Rwandan Genocide

Death of Thousands

For: Mr. Roukema

By: Jonathan Westerveld

CHY4U

Due: June 10, 2013

Rwanda is a small country in the middle of southern Africa. There are two factions of people in Rwanda: the majority known as Hutus, and the minority known as the Tutsis. In the past the only difference between the two groups was that the Tutsi were the wealthy aristocrats while everyone who was poor were Hutu. When Germany imperialized Rwanda the difference between the two groups became greater. The Germans saw the Tutsi as the dominant people due to their lighter complexion and taller build. Furthermore, being wealthier than the Hutu, the Germans gave the Tutsi most of governing responsibilities. After World War One, Rwanda was taken away from Germany and given to Belgium. The Belgians segregated the two groups by making in mandatory for all Rwanda's to be labelled as Tutsi of Hutu on their identity papers. The Belgians also gave all government control to the Tutsi people. The empowered Tutsi angered the oppressed Hutu, so in the 1960's, the Belgians flipped the two around and gave the Hutu control of the government to try and prevent an uprising. This switch of power angered the Tutsi people and the hostility between the two groups grew creating the tension that caused the Rwandan Genocide of 1994. (Rosenburg)

Genocide is defined as the deliberate destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group. It occurs when one or more groups of people decide to systematically kill men, women, and children of another group. In Rwanda, the tension between the Hutu and Tutsi peoples continued to escalate to the point that the Hutu began to kill members of the Tutsi population. It is estimated that over 800, 00 Tutsi and Hutu people died in a span of 100 days between April and July in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 (Carlson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati,).

The United Nations is an organization made up of the majority of countries in the world. The mission of the UN is ensuring international peace, cooperation, and security. The UNAMIR, which stands for the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda. The Security Council had control over sending recruits, supplies, and gave direct orders to the UNAMIR. In the Rwandan Genocide of 1994 the United Nations' efforts fell short of the completing their duty to preserve peace and security as they ignored the facts and signs and reacted with a lack of will to intervene.

The United Nations Security Council ignored the signs of the imminent genocide that were raised to their attention by Waly Bacre Ndiaye. He was the UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, and had visited Rwanda from April 8-17, 1993 to gather information. He was given the objective to report the degree to which human rights were being violated in Rwanda. In his report he commented on the terrible injustices and violent atrocities that occurred regularly. He stated "that the victims of the attacks, Tutsis in the overwhelming majority of cases, have been targeted solely because of a certain ethnic group and for no other objective reason" (Ndiaye, page 23). Ndiaye blew the whistle on the risk of genocide in Rwanda, with that statement, and later in his report recommended steps that should have been taken to try and prevent further violations. Rather than listening and reacting swiftly the members within the Security Council ignored Ndaiye's report and considered Rwanda's situation as unimportant. (Carlson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati).

The United Nations showed an ignorance for the conditions in Rwanda when they established UNAMIR on October 5, 1993. The Security Council created the mandate that made UNAMIR a peacekeeping force of 1428 military personnel. This means they were only allowed to intervene actively if they were shot at, threatened, or given permission by the Security Council. (Carlson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati) Canadian lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was the head of UNAMIR. On January 11, 1994, Dallaire sent a message to the Security Council regarding an informant from the Hutu from the Hutu camp who told him of weapon caches, plans to provoke and kill Belgium soldiers so they withdraw, and tactics to exterminate Tutsi civilians. Dallaire asked that the informant be given protected evacuation from Rwanda and he asked for permission to intervene and seize the weapon caches. The council responded by giving him orders to not intervene. (Carlson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati) Everything the informant told Dallaire came true in three months. The Security Council should have taken respectable measures for what the informant had warned of, and taken an active role to prevent the clearly oncoming genocide.

The allowance of Rwandan Government Officials to represent on the Security Council exemplifies the United Nations' practice of ignorance in regards to Rwanda's political situation. The UN decided not to acknowledge and search for the truth regarding rumours of how the Rwandan Government supported and promoted acts of genocide on the Tutsi people. The Rwandan Government supported hate towards the Tutsi people. The fact that newspapers and radio's publicly supported this hatred and even promoted the massacre of the Tutsis in the country's media draws attention to how the government helped commit genocide (Maritz). Dallaire's stated clearly in Shake Hands with the Devil that "We received reports of an increasing number of RGF troops assisting in the genocide" (page 378). This proves that the Rwandese Government Forces, or RGF, reportedly helped train Hutu tribes people, armed them with intent of having them massacre the Tutsi, and even committed the acts of genocide themselves. Despite these reports of major injustices completed by the Rwandan Government the UN allowed Rwandan regime to have a seat in the Security Council on January 1, 1994 (Dallaire, page 145). The UN allowed them to be privy on secure documents about the mission that was in their own country. Also, this Rwandan representative would have expressed a very racist philosophy and biased explanation to events in Security Council discussions and would have told his people in Rwanda all about how the major powers within the UN were treating Rwanda, which would have given them a sense of moral and legal impunity (Maritz). Therefore, the UN should have accepted the facts, recognized the consequences, and denied Rwandan Regime from being members of the Security Council.

The situation arising in Rwanda was received with a lack of will to intervene by many of the major powers in the UN. This is because Rwanda was not a place of strategic interest. It had no desired "natural resources and no geographical significance" (Dallaire, page 88) as it was landlocked. Since there was very little personal gain for most countries to intervene in Rwanda many decided that the costs and the risks were not worth it. The amount of countries that were willing to send soldiers decreased when the Belgians withdrew from Rwanda after they lost 10 soldiers. It was because of the lack of will to intervene practiced by the UN that caused UNAMIR to be unable send appropriate means to prevent such occurrences like the Belgian soldiers' deaths. The UNAMIR had neither the resources nor the permission to mediate between the two peoples of Rwanda. Dallaire was told before the mission even began "to design the mission to fit available resources rather than to respond to the actual demands of the situation" (page 56). He was told that had he designed the mission to respond to the actual demand the mission would have been scrapped by the Security Council due to its expenses and little reward. Many, but not all, of the major powers refused to send troops and intervene in Rwanda as it was of very little political and strategic interest.

There was a driving force of racism behind the lack of will to intervene by the United Nations. April 7-10 was the only time that the Security Council gave UNAMIR permission to use force other than in self-defence. This was almost one week after the genocide officially began. The Security Council requested UNAMIR help, alongside French and Belgian troops, to evacuate foreign Nationals from danger so they could be airlifted out. Not a single Rwandan was rescued by these troops (100 Days of Slaughter). Belgium pulled all of their support from UNAMIR four days after the foreign Nationals' evacuation took place (Carlson, Sung-Joo, and Kupolati, page 12). It was April 21 when the UN Security Council decided that the genocide in Rwanda was past the stage of peacekeeping. However, instead of sending more troops they decreased the UNAMIR presence (100 Days of Slaughter). The west had finally realized that the situation in Rwanda was genocide and had wasted no time to rescue their citizens and evacuate. The world decided that it was more important to save the "whites" rather than the "blacks". The racist approach that the world responded to the genocide should never have been allowed by the UN as it directly affected an even larger lack of will to intervene in Rwanda.

The United Nations should have taken action by gathering the countries that had interest in Rwanda. France is one country that expressed significant political interest in Rwanda in comparison to most other major. Since the Rwandan Government is French-speaking, France sent troops to "show its support for all French-speaking African countries" (Dallaire, page 62). They dispatched troops to the Rwandan Army in spite of the knowledge that ethnic massacres were occurring and it was understood that the Rwandan Government was likely responsible. A few days after April 6, 1994, when the genocide officially began, the French embassy was abandoned. All that they left behind was around 70 soldiers who continued to hand out arms, train militia, control checkpoints and even check identification cards handing Tutsi citizens over to the Rwandan Army (Maritz). The French intervention in favour of the government in Rwanda should have been corrected by the UN almost immediately. The UN was responding to the events of the Rwandan Genocide with laziness and a lack of will to take action. They had a great opportunity to have a strongly supported mission in Rwanda; however they failed to convert that interest into beneficial intervention in Rwanda. The UN should have used the concern that France had for Rwanda to supply the mission with thousands of troops, and then the UN could have actively prevented the genocide in Rwanda.

During the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, the United Nations did not achieve all their requirements as the international protectors of peace and security, because of their ignorance of the actual circumstances and a lack of will to actively intervene. The UN ignored Ndiaye's report on the genocide-imminent country of Rwanda almost a year before the Genocide officially happened. The Security Council failed to raise awareness of the crucial conditions in Rwanda while creating the mandate for UNAMIR. Also the UN showed enormous ignorance of the corruptness in the Rwandan Government was allowed a seat in the Security Council. The UN and other major powers had a lack of will to actively interfere in Rwandan state of affairs as they treated the country with insignificance and racism, as well as not actively ensuring intervention in Rwanda was correct. When faced with the terrible event of the Rwandan Genocide the UN did not succeed in doing all it should to try to prevent and fight the gruesome violations of human rights that occurred.

Work Cited:

Carlson, Ingvar, Han Sung-Joo, and Rufus M. Kupolati. The Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. Rep. N.P.: United Nations, 1999. Web.

Dallaire, Rom. Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003. Print.

Maritz, Dominique. "Rwandan Genocide: Failure of the International Community?" e-ir.info. E-International Relations, 7 Apr. 2012. Web. 2 Dec. 2012. <http://www.e-ir.info/2012/04/07/rwandan-genocide-failure-of-the-international-community/>.

Ndiaye, Bacre W. QUESTION OF THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS AND FUNDAMENTAL FREEDOMS IN ANY PART OF THE WORLD, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO COLONIAL AND OTHER DEPENDENT COUNTRIES AND TERRITORIES. Rep. N.p.: United Nations, 1993. Print.

Rosenburg, Jennifer. "Rwanda Genocide." About.com 20th Century History. About.com, 2012. Web. 02 Dec. 2012. <http://history1900s.about.com/od/rwandangenocide/a/Rwanda-Genocide.htm>.

"100 Days of Slaughter." Pbs.org. PBS, Jan. 1999. Web. 3 Dec. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/>.