Alison Des Forges

Alison Des Forges
File:AlisonDesForges.jpg
Born	Alison B. Liebhafsky (1942-08-20)August 20, 1942 Schenectady, New York, United States
Died	February 12, 2009(2009-02-12) (aged 66) Clarence Center, New York, United States
Cause of death	Aviation accident
Nationality	American
Education	B.A., M.A., Ph.D. (history)
Alma mater	Radcliffe/Harvard Yale
Known for	Human rights activism
Spouse	Roger V. Des Forges (1964)
Children	2

Alison Des Forges (née Liebhafsky) (August 20, 1942 – February 12, 2009) was an American historian and human rights activist who specialized in the African Great Lakes region, particularly the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. At the time of her death, she was a senior advisor for the African continent at Human Rights Watch.

Life

Des Forges was born Alison B. Liebhafsky on August 20, 1942 to Sybil Small and Herman A. Liebhafsky. She married Roger Des Forges, a historian at the State University of New York at Buffalo who specialized in China, in 1964. Des Forges earned her B.A. in history from Radcliffe College in 1964, and her M.A. and a Ph.D. in the same discipline from Yale University in 1966 and 1972. Her master's thesis and doctoral dissertation both addressed the impact of European colonialism on Rwanda.

In April 1993, she was one of the first outsiders to claim that a full-blown genocide was under way in Rwanda.

Des Forges left academia in 1994 in response to the Rwandan Genocide to work full time on human rights. She testified 11 times before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and gave evidence about the Rwandan Genocide to panels of the French National Assembly, the Belgian Senate, the US Congress, the Organisation of African Unity, and the United Nations. She was also an authority on human rights violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Burundi. She wrote the 1999 Leave None to Tell the Story, in which she argued that the genocide was organized by the Rwandan government that took power in 1994, rather than being a spontaneous outbreak of tribal conflicts. She specialized in the African Great Lakes region and studied the Rwandan Genocide. Des Forges was named a MacArthur Fellow in 1999, and became the senior advisor at Human Rights Watch for the African continent.

She died on February 12, 2009, when her flight, Colgan Air Flight 3407,en route from Newark Liberty International Airport to Buffalo Niagara International Airport, crashed in Clarence Center, New York, a suburb of Buffalo. All 45 passengers along with the four crew died, along with one person on the ground.

Bibliography

• Defeat is the Only Bad News: Rwanda under Musiinga, 1896-1931 - Ph.D thesis at Yale University - 1972 -
• Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda - Human Rights Watch et FIDH - 1999 - ISBN 1-56432-171-1
• Roth, Kenneth; DesForges, Alison (Summer 2002). "Justice or Therapy?". Boston Review.

External links

• Bio at Human Rights Watch website
• Tribute at Human Rights Watch website
• PBS Frontline: Ghosts of Rwanda interview with Alison Des Forges

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