The failure of the international community to effectively respond to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been the subject of significant criticism. During a period of around 100 days, between 7 April and 15 July, an estimated 500,000-1,100,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi and moderate Hutu, were murdered by Interahamwe militias.
A United Nations peacekeeping force – UNAMIR – had been stationed in Rwanda since October 1993, but once the mass slaughter began, the UN and the Belgian Government elected to withdraw troops rather than reinforce the contingent and deploy a larger force. The piecemeal peacekeeping force on the ground was both unable and unauthorised to make any real attempt at stopping the violence, and their role was reduced to seeking a political agreement between the Rwandan Patriotic Front and the Interim Hutu Power government, as well as protecting selected havens for Tutsi who were seeking refuge, such as Amahoro Stadium and the Hôtel des Mille Collines. The inaction of the UN in the face of genocide is widely considered one of the UN’s most shameful moments.
Background
Particularly since the era of Belgian colonialism, where previously fluid ethnic identities were crystallised through administrative selection and the institution of identity cards, divisions between the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority had been the source of frequently violent political tensions. Shortly before independence, the Tutsi ruling class instituted by the Belgians was overthrown by the Hutu revolution in 1959. Over the following decades, multiple instances of ethnically-motivated pogroms and massacres took place, and as a result many Tutsi – over 300,000 – fled Rwanda to neighbouring countries.
In 1990, a group of 4,000 Rwandan exiles, the Rwandan Patrotic Front, advanced into Rwanda from Uganda, commencing the Rwandan Civil War. A peace agreement, the Arusha Accords, was signed in 1993, bringing most of the fighting to an end. The RPF were given positions in a Broad-Based Transitional Government (BBTG) and in the national army. To monitor the peace agreement, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), a peacekeeping force, arrived in the country and the RPF were given a base in the national parliament building in Kigali, for use during the setting up of the BBTG.
On 6 April 1994, President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down over Kigali, killing him, as well as the President of Burundi, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The event served as a catalyst for mass killings of Tutsi and moderate Hutu by the Interahamwe – militias supported by politicians and other key figures who were part of the Hutu Power movement.
The movement recruited and pressured Hutu civilians to arm themselves with machetes, clubs, blunt objects, and other weapons and encouraged them to rape, maim, and kill their Tutsi neighbors and to destroy or steal their property. The RPF restarted its offensive soon after Habyarimana's assassination. It rapidly seized control of the northern part of the country and captured Kigali about 100 days later in mid-July, bringing an end to the genocide. The overall death toll of the Genocide is disputed, but most scholars estimate between 500,000 and 800,000 Tutsi deaths, and up to 1.1 million overall deaths.
Early warnings
Before the killings began, several warnings made to UN peacekeepers and international observers went unheeded. As Rwanda expert Alison Des Forges put it, in her report for Human Rights Watch, "the preparations for violence took place in full view of a U.N. peacekeeping force".
The most infamous warning came on 11 January 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of UNAMIR, sent his "Genocide Fax" to UN Headquarters. The fax stated that Dallaire was in contact with "a top level trainer in the cadre of Interhamwe-armed [sic] militia of MRND." The informant—now known to be Mathieu Ngirumpatse's chauffeur, Kassim Turatsinze, a.k.a. "Jean-Pierre"—claimed to have been ordered to register all Tutsi in Kigali. According to the memo, Turatsinze suspected that a genocide against the Tutsis was being planned, and he said that "in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis".