Refugee camp in Zaire during the Rwandan genocide
An ethnic conflict or ethnic war is a war between ethnic groups, often due to ethnic nationalism. In the aftermath of the Cold War there arose a wave of such conflicts. Often ethnic conflicts result in war crimes such as genocide. Scientificly, for the reasons, three types of theories exist: primordialist, instrumentalist and constructivistic, which are more recently combined with the aim of understanding the phenomenon.
From an primordialist point of view, an ethnic conflict arises because there are fundamental inviolable differences between populations in traditions, faith, and language. From an instrumentalist point of view, the ethnic background is used only as an instrument to ensure conflict with another population group. Finally, constructivism states that a conflict arises based on knowledge and experiences propagated within a particular population group. An example of this is the conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis, which originated from identity papers, which were awarded by Belgian colonial power in 1930. In this the population groups were subdivided on the basis of trivial matters such as cattle size, physical characteristics and church visits. Over the years, both groups are increasingly identifying themselves.
The scientific debate has also focused on the issue of whether or not ethnic conflicts have occurred since the end of the Cold War and finding ways to control conflicts through instruments like consociationalism and federalization. >
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