers...

This chapter introduces the concept of Collage+, involving complex layering of mediums, techniques and meanings, examining the work of four contemporary global artists in particular. Each reflects on his or her own work and on engagement with global art trends and markets. Steve Bandoma, Maurice Mbikayi and Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo are from the Dem...

This chapter, co-authored with Des Gasper, explores Dutch ‘convivial racism’, and connects this kind of response to immigration to a latent ‘fear of flooding’ and Dutch hydropolitics. The chapter explores the idea that white Dutch citizens’ everyday forms of racism are unconsciously connected with a pervasive, but unacknowledged, ‘fear of flooding’...

In Brexit Britain, three crises are shown in this essay to have been superimposed, one on the other, over a decade. Brexit is the linking and defining crisis, but altogether I show that three unresolved crises succeeded one another, adding up to a generalised crisis of legitimacy of the British Establishment. Brexit may even spell the end of the UK...

This chapter considers the politics of art during the inter-war and early Cold War through the life and art of Kazimir Malevich and Mark Rothko. The paradoxes of artistic and political ‘freedom’ under two clashing systems are related to each artist’s own existential and material uncertainties. In late, slippery capitalism, artists can sometimes see...

The opening chapter introduces themes of art, death and refuge, in the setting of ‘liquid’ late capitalism, and the ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences. This chapter discusses multi-layered approaches across three main themes: (1) the politics of artists’ lives, and their search for freedom and decolonisation through artwork, from the early twe...

This chapter reflects on the persistence of genocide denial in Rwanda. I draw on Stanley Cohen’s, States of Denial, to show three types of organised genocide denial that persist (literal, interpretative and implicatory). Genocide against Tutsi started on 6 April, after the President’s plane was shot down. Targeted killings ended only once the RPA (...

Continuing from Chap. 4 with the theme of death, Chap. 5 asks about the circumstances in which tens of thousands of migrants crossing the Mediterranean have been left by EU states to drown, being rescued at sea by civilians, and then are returned to Libya or Turkey. Especially since 2015, a plethora of studies has emerged on this question of ‘push-...

Helen M. Hintjens examines initiatives to provide sanctuary to undocumented peoples. She notes that these initiatives are frequently local and grassroots, often led by faith‐based groups, in opposition to centralised governmental policies. Positive examples are available globally. In the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Islami...

This chapter situates human mobility at the intersection of security and development. Capitalism prompted much of the population of Europe to move out of rural areas into cities, and from there imperialism led to huge forced and voluntary migration towards settler colonies. By tying development funding and humanitarian aid to cooperation of develop...

The intersection of forced migration and post-war justice in the African Great Lakes region.

This invited short article reflects on whether the persecution of Falun Gong adherents in China is tantamount to genocide. In the article, I conclude that it is.

Recent warfare in Eastern DRC, especially since 2015, is marked by violence inspired by ‘race’ narratives. Identity politics around ‘race’ is used to legitimise ‘expressive’ or reprisal-oriented violence against ‘Hamitic’ or ‘Tutsi’ minorities. The case of the Banyamulenge of South Kivu is examined in this article. Following Autesserre, we show tha...

In the sensitive post-genocide cultural landscape of Rwanda, this research considers the significance of the recent revival of a musical group that was first popular in the pre-genocide Habyarimana era. Orchestre Impala was perhaps the most popular musical group of the late 1970s and 1980s, and its revival represents something of a novelty in Rwand...

This article discusses three different forms of genocide denial that have—broadly speaking—followed one another in post-genocide Rwanda since 1994. Genocide denial is considered a stage of genocide, and each of these three forms of genocide denial is outlined, drawing on the seminal study on denial of Stanley Cohen. The article suggests that collec...

In this introductory article, the main theoretical concerns guiding this thematic issue are briefly discussed, alongside an overview of relevant literature on rights and urban citizenship. We draw on the work of Engin on ‘enacted citizenship,’ and combine Hannah Arendt’s ‘right to have rights’ with Henri Lefebvre’s ‘right to the city,’ for inspirat...

Transitional Justice and Forced Migration - edited by Nergis Canefe November 2019

Abstract: For decades, European Union (EU) member states have fought an illegal proxy war – a form of state crime – against refugees and migrants, far beyond EU external borders. Fatalities make this proxy war equivalent to international classifications of war. To justify this war, migrants have progressively been reclassified by the EU as “illegal...

For decades, European Union (EU) member states have fought an illegal proxy war – a form of state crime – against refugees and migrants, far beyond EU external borders. Fatalities make this proxy war equivalent to international classifications of war. To justify this war, migrants have progressively been reclassified by the EU as “illegal” or crimi...

The EU has tried to distinguish itself as respecting human rights in its migration policies. In 2015, mass drownings at sea of refugees from war‐torn and despotic countries like Syria and Eritrea started to rise with the end of Mare Nostrum, the Italian navy's search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean. One EU response was to declare a war on...

For decades, European Union (EU) member states have fought an illegal proxy war – a form of state crime – against refugees and migrants, far beyond EU external borders. Fatalities make this proxy war equivalent to international classifications of war. To justify this war, migrants have progressively been reclassified by the EU as “illegal” or crimi...

This chapter reflects on one innovative classroom learning experiment, which involved approaching the concept of ‘Liberal Peace’ from a holistic Peace Studies perspective. As part of their studies in the course, Governance, Conflict Analysis and Conflict Management, Masters and doctoral students reflected on the relevance and irrelevance of this co...

Increasingly subjected to restrictions on the borders, in camps, detention centres, suburbs of metropolises, and treated as second class citizens, those who migrate because political, economic and social structures fail to provide them with protection in their countries of origins face what we term ‘containment’ policies. These policies aim to excl...

This essay explores the gap said to exist between scholars and advocates in the world today, including scholars of social movements and social change. We suggest this gap is more apparent than real, more constructed than given, and a matter of politics itself. We identify powerful forces that serve, from both within and outside the university syste...

Short paper presented at a confererence on Gender and Migration in Istanbul 2013

This edited volume brings together original case study research from Uganda and other East African countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda) working in the broad field of social justice. The volume was conceived as part of the Nuffic-funded NICHE project Mainstreaming and Strengthening the Social Development Component of JLOS in Uganda (2011-15). Contrib...

As UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjöld shaped many of the fundamental principles and practices of international organisations, such as preventive diplomacy, the ethics of international civil service, impartiality and neutrality. He was also at the heart of the constitutional foundations and principles of the UN. This tribute and critical review...

In Surveillance Studies, routinized surveillance systems are often regarded as public (and corporate) interference in the private lives of citizens. On the other hand, it is often recognised that surveillance of citizens is also often the counterpart of fundamental rights being guaranteed by the state, especially in fields of economic and social ri...

In this chapter the contribution of land to post-genocide reconstruction in Rwanda is reflected on from a social justice perspective, prioritising the rights of the most vulnerable. The chapter outlines the efforts to implement the 2005 Land Law and Land Policy. Gender equality is one goal of land governance, and this sits uneasily with the wider g...

This article, covering the period 2003–2010, is concerned with those Iraqis whose asylum claims in the UK have been rejected in recent years and who have found ‘nowhere to run’. A deterrence-based UK immigration regime has undermined many of their basic rights since the start of the war. And despite wide public knowledge about the dangers of return...

This article traces the contours of the complex, often obscure administrative and governance arrangements that have framed relationships between the Caribbean Overseas Territories of the UK in recent years. Relations between the governments of Anguilla, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands (BVI), Caymans, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos and the UK gove...

This article introduces an approach, a set of methodologies, that may be of interest to researchers who wish to understand the realities of undocumented people and other ‘difficult to contact’ groups, including in the Netherlands. Given that there are proposals to criminalise undocumented status in the Netherlands, something that has already happen...

Country of Origin Information (COI) is an integral part of asylum decision-making in the UK and is used at all stages of the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process to assess applications for refugee status or other forms of international protection. It informs decision makers and legal advisers about the political, social, cultural, economic, a...

Background and context. Production of Country of Origin Information (COI). Country of Origin Information (COI) is an integral part of asylum decision-making in the UK and is used at all stages of the Refugee Status Determination (RSD) process to assess applications for refugee status or other forms of international protection (Morgan et al. 2003; I...

This chapter considers whether the transitional Government of National Unity has been able to reconstruct Rwandan political identities along non-racial lines a decade and a half after the genocide. During the genocide itself, the “local peasants in the hills, manipulated by the state to kill their erstwhile neighbours” were split irreconcilably alo...

As narrow forms of state-based security takes center stage in global realities, little people everywhere use whatever weapons they have—their bodies, networks, social and organizational skills, and creativity—to defend themselves against threats to their broadly defined human security and to their dignity as citizens. Determined states can respond...

This study addresses political participation rights from the perspective of a social movement. We focus on the case of the NO movement which emerged in Costa Rica in 2007 in the run-up to the Referendum on ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). The study explores some ways the NO movement sought to make political partici...

A brief chapter in an Encyclopedia-type volume on the History of Nations and Nationalism. The file contains the details of the book, but not a pdf of the Chapter itself.

A review article of the following texts: Augustin Cyiza: Un homme libre au Rwanda, by Thierry Cruvellier et al. Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2004; pp. 217. ISBN 2845 86552X (pb); Exilés, réfugiés, déplacés en Afrique central et orientale, by André Guichaoua (ed). Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2004; pp.1066. ISBN 2845865236 (pb); Rwanda 1994: Les politique...

This commentary piece reflects on the range of contributions to this Special Issue, considering the ways in which the European context fails to offer more inclusionary notions of citizenship in the current era. A long-term decline in state legitimacy in Europe and in the UK cannot be offset by the intensified policing of insecurity that is known as...

This chapter considers some of the key institutional innovations in Rwanda since the genocide. Their impact is assessed in relation to the claim of the transitional regime (1994-2002) and the government since then, to be reconstructing Rwanda as a unified nation. The chapter considers how official narratives about the genocide and post-genocide era...

This review essay surveys the theoretical insights emerging from within the Global Justice and Solidarity Movement, also known as the Anti-Globalisation Movement, or the Movement of the Movements, and also reviews the literature focused on this phenomenon by those closely involved, as well as other observers. The central concern is to understand th...

The legacy of the genocide of 1994 has spread from Rwanda to the wider Great Lakes region, and its most damaging effects have been felt in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), former Zaire. Here an economy based on pillage and force of arms has been organized by local elites, and the Rwandan state, ensuring also on behalf of the West that it...

In June 2005, the author interviewed five Sudanese men. All but one had been failed by UK asylum procedures. Their stories are related to other examples of similarly desperate asylum seekers throughout the UK and the effects of policies of forced destitution, detention and deportation are described.

According to Frantz Fanon, decolonisation starts out as ‘a programme of complete disorder’. This idea is interestingly echoed in the Creole expression ‘ce on dezod ka me lod’, which translated means that through chaos comes order. In 1998–1999 Martinique lost 23,000 working days; strikers blockaded the ports of Pointe à Pitre in Guadeloupe and Fort...

The term ‘identity’ tends to have positive connotations. This article presents an example of a lethal form of identity politics, where self-expression was not possible for victims or victimizers. At the time, killings in Rwanda in 1994 were presented by (and to) the international media as the outcome of deep-seated ‘ethnic’ or ‘tribal’ hatred, betw...

Energy Resources Australia, a subsidiary of the Australia company North Ltd has been mining uranium at Ranger mine in Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory since the 1970s. When ERA proposed opening a second uranium mine at Jabiluka, near Ranger, the Jabiluka Action Group (JAG) was formed to oppose this move. JAG joined forces with Mirrar Aborig...

While global problems of poverty, inequality, and social upheaval are on the increase, the language used by development agencies and development experts sounds increasingly radical and idealistic. New socio-political conditions have been borrowed from real contexts in the South, only to be re-imposed on Southern 'partners'. Notions like empowerment...

The remaining Caribbean dependencies of Britain, France and the Netherlands are constitutionally diverse. Yet in none of the territories is there evidence of significant support for independence. Dissatisfaction exists with central control, but this does not produce separatist pressures. On the contrary, there is the general expectation that contin...

The Sahel region has become fairly well known as an environmentally vulnerable region where human inventiveness and collective organisation have been able to reverse processes of land degradation, brought about by earlier 'maldevelopment'. This paper sets out to explore schisms between local accounts of the spiritual significance of environmental d...

The Sahel region has become fairly well known as an environmentally vulnerable region where human inventiveness and collective organisation have been able to reverse processes of land degradation, brought about by earlier 'maldevelopment'. This paper sets out to explore schisms between local accounts of the spiritual significance of environmental d...

By focusing on some exceptional forms of North-South post-colonial relatoins, this study highlights some crucial limitations of a state-centric appraoch to decolonisation. By inversion, a kind of mirror-image, the book looks at instances and place where decolonisation proceded through integration and equal rights demands, rather than through separa...