03/19/2004

 On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira, was shot down just outside of Kigali, the Rwandan capital. Immediately, radical Hutu elements of the Rwandan Armed Forces (RAF) and the interahamwe (radical Hutu militia) swung into action, systematically executing the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutus. In a few short weeks, eight hundred thousand people were butchered to death with machetes and pitchforks, as well as with more conventional arms, in one of the worst acts of genocide since World War II.

The roots of the genocide lie within the colonial past of Rwanda and its neighbor, Burundi, which were colonies of first Germany, then Belgium.  Colonial policy differentiated between the Hutu and the Tutsi, though they have common ancestors. Hutu comprise approximately 85% of the Rwandan population and the Tutsi 14%. In Rwandan society, however, the Tutsi held political power through the Tutsi monarchy. The Belgians viewed the Tutsi as a superior race, and consequently used deliberate administrative policies to institutionalize the status of the Tutsi as the political elite in the country.

From the late 1950s onwards, periodic Hutu uprisings in Rwanda led to the displacement of Tutsis, mostly to neighboring countries.  Hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled Rwanda, and over the years became increasingly unified in external opposition movements.  The government in Rwanda became Hutu-run in the 1970s, and pursued discriminatory policies against the Tutsis.

By 1990, Rwanda was in political crisis. Tutsi exiles seized the opportunity, and in October of that year, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda. During the civil war, the government sponsored attacks on the Tutsi population, a precursor to the events of 1994.  The civil war in Rwanda also led to a massive number of internally displaced persons (IDPs); by 1993, nearly one million Rwandans, out of a total population of seven million, were displaced.  Peace accords were signed in August 1993 between the Rwandan government and the RPF forces in Arusha, Tanzania.  The Arusha Accords were never really implemented, and shortly after their signing, the Rwandan government organized, trained and armed the interahamwe.

Detailed plans for the genocide were made, with maps showing the location of Tutsis, and lists of Tutsis and moderate Hutus who were targeted for execution. The downing of the Presidents’ plane provided the pretext to launch the genocide, which was incited and aided by use of radio broadcasts.

At the time of the genocide, a small UN peacekeeping mission was present in Rwanda, under the command of Canadian General Romeo Dallaire. As tensions increased in Rwanda in the early months of 1994, General Dallaire sent alarming messages to his superiors in New York, including then Under Secretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, Kofi Annan, requesting authorization to take action to avert the possibility of violence. The UN Secretariat ignored these messages. Then as the genocide began to unfold, the peacekeeping mission in Rwanda was reduced even further, especially after ten Belgian soldiers were deliberately killed to intimidate the UN forces. General Dallaire pleaded for more troops, but to no avail. He has frequently stated in the years after the terrible slaughter in Rwanda that had he been given 5,000 soldiers, he might have been able to stop the genocide.

The UN Security Council voted to reduce the size of Dallaire’s peacekeeping mission in large part because after Somalia the U.S. wanted no part of another African peacekeeping disaster.  Some U.S. government officials engaged in deplorable behavior, including verbal acrobatics designed to avoid calling what was happening in Rwanda genocide, because had the events in Rwanda been formally recognized as genocide, the U.S. would have been obliged to act under the terms of the Genocide Convention, to which it is a states party.

As the genocide progressed with incredible swiftness in April 1994, the RPF, which had halted military activities after the signing of the Arusha Accords, re-launched its military offensive against the Hutu government. The RPF took advantage of the chaos created by the mass murder and swept across the country, with those responsible for the genocide fleeing before its advance. French troops intervened, but with the intent and effect of protecting the remnants of the government as it retreated south and west towards the Congo.

As the RPF swept through Rwanda, a mass evacuation of the Hutu population out of Rwanda ensued, with around 1.75 million refugees, primarily Hutu, fleeing to the neighboring countries of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Tanzania and Burundi. Massive refugee camps were established, most near the Rwandan borders, camps that housed the Hutu leaders and their followers responsible for the genocide. These camps facilitated the survival of the killers, and when the camps were finally broken up, the interahamwe fled deep into the Congo, in effect extending the Rwandan civil war to the Congo.

On July 18, 1994, the RPF declared victory, and set up a new broad-based government.  Hundreds of thousands of Tutsi refugees, many born in exile, returned to Rwanda. But the past decade has been a troubled one in Rwanda, as the country has struggled to find justice for the victims of the genocide, while the government continued to use its own troops and proxy forces in the Congo to contest the remnants of the interahamwe. Peace, justice, and reconciliation remain elusive, both in Rwanda and in the wider Great Lakes region.

The genocide in Rwanda highlighted the inability of the international community and the United Nations to give meaning to the words "Never Again." The abject failure of peacekeeping during the Rwandan genocide was the impetus for RI’s commitment to improving peacekeeping capacity at the UN.  Ten years after the genocide, however, the world still lacks the capacities needed to deploy effective peacekeeping and stability operations.  Even so, today more policy makers than ever before are aware that such capacities must be created. RI is hopeful that soon, when the question is asked, "What would the world do if another Rwanda happened?" there will be an answer.

Refugees International is a co-sponsor of a month-long series of activities organized by a consortium of Washington-based institutions in commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Rwanda genocide.

Remembering Rwanda has been organized both to remember the victims and the survivors of this horrific event, and to generate a public conversation about the failure to prevent the Rwanda genocide and the lessons that can be learned from that failure.

Sponsoring organizations for Remembering Rwanda Events include:

• Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Refugees International
• International Crisis Group
• Fund for Peace
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Search for Common Ground
• Center for American Progress
• Citizens for Global Solutions
• United States Institute of Peace
• Genocide Watch
• Embassy of Rwanda.