Rwanda Genocide Research Paper

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In 1994 the biggest genocide the world had seen after World War II took place in Rwanda. Part of German East Africa from 1894 to 1918, Rwanda came under the League of Nations mandate of Belgium after World War I, along with neighbour Burundi. Rwanda’s colonial period, during which the ruling Belgians favored the minority Tutsis over the Hutus, exacerbated the tendency of the few to oppress the many, creating a legacy of tension that exploded into violence even before Rwanda gained its independence. In 1973, after Rwanda was declared independent, a military group installed Major General Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu, in power. After facing all the discrimination by the Belgians, infuriated Hutu’s began to purge the Tutsi’s. Ethnic differences …show more content…
This incident sparked off the genocide in which many precious lives were lost. From April to July 1994, members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority. Begun by extreme Hutu nationalists in the capital of Kigali, the genocide spread throughout the country with staggering speed and brutality. The world was well aware of the entire situation and chose to do nothing about it. The United Nations, being an organization that initiates peace did not even bother to intervene. This shows how the UN failed in dealing with the mass genocide because it lacked an objective or proper view of the crisis and skills needed to intercede, relied too much on …show more content…
The new Government declared its commitment to the 1993 peace agreement and assured UNAMIR that it would cooperate on the return of refugees.
For their part, when the conflict broken out in April, UNOMUR observers had expanded their monitoring activities in Uganda to the entire border area. But the Security Council gradually scaled down the operation, and UNOMUR left Uganda in September.
By October 1994, estimates suggested that out of a population of 7.9 million, at least half a million people had been killed. Some 2 million had fled to other countries and as many as 2 million people were internally displaced. A United Nations humanitarian appeal launched in July raised $762 million, making it possible to respond to the enormous humanitarian challenge.
A Commission of Experts established by the Security Council reported in September that "overwhelming evidence" proved that Hutu elements had perpetrated acts of genocide against the Tutsi group in a "concerted, planned, systematic and methodical way." The final report of the Commission was presented to the Council in December
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