What Was the Role of the International Community during the Genocide?

The international community’s inaction during the Genocide against the Tutsi is a source of shame and regret.

After the Arusha agreement led to a ceasefire in the 1993 Civil War, the UN deployed UNAMIR, a peacekeeping force, to monitor the implementation of the negotiated settlement. The Force Commander was a Canadian General – Roméo Dallaire.

In his book Shake Hands with the Devil, he recounts sending the infamous ‘Dallaire Fax’ on January 11 1994. The fax referred to information from a highly-ranked member of the Interahamwe militia, who had informed him that registration lists of ‘all the Tutsi in Kigali’ were being made, and that ‘in 20 minutes his personnel could kill up to 1000 Tutsis’.

Despite clear evidence of planned murder, the international community failed to take action. According to Alison Des Forges, the French government ‘certainly knew about the preparations for killing Tutsi and opponents of Hutu Power’, yet ‘continued to support the Rwandan government diplomatically’. Belgium, on the other hand ‘tried hardest to respond to the warnings of imminent slaughter’, but their calls for a bolstered peacekeeping force went unheeded.

Once the genocide against the Tutsi began, international powers were reluctant to intervene outside of evacuating their own personnel from Rwanda. Samantha Power observed that American officials, and other diplomats around the world, avoided the word ‘genocide’ at all costs. Seemingly, they were ‘afraid that using it would have obliged [them] to act under the terms of the 1948 genocide convention’.

As the genocide raged on, rather than bolstering the peacekeeping force, the UN retreated. On 21 April 1994, UNAMIR shrank to just 270 troops. With deaths numbering in the tens and hundreds of thousands, the UN reluctantly approved UNAMIR II which would provide 5,500 more troops. The implementing resolution (Res. 924 1995) came a full two months after the killings began – after, according to Secretary General Boutros-Ghali – up to half a million people had already been killed. According to an OECD report, the deployment of this resolution took two months: the reinforcements arrived ‘after the civil war and genocide were over’.

Alongside UNAMIR II, the French government announced that they would be sending a mission to establish a ‘safe zone’ in South-West Rwanda. Their intervention, which involved 2,500 soldiers, was named ‘Operation Turquoise’.

This operation become infamous for its misguided nature. It enabled thousands of militia men to flee unhindered, and the roadblocks that paved the way to safety might have even enhanced the speed of killing. According to Samantha Power, the French ignored the fact that Radio Mille Collines’s messages which encouraged the killing of Tutsis were being broadcast from the ‘Zone Turquoise’. They also neglected to arrest or apprehend any militia leaders.

Eventually, the Genocide was brought to an end by the RPF forces when they reached Kigali. In recent years, many UN officials have expressed regret, sorrow and shame for their lack of action in 1994.