About the Rwanda Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the systematic murder of the Tutsi minority of Rwanda and the moderates of its Hutu majority, in 1994. This was both the bloodiest period of the Rwandan Civil War and one of the worst genocides of the 1990s. With the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords, the Tutsi rebels and Hutu regime were able to agree to a cease-fire, and further negotiations were underway. The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the RPF (political wing of the RPA) and Hutu officials in talks, certain Hutu factions, like the Akazu, were against any agreement for cooperation between the regime, and the rebels; to end Rwanda's ethnic and economic troubles and progress towards a stable nationhood. The genocide was primarily the action of two statutory Hutu militias, the Interahamwe (military wing of the MRND) and the Impuzamugambi (military wing of the CDR), against dissenters to their culture of Hutu power. Over the course of about 100 days, from April 6 to mid-July, at least 500,000 Tutsis and thousands of Hutus were killed during the genocide.Some estimates put the death toll around the 800,000 and 1,000,000 marks.With the genocide, and the resurgence in the civil war, Rwanda's conflict was thought by the United Nations to be too difficult and volatile for it to handle. Eventually, the Tutsi rebels successfully brought the country under their control and overthrew the Hutu regime. Hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees fled across the borders, mainly west to Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). The presence of the extreme Hutu factions on the border with Rwanda was the cause for the First and Second Congo Wars, with clashes between these groups and the RPF's RPA, now part of a coalition force, even until today.Hutu and Tutsi rivarly was also central to the Burundian Civil War.The UN's neglect of the Rwandan Genocide, under comprehensive media coverage, drew severe criticism. France, Belgium, and the United States in particular, received negative attention for their complacency towards the extreme Hutu regime's oppressions. Canada, Ghana, and the Netherlands, did continue to provide a force on the ground, under the command of Roméo Dallaire of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), but this mission had little actual power without support from the UN Security Council. Despite specific demands from UNAMIR's commanders in Rwanda, before and throughout the genocide, its requests for authorization to intervene were refused, and its capacity was even reduced.


Written by Jason