The nature and features of conflict as a concept are often misunderstood, particularly by people outside
the domain of peace and conflict
or other related social science disciplines. To them, any form of conflict is war. It is commonplace
to find people describing a little disagreement between people as
war because of the underlying social implications of such a disagreement, whereas, an outright physical combat between another set of people might be seen and handled as mere disagreement. This in essence implies that the socio-psychological factors surrounding a particular conflict would determine its future dynamics and dictate the choice
of resolution mechanism to apply. This paper sets out to examine the Rwandan conflict of 1994 as it relates to the concept of genocide and to determine its relationship with war as a concept.