No two other states in Africa have as much in common as Rwanda and Burundi in terms of size, social structure, language, and colonial experience; yet their trajectories since independence have been radically different. Both have experienced genocide, but the victims in each case belonged to different ethnic communities; they both went through the agonies of civil war, but emerged from this ordeal with strikingly contrasting political systems and approaches to ethnicity. A key issue in the reconstruction of their societies centers on how to reconcile the claims of the Hutu majority with the rights of the Tutsi minority. While Rwanda has outlawed public references to ethnic labels in an attempt to promote national unity, Burundi has institutionalized a power-sharing formula based on the explicit recognition of ethnic identities. Rwanda's power holders are overwhelmingly Tutsi, unlike Burundi where power is broadly shared between Hutu and Tutsi. Yet elements of convergence should not be ignored: in the wake of recent presidential and legislative elections there is an unmistakable trend in both states toward authoritarianism and human rights violations.