Taba was a commune located in the historic

Gitarama Prefecture Gitarama was one of the former twelve provinces (''intara'') of Rwanda and was situated in the centre of the country, to the west of the capital Kigali. Gitarama Prefecture was created in 1959, increasing the number of prefectures of Rwanda from ...

Rwanda Rwanda (; rw, u Rwanda ), officially the Republic of Rwanda, is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley of Central Africa, where the African Great Lakes region and Southeast Africa converge. Located a few degrees south of the Equator ...

. During the

Rwandan genocide The Rwandan genocide occurred between 7 April and 15 July 1994 during the Rwandan Civil War. During this period of around 100 days, members of the Tutsi minority ethnic group, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were killed by armed Hutu ...

in 1994 massacres and atrocities were committed in Taba. The Hutu

Interahamwe The Interahamwe ( or ) is a Hutu paramilitary organization active in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. The Interahamwe was formed around 1990 as the youth wing of the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND ...

militia murdered hundreds of Tutsi and Tutsi women were raped in government offices. The mayor of Taba, at the time of the atrocities, was

Jean Paul Akayesu Jean-Paul Akayesu (born 1953 in Taba) is a former teacher, school inspector, and Republican Democratic Movement (MDR) politician from Rwanda, convicted of genocide for his role in inciting the Rwandan genocide. Life Akayesu was the mayor of T ...

. Akayesu was the first person convicted of

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin ...

by the

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR; french: Tribunal pénal international pour le Rwanda; rw, Urukiko Mpanabyaha Mpuzamahanga Rwashyiriweho u Rwanda) was an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nation ...

(ICTR). After the genocide (ASOFERWA) built a "Peace Village" in Taba. The ICTR contributed 15% of the needed budget to build the 23 houses of the "Peace Village". There were concerns at the time about overlap between those implementing the reparations project and those involved with the criminal proceedings at the Tribunal. Elections were held in Taba on March 29, 1999. The elections consisted of groups of 50-100 families selecting a committee of 10 persons who would vote in elections for the larger administrative areas. The voting was accomplished by supporters publicly queueing behind their candidate of choice.

References

{{coord missing, Rwanda Former subdivisions of Rwanda