Obituary: Alison L. Des Forges, 66, Human-Rights Activist

Alison L. Des Forges, a historian known for documenting the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and a senior adviser to the New York organization Human Rights Watch, died Thursday night as a passenger on Continental Airlines Flight 3407 when it crashed near Buffalo, N.Y. according to The New York Times. She was 66.

Ms. Des Forges, who served as senior adviser to Human Rights Watch’s Africa division, received a 375,000 “genius grant” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 1999. Her book of that year, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, is widely recognized as a definitive record of that era.

“Her death is a devastating blow,” Kenneth Roth, the president of Human Rights Watch, wrote in an e-mail message today to the group’s board. “She epitomized the human rights activist — principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people.”

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