Why Did The Government Intervene In Rwanda

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 in the establishment of a peace agreement between the two warring parties and sent General Romeo Dallaire, UN Force Commander, to Rwanda to ensure the terms of the agreement were honored. Dallaire had never seen action and welcomed opportunity to make a difference supporting peace in Africa. The peace mission was especially important to Dalliaire in light of recent U.N. failures to maintain peace in Somalia and Bosnia.

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 first reason that the US did not intervene in Rwanda is the previous Black Hawk Down incident. This unfortunate event took place in 1993 when a group of soldiers attempted to make peace

Throughout the 20th century, numerous acts of genocides have attempted to bring the complete elimination and devastation of large groups of people originating from various particular ethnicities. With these genocides occurring in many regions of the world, the perpetrators often organizing such crimes, have historically been larger and more powerful than the victims themselves. Often being the government and its military forces. However, the lack of international response associated with these genocides, further contributed to the devastating outcomes. On April 6,1994, the fastest killing spree of the century took place in Rwanda against the Tutsi minority population. With many warning signs having already been proclaimed prior to the start of the Rwandan genocide, I believe that with international interference, this bloodshed could have ultimately been prevented.

The United Nations failed Rwanda, in a time of need they abandoned the Rwandan people giving them no physical protection. Sadly, things go wrong with the slaughter of almost 800,000 Rwanda people, left defenseless in a country where no one outside cared. U.N. troops were present as only “peace-keepers.” The dispute was between the Hutus and Tutsis people could of been controlled if the U.N. changed their position, but the result could bring more consequences. This conflict between the two social groups in Rwanda,was left to be resolved on its own with many lives lost.

The UN and the US government are accredited for deploring conflict situations as well as contributing humanitarian aid, and this is what these two organizations did in Rwanda and Darfur. However, the UN did not do anything to punish or prevent the genocides that took place in these two countries. The US government promised to support the peace talk’s agreement in Darfur and hold the perpetrators accountable for their acts. It never kept that promise since nothing has been done. So far, the UN’s Security Council has also failed in its peace keeping mission effeorts, and is instead pressuring Sudan with words only. No solid steps have been made to bring the wrong doers into justice (Shapiro).

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

Similar to the Apartheid in South Africa, the genocide in Rwanda was not a random event. It was instead the result of generations of discrimination and abuse based on ethnic groups. In the early 19th century during Rwanda’s colonial period, there already existed a divide between the elite Tutsi cattle herders and the majority of the population who were peasant farmers, known as Hutu.[i] In 1918, Rwanda came under Belgian control, “during which the ruling Belgians favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbating the tendency of the few to oppress the many.”[ii] In 1933, the Belgians then proceeded to institutionalize this system of discrimination by mandating ethnic ID cards, while still favoring the Tutsi

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

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

On May 25, 1994, U.S. president, Bill Clinton, wrote in a letter to Representative Harry Johnston, “The White House issued a strong public statement calling for the Rwandan Army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front to do everything in their power to end the violence immediately. This followed an earlier statement by me calling for a cease-fire and the cessation of the killings” (qtd. in Baldauf). It seems that by calling out those engaged in the conflict, the U.S. took the responsibility from themselves and took no further action. In the post-Cold War era, it is not surprising that most other countries followed the lead of the U.S. and also chose to not take any significant action

Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, ethnic, political, or cultural group”. In Rwanda for example, the Hutu-led government embraced a new program that called for the country’s Hutu people to murder anyone that was a Tutsi (Gourevitch, 6). This new policy of one ethnic group (Hutu) that was called upon to murder another ethnic group (Tutsi) occurred during April through June of 1994 and resulted in the genocide of approximately 800,000 innocent people that even included women and children of all ages. In this paper I will first analyze the origins/historical context regarding the discontent amongst the Hutu and Tutsi people as well as the historical context as to why major players in the international

Romeo Dallaire, the UN general during the Rwandan genocide, asked for U.N help many times. Unfortunately his attempts for help were denied, because his plead for help went against the original mandate for being there in Rwanda in the first place. The mandate was that the peace keepers were supposed to keep the peace not make peace. My personal opinion was not that the international institutions are weak, but that the affiliated parties responsible in those international institutions are. The inaction of the United States in Rwanda has been the result of an entire native population to be wiped from this

The international response to this crisis was absolutely abysmal. Despite having had clear knowledge of the events occurring in Rwanda, the international community, namely the United States and the United Nations, remained unresponsive, allowing the genocide to proceed unabated. In late April 1994, amid urgent calls for an increase of forces, the United Nations Security Council passed resolution 912, which, despite their stated, ‘deep concern’ for the Tutsi people, withdrew 90% of UN troops from Rwanda, leaving only 270 soldiers in the country to protect civilians from genocide. NSA declassified documents clearly show how the United States willfully chose to be bystanders to the conflict that decimated the Tutsi population of Rwanda, having

Is there a difference between genocide and war? The idea and concepts of conflict are often misunderstood. To many, any form of conflict is war. War can be defined as a direct violent encounter between two or more opposing parties with a view to gaining access to an object of their mutual interests. It is usually accompanied by the use of weapons such as guns, bows and arrows, machetes, sticks, biological weapons, and weapons of mass destruction. (Insert bibliography #1). Genocide has been described as a specific term, referring to violent crimes committed against particular groups, with the intent to destroy the existence of such groups (insert bibliography #1). Having said that, one common factor often exhibited by genocide perpetrators is to destroy a group perceived to be a threat to the ruling power. The purpose of this paper is to take a look at both the historic and political causes for the Rwanda Genocide, and to distinguish whether ethnicity was the cause or was it the aspect of the conflict.