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Des Forges, senior adviser to the group's Africa division for almost two decades, dedicated her life to working on Rwanda and was the world's leading expert on the 1994 Rwanda genocide and its aftermath.
Continental Flight 3407, on a flight from Newark in New Jersey to Buffalo, plummeted onto the house in Clarence Center late Thursday.
The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop plane exploded on impact about five minutes before it was due to land, killing all 49 passengers and crew.
One person in the crushed house also died.
"She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights activist - principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said of Des Forges.
"She was among the first to highlight the ethnic tensions that led to the genocide, and when it happened and the world stood by and watched, Alison did everything humanly possible to save people."
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda based in Arusha, Tanzania, on Saturday voiced its sadness at her death.
"It is with deep shock that the tribunal has learned of the tragic disappearance of Alison des Forges. It is a great loss for the world of human rights, international justice and all humanity, " a spokesman for the UN tribunal, Roland Amoussouga, told AFP.
Des Forges appeared as an expert witness in 11 trials for genocide at the ICTR, three trials in Belgium, and at trials in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada.
Her book "No Witness Must Survive" is regarded as the reference work on the Rwandan genocide.
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Image of Alison des Forges, by Paul Hawthorne.
Continental Flight 3407, on a flight from Newark in New Jersey to Buffalo, plummeted onto the house in Clarence Center late Thursday.
The Bombardier Dash 8 Q400 turboprop plane exploded on impact about five minutes before it was due to land, killing all 49 passengers and crew.
One person in the crushed house also died.
"She was truly wonderful, the epitome of the human rights activist - principled, dispassionate, committed to the truth and to using that truth to protect ordinary people," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said of Des Forges.
"She was among the first to highlight the ethnic tensions that led to the genocide, and when it happened and the world stood by and watched, Alison did everything humanly possible to save people."
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda based in Arusha, Tanzania, on Saturday voiced its sadness at her death.
"It is with deep shock that the tribunal has learned of the tragic disappearance of Alison des Forges. It is a great loss for the world of human rights, international justice and all humanity, " a spokesman for the UN tribunal, Roland Amoussouga, told AFP.
Des Forges appeared as an expert witness in 11 trials for genocide at the ICTR, three trials in Belgium, and at trials in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Canada.
Her book "No Witness Must Survive" is regarded as the reference work on the Rwandan genocide.
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Image of Alison des Forges, by Paul Hawthorne.
