Human Rights: The 1994 Rwanda Genocide

Genocides happen when ethnic divisions become apparent. Many times, these ethnic divisions were due to colonization from people of different race. These cases are especially true in Africa when Europeans colonized their territory, with clear racial divisions between them (Gavin). These genocides go on because of nations acting on ignorance and refusing to help out the nations in turmoil, allowing the genocides to continue, without wasting their own resources. These nations purposefully ignoring the slaughter of people cause the nations to also be guilty of the genocide underway (“The Heart”). The genocide occurred in Rwanda in Central Africa during 1994. The decades of Tutsi oppression of Hutus and the assassination of President Habyarimana in 1994 led to the genocide in Rwanda.

For years, Rwanda has been a hotbed of racial tension. The majority of the Rwandan population is made up of Hutu's, with Tutsi's making up the rest of it. Ever since European colonial powers entered the country and favoured the Tutsi ethnic group over the Hutu by putting Tutsi people in all important positions in society, there has been a decisive political divide between the two groups. This favouring of the Tutsi over the Hutu, and the Hutu subjugation as an ethnic lower class resulted in the civil war and revolution of 1959, where the Hutu overthrew the Tutsi dominated government, and resulted in Rwanda gaining their independence in 1962.

Rwanda is a country located in the middle of the African continent. The two ethnic groups present in the country lived in peace under their monarch until the arrival of Europeans. The Belgians arrival into Rwandan is what split the two ethnic groups of the Tutsi and Hutus, making them identify themselves with ID cards. This caused tension between the two groups as the Belgians favored the ethnic Tutsi, and made them the head of the government. Decade’s later Hutu extremists would take over the government and have revenge on the Tutsi. The new government would send out broadcasts calling on Hutus to kill their friends and neighbors. The Rwandan genocide would become the worst genocide to ever happen in Africa and one of the worst in the world. Today Rwanda’s recovery is surprisingly fast with the help of multiple nations and organizations. Rwanda’s recovery is nothing short of a miracle and is an amazing story of a war between two peoples.

On April 7th, 1994 in the small East African country of Rwanda the darkest and most brutal tragedy occurred, the Rwandan genocide. 800,000 Tutsi’s and Rwandan men and women were grossly slaughtered by the Hutu government. This was one of the worst genocides in history and yet not many people spoke about it, why? I believe many people did not say anything is because they were scared that they would be caught and then killed. A man by the name of Philippe Gaillard was a part of the Red Cross international committee in Kigali. He was one of the few people who spoke up about the tragedies occurring in Rwanda. He told his friend who was a news reporter for the BBC in France and published his story. By Gaillard not “shutting up” about the situation it made the Hutu extremists embarrassed and this lead to the Hutu government allowing the Red Cross committee to have safe passage throughout Rwanda. “America, the beautiful America, the brave”, was what America was known for being, but after the ethnic cleansing of the Rwandan people it changed.

With over eight hundred thousand to one million deaths, the Rwandan genocide is undoubtedly one of the most sad and shocking examples of the lack of intervention by not only the US and the UN, but by other countries as well. The ongoing tensions between the Hutu, the largest population in Rwanda, and the Tutsi, the smaller and more elite population is what eventually lead to the Rwandan genocide. The killings began quickly after President Habyarimana 's plane was shot down. After hundreds of thousands of deaths, the US did not intervene in Rwanda because being a landlocked country with no natural resources to benefit the US, there was no economical benefit, and the risk of sending in troops simply outweighed the rewards. The aftermath of the genocide has not only impacted those who lived through it, but it has also impacted future generations as well. At the end of the genocide, the ICTR was formed by the UN to find justice. The Rwandan genocide has shocking similarities between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as well. Overall, the Rwandan genocide was a terrible event that escalated far beyond what it should have if there had been intervention from other countries and the UN.

In 1994, Rwanda was in its darkest days. 800,000 people died in a matter of 100 days. But it was all because of a simple separation between the Rwandans, the Hutu and the Tutsi. To understand the topic we must first look at the topic from the beginning. Who were the Hutu and the Tutsi?

Another issue that arose during the genocide that is important was the fact that during the genocide many women were raped while men were out on killing sprees. Many of those women who were raped contracted HIV/AIDS. The medicine to treat HIV/AIDS is too expensive for the people of Rwanda to afford, so many have died. Some of the women who were raped did not contract HIV/AIDS but still struggle due to having friends that contracted it or were impregnated and are now raising children of their rapists. Acquaro (2005) presents the example of Severa Mukakinani whose husband and seven children were murdered during the genocide. She was then raped and impregnated and is now raising a daughter named Marie Chantal Akimana meaning “child of God”. Even

A genocide is defined as the deliberate killing of a group of people, especially of a certain ethnicity. By that definition and almost any other a dictionary could define, the killing of the Tutsis was certainly a genocide.The Rwandan Genocide occurred in 1994, in an African country called Rwanda. A long history of building friction between the Hutus and the Tutsis undeniably caused the mass murder of over 800,000 Tutsis, but various countries’ failure to act allowed the genocide to go on longer than it should have been able to.

War, a method people use when communication is useless. In Rwanda, an estimation of 800,000 people had died in such a short time. It was called Rwanda genocide. Rwanda is a small country in Africa with a great agriculture economy. It was controlled by Belgium. Belgium likes the Tutsi's family more than the Hutu's. The Hutu's did not like it so they started violence resulted of the migrating of most of the Tutsi. They were becoming less every time. On 1961, Hutus forced Rwanda's Tutsi Prince into dropping and declaring the country as republic. A year later, Belgium finally granted them their independence. In 1990, the Tutsi formed an army named (RPF) to conquer back their land from Uganda. The attacks started on the 7th of April and ended on

The Rwandan genocide was very violent and very cruel. Many people were killed and were raped. This war was not more than where you were born and what family you belong to. In 1918 Belgium took over Rwanda, but in 1933 the Belgians forced the Rwandans into two different categories. The Hutus and the Tutsis. Everything started just because it was easier to know where all the blacks were if they were in separate groups. The Tutsis were the minority; they were the upper class and were aristocratic. The Hutus on the other hand were peasants; they were the poorest of the poor. The Europeans brought the culture of a political ethnic dissidence to Rwanda. They took the original structure and made it very extreme, ethnic cards were given to be worn at all times. The Tutsis were privileged to everything, nice food, a good area to live in, good clothing. The Hutus on the other hand were made into a much oppressed group; they lived in slums and barely had enough food to live off of. Even though the Hutus were the majority they were treated like second class, animals.

In the course of a hundred days in 1994, over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in the Rwandan genocide. It was the fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. My thesis is that the international community utterly failed to prevent and stop this atrocity. I will focus on numerous interconnected aspects that led to international inaction and also on the main actors, Belgium, the United Nations Secretariat, the United States and France, that knew that there was genocide underway in Rwanda - therefore, they had a responsibility to prevent and stop the genocide, but lacked political will. This led to inaction at the level of the Security Council (SC), where member states

This article is going to be about the Rwanda Genocide, which is referred to the mass murders of 1994.

In the 1990’s, the mass media concentrated all its thoughtfulness on a refugee catastrophe. This was connected to the Rwanda Genocide, and the United Nation provided assistance for those distressed by these event (Herta, 2014, p. 263-264). Prior to this event The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) structured themselves and invaded the country. They had a purpose to force the Hutu dictatorship into reforming the country. They wanted the Tutsi regime to return back into the country. As per Herta (2014), The Great Lakes region was affected by the event, just about fifty-six million people lived below poverty levels, and this led to the greatest humanitarian effort of the decade. The target of this paper is to explain how this event was a genocide.

Human rights are known as “inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled to simply because he or she is a human being”. These rights are known to be universal and are the same to everyone living on earth. These rights are said to exist in both national and international law. The Universal Declaration of Human rights, which is supported by fifty countries across the globe, attests to this definition and backs up the idea that all people are equal and have the right to pursue happiness no matter who they are, where they are from, their skin color, age, or sex, etc. If these countries believe these things to be true, why was there not a mass intervention when

The school year was amazing I learned a lot of new things in many subjects such as English,Math,Science, and Social Studies and etc. I learned a lot of interesting history in World Cultures, the russian east asia, south asia, africa content history and many ot the contents. The most interesting part o history i learned in World Cultures was the Rwanda Genocide. Therefore in this essay, i will tell you why the Rwandan Genocide was the most important and interesting content of history i learned in World Cultures.