UNAMIR: The Un's Fight For Peace

The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 caused the death of nearly one million Rwandans. In the genocide the Hutu ethnic group targeted the Tutsis in this genocide and mass murdered them. Government involvement? The government was composed of Hutus, allowing this genocide to take place easily. As hundreds of Tutsis were

By 2000 there was over 100,000 people awaiting trial. The UN had failed to resolve conflict in Rwanda there is still some little minor conflict going on in Rwanda this day. The UN had put up some camps for the tutsis and helped alittle for people to seek shelter and safety. The hutus knew that the UN could not do anything physical because they are primarily peacekeepers and trying to resolve the problem so the hutus was still killing everyone so nothing was resolved.

The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda was a mission designed to help carry-out the conditions set forth in the Arusha Accords, which were signed in 1993, with the purpose of ending the Rwandan Civil War. The UN was aware of the situation in Rwanda, and the tension between the two ethnic groups, well before the genocide was committed.

The final reason why the United Nations is to blame for Rwanda’s Genocide is because of the fact that they ignored evidence of planned genocide and abandoned Rwandans in need of protection. The United Nations failed trying. The independent report, commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( who was in charge at the time of the Rwandan Genocide), says the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda was hopeless from the start by an poor consent and destroyed by the Security Council's unwillingness to strengthen it once the slaughters, murders and rape began. UN officials, together with Annan and then-Secretary-General

Over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsi minorities, were killed by Hutu extremists in just one hundred days (Rwanda Genocide). The United Nations failed to provide support and protection to the people of Rwanda, and were ashamed of the abandonment of the helpless people. At the twentieth anniversary ceremony of the genocide, UN chief Ban Ki-moon mentioned, "In Rwanda, troops were withdrawn when they were most needed (Rwanda Genocide)." The UN left the victims to fend for themselves, resulting in an even larger death total. They ignored the fact that the genocide was planned, and refused to take action, when the Rwandans needed their help (Winfield). As stated by the former Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson in a press conference, "Our conclusion is there is one overriding failure which explains why the UN could not stop or prevent the genocide, and that is a lack of resources and a lack of will - a lack of will to take on the commitment necessary to prevent the genocide (Winfield)." If the UN had taken more action and became more involved, the Rwandan Genocide wouldn’t have reached the extremity that it had reached. The inaction in Rwanda was the largest failure the UN has ever had. Just about 1,200 miles away about ten years later, the UN once again fails the people of the corrupt country of

Peace talks to settle disputes between the Tutsi and the Hutu set up by the US, France, and Organisation of African Unity had tried to establish a peaceful government between the two groups. That went up in flames fast as the President of the Rwanda was killed as his plane was shot down. The next day the genocide began even with UN peacekeepers in the country. I was astonished to see that the UN peacekeepers just left without taking any military action. The UN was founded after the holocaust in Europe, one of the worst events in human history. Still, rather than the UN intervening and preventing another genocide from occurring they simply left. The UN failed to do one of its most important jobs and it was deeply

On April 6 1994, prior to the death of president Juvenal Habyarimana, the nation of Rwanda become released into turmoil as genocides claimed the lives of at the least ½ a one million of its citizens (Seltzer in Des Forges, 1999,). Instigated by using the Hutu political elite and its military guide, their top objectives were the Tutsi, as well as Hutu moderates. Many have purported “ethnic hatred” as the motive of the Rwanda Genocide and at the same time as an ethnic divide became indeed found in Rwanda across the time of the warfare, the reasons for the genocide are more than one and was greater complex.

UNAMIR was given a mandate to help guide and overlook the Arusha Accords [what are the arusha accords] which was meant to stop the Rwandan civil war, signed August 4th 1993. The mandate is made very limited by the UN. Before the genocide, early warning by General Dallaire and his plead to expand the mandate went ignored and rejected many times (Caplan, 2004). It is pure ignorance by the UN to reject the call to expand the mandate by General Dallaire. Had the UN took the early warning and pleas to expand the mandate to allow intervention and force, many Rwandans would still be alive today and the situation would have been under control with the perpetrators fearing and backing away from the inhumane plot. The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations gave UNAMIRauthorization to excel the already narrow mandate, only to help evacuate foreign nationals from the country which turned out to be a major mistake and seemed racist for only saving white lives (Melvern, 2000). The new mandate that is authorized made the situation worse. The Belgian UN troops guarding the Kigali ETO school were told to abandon the school, leaving 2500 Tutsis and Hutu opposition leaders looking for UN protection

… they could get away with it” (p. 453). Ultimately, the genocide was officially brought on by the shooting down of the Habyarimana President on April 6, 1994 that allowed the radicals (never discovered) to realize they could initiate and get away with anything without being responsible or punished (p. 455-456). “…the terrible success of Hutu Power is making so many ordinary people accomplices in genocide. When the genocide ended little more than 100 days later, between 500,000 to as many as 1,000,000 women, children, and men, the vast majority of them Tutsi, lay dead. Thousands more were raped, tortured and maimed for life. Women and children were not spared. Victims were treated with sadistic cruelty and suffered unimaginable agony. Thousands of moderate Hutu, those who had refused to cooperate with the Hutu Power radicals, had been systematically murdered” (p. 458). This genocide remains prominent for mere fact that not only did it annihilate the Tutsi whom they saw as inferior members of the Rwandan country… but it

On the early summer of 1994 the exodus of the Genocide in Rwanda began. Almost 800,000 people were killed in the period of 100 days. All due to bitter accusations from the biggest ethnic group- the Hutus. Somewhere inside Rwanda’s political elite, the group of Hutus aggressively criticised less

The documentary “Ghost in Rwanda” illustrates the devastation of the 1994 Genocide where approximately eight hundred thousand Rwandans were exterminated by their own government. The genocide was a result of ongoing conflicts between the Hutu, the ethnic majority in Rwanda, and the Tutsi the ethnic minority. The United Nation assisted

Prior to the outbreak of the genocide in April 1994, the United Nations had established the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda. UNAMIR forces consistent of just over 2,000 personnel, and was responsible for the supervision the transition from war to peace. Their responsibilities included ‘monitoring the ceasefire, assisting with demobilisation and mine clearance, and encouraging the facilitation of political and social conditions that would allow a transitional government to take control.1

The Rwandan civil war started in 1990 between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). In 1993, the Arusha Accords created a government that shared power between the RPF and President Juvnal Habyariama’s government. The Rwandan genocide was sparked by the assassination of Habyariama in April 1994. This assassination was the catalyst for the genocide because it ignited anti-Tutsi rage and ultimately the genocidal actions of the majority Hutus against the minority Tutsis that resulted in the deaths of up to one million people. The United Nations played a prominent role in the implementation of the Arusha Accords through the UN Security Council resolution 872 that established the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) in 1993. With the spark of the genocide, UNAMIR remained in Rwanda after the Arusha Accords in order to maintain peace and provide humanitarian resources. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) is regarded as a failure due to the lack of action and intervention from the UN despite being informed of the impending

The UN was contacted by the Tutsi members to come in and help them wipe out the Hutu population, but as they entered the country the UN members did not have the ability to shoot or kill anyone, becoming useless. The genocide only ended when the Tutsi-dominated rebel group, the

Before UNAMIR had been launched there was a lack of information surrounding Rwanda. In a precursor to the mission, Dallaire looked for intelligence regarding the small landlocked country in Africa, what he could find came from newspaper accounts, and scholarly articles. He learned of the social and political climate, which stemmed from an ethnic divide between the Hutus and Tutsis. This was the only information Dallaire along with Brent Beardsley had gathered, it was not until they met with Isoa Tikoka, a United Nations military observer who had been at the Arusha peace agreement negotiations, that they learned of his existence and could have used his help to gather more insightful and current information. Information regarding the state