Rwanda the UN's Role in the Rwanda

Rwanda The UN's role in the Rwanda genocide The Rwandan genocide took place during a civil war that nearly destroyed the poor, African nation. The civil conflict was waged between two ethnic groups known as the Tutsis and Hutu. An estimated 800,000 people were killed, mostly Tutsi, and the hands of the ethnic Hutu (UN admits Rwanda genocide failure, 2000, BBC). Initially, the UN had assumed some responsibility for attempting to keep the peace during what was supposed to be a transition to a power-sharing government between the rival factions.

The UN mission (UNAMIR) "created in October 1993 to keep the peace and assist the governmental transition in Rwanda, sought to intervene between the killers and civilians. It also tried to mediate between the [pro-Tutsi] RPF [Rwandan Patriotic Front] and the [pro-Hutu] Rwandan army after the RPF struck from Rwanda to protect Tutsi and rescue their battalion encamped in Kigali as part of the Accord" (Ferroggiaro 2001). However, after ten Belgium soldiers were killed, the United Nations Security Council voted to withdraw its 2,500 troops from UNAMIR (UN admits Rwanda genocide failure, 2000, BBC).

"The Security Council took this vote and others concerning Rwanda even as the representative of the genocidal regime sat amongst them as a non-permanent member" (Ferroggiaro 2001). As stories in the media about the carnage continued to mount, the UN changed course and created a new, more moderate force in the form of UNAMIR II, with 5,500 troops (Ferroggiaro 2001). But because of delays and foot-dragging, this effort did not materialize until the end of the genocide.

"Faced with the UN's delay, but also concerned about its image as a former patron and arms supplier of the Habyarimana [genocidal] regime, France announced on June 15 that it would intervene to stop the killing...the French set up a 'humanitarian zone' in the southwest corner of Rwanda. Their intervention succeeded in saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives; it also facilitated the safe exit of many of the genocide's plotters, who were allies of the French" (Ferroggiaro 2001).

Only the takeover of the capital by the RPF ended the wholesale slaughter of the Tutsi. With the benefit of hindsight, the UN conceded that its response to Rwandan civil war was inadequate. In the year 2000, The United Nations Security Council accepted responsibility for failing to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. "Council members acknowledged its main finding that their governments lacked the political will to stop the massacres" (UN admits Rwanda genocide failure, 2000, BBC).

The reasons for the failure to act in Rwanda have been attributed to numerous cultural and political factors, most notably the lack of concern for an area that was not deemed to be strategically or economically significant for the major Western powers. Although there was public outrage, it was not sustained enough given the area seemed, to many Westerners, a very remote part of the world. Also, the complex ethnic rivalries between Hutu and Tutsi were difficult for the Western public to understand.

The lack of political will, combined with bureaucratic intransigence, led to the death of hundreds of thousands, despite the fact that only a relatively modest number of UN troops would likely have been able to subdue the Hutu forces. It is true that individual nations cannot intervene in every dispute, in.