Students’ research. The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Rwandan National Reconciliation Politics

Project idea

The main goal of this research is to contribute to the general field of research on internal processes and development trends in Africa by providing relevant data, and to improve research competencies of the student by carrying out analysis on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on national reconciliation politics in Rwanda. Despite being a health crisis, an unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly has influenced many other spheres. Different states have chosen different strategies to stop the virus from spreading and to control its consequences. Based on the previous experiences of force majeure disasters, which had not only unexpected but also impactful, destructive effects, academics point out that this crisis and its results may be also abused. Therefore, the pandemic has contributed to the accumulation of power in non-democratic regimes as well as to the expansion of their interests and influence both nationally and globally.

The case of Rwanda is interesting as its reconciliation politics are especially internalized and centralized. Thus, it is important to analyse the impact of crisis on the transitional justice and the implementation of national reconciliation politics, as it is directly related to the quality of democracy in the country and to the long-term results to peace and conflict processes. There is a lack of research on power accumulation in the context of the pandemic that would employ the mechanisms of transitional period. Therefore, this gap may be significantly filled by the student’s research and the primary data collected. The results of this project will be useful both on academic and on practical level, thus, they will be disseminated to the main stakeholders. Systematized data and theoretical insights on the influence of COVID-19 pandemic to the process of reconciliation will enable the researcher to formulate evidence-based recommendations to the representatives of international institutions and organizations.