in 1959. The economic disparities between the Hutus and Tutsis aided to the already volatile and hostile situation .Neither Rwanda nor Burundi has ever been economically successful. Both of these countries depend on predominantly on agriculture. Around 90 percent of the export revenues of these countries come from the production of coffee and tea. Both of these nations have huge financial debts and outrageously high poverty levels. In the early 1990’s, there was a worldwide recession and as a result the profits from coffee and tea sales fell. The falling profits and the loss of wages only heightened the already tense situation. In Burundi, the Tutsi minority who controlled and owned most of the countries plantations were resented by the working class Hutu. Although not all Tutsi’s were wealthy and not all Hutu were poor, the dire economic environment only magnified the situation. The Tutsis in Burundi, fearful of a Tutsi lead Rwandan Patriotic front (RPF) take over murdered hundreds of thousands . Up to this point I have not explained why I am classifying this as a social problem rather than ethnic problem. This is not the latter because in Rwanda, along with the thousands of Tutsi’s that the extremist Hutu slaughtered, were many moderate Hutu. The genocide that occurred was not an ethnic conflict but a social-political conflict. The Hutu who ere killed by the extremist militias were slaughtered because they did not share the same political views.During the Rwandan genocide, fear and insecurity promoted violence. Ethnic consciousness, created by the existing government, and hunger for land led peaceful Hutu farmers to participate in the massacre of their neighbors. This caused the Tutsis to act violently in response. In 1994, 10,000 persons a day were murdered. In Rwanda the threat of losing control is what sparked the genocide .In Burundi, violence has increased with intensity. As in Rwanda the armed ...
