UN Inaction and the Rwandan Genocide: World's Failure
This essay examines how the international community's inaction contributed to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, arguing that the world effectively turned its back on Rwanda. Drawing on sources including accounts of UN Force Commander Roméo Dallaire, the paper identifies three key failures: the UN's decision to withdraw its peacekeeping troops rather than provide protection; its choice to restrict engagement to the narrow terms of the Arusha Accord; and the broader refusal by the UN and the United States to authorize or pursue peace enforcement measures. Together, these failures allowed ethnic violence between Hutus and Tutsis to escalate into a 100-day genocide.
- Introduction: The World Turns Its Back on Rwanda: Thesis and three arguments previewed
- Dallaire's Role and the UN Troop Withdrawal: UN withdrew troops despite capacity to protect
- Restriction to the Arusha Accord: UN limited engagement to narrow peace agreement
- Refusal to Extend the Mission to Peace Enforcement: UN and US declined to authorize force
- Conclusion: Genocide result of ethnic war and global inaction
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What makes this paper effective
- The essay establishes a clear, arguable thesis in the introduction and returns to it consistently in each body paragraph, giving the piece strong structural coherence.
- Each argument is grounded in specific cited evidence — Dallaire's knowledge of weapons shipments, the UN's rejection of his interception request, and the U.S. reluctance after Mogadishu — rather than relying on generalizations.
- The conclusion effectively synthesizes all three arguments and ties them back to the central claim without introducing new material.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of a multi-point argumentative structure: the author signals each new argument with an explicit transition ("Secondly," "Thirdly"), states the sub-claim, provides textual or historical evidence, and then reasserts how that evidence supports the thesis. This signposting technique makes the logical progression easy to follow and helps readers track the accumulation of evidence across the essay.
Structure breakdown
The essay follows a classic five-paragraph structure scaled to a short academic essay: an introductory paragraph that previews three supporting arguments, three body sections each addressing one failure of international response, and a conclusion that restates and synthesizes the thesis. The structure maps cleanly onto the PEEL (Point, Evidence, Explanation, Link) pattern common in undergraduate humanities writing.
Introduction: The World Turns Its Back on Rwanda
The Rwandan Genocide is the greatest massacre of human beings since the Holocaust. Most victims were murdered with machetes and would likely have known their killers. While the war was mainly fueled by ethnic tensions between Hutus and Tutsis, it escalated into genocide because the world turned its back on Rwanda. Several arguments support this claim: the failure by the United Nations to offer protection and its decision to withdraw troops; the UN's choice to restrict its engagement with Rwanda to the Arusha Accord, which promoted inaction; and the failure of the UN and the international community to initiate peace enforcement efforts when Rwanda needed help. The escalation of the ethnic war between Hutus and Tutsis into a genocide that lasted 100 days was partly the result of the world abandoning Rwanda.
Dallaire's Role and the UN Troop Withdrawal
One of the arguments supporting the claim that the world turned its back on Rwanda was the UN's decision to remove its troops despite being capable of offering protection. According to Cahill (2013), the United Nations decided to remove its main body of Blue Helmets from Rwanda (p. 110). The UN could have utilized its troops to protect schools, churches, hospitals, and other locations where Tutsis were seeking refuge during the massacre. Even though the organization could have recognized the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) as the legal Rwandan government, it could also have severed its link with an RPF that was helping to orchestrate the violence.
The failure to provide protection and the eventual withdrawal of troops can be partly attributed to Roméo Dallaire's failure to report the rising ethnic conflict adequately. The emergence of the Rwandan Genocide is largely attributed to plans by Hutus to attack Tutsis after seizing the government. While Dallaire was aware of these plans — including details about weapons shipments by the Hutu elite and the origin of those weapons — he did not provide the UN with reports that would have prompted the organization to take preventive action. Dallaire had several meetings with the leader of the Hutu-led military and learned of their plans to take over the government and kill Tutsis (Mackenzie, 2008, p. 16). However, he did not take the necessary measures to avert the coming war and instructed his troops to fire only if fired upon.
Restriction to the Arusha Accord
The UN's decision to limit its engagement with Rwanda to the Arusha Accord was a further demonstration of how the world turned its back on Rwanda. Dallaire's mission in Rwanda was to evaluate a peace agreement between the Hutus and Tutsis, two warring ethnic groups (Shiffman, 2008). He served as commander of the UN Observer Mission Uganda–Rwanda (UNOMUR), tasked with monitoring the border between Uganda and Rwanda to ensure no military assistance was being provided across it (Grunfeld & Huijboom, 2007, p. 47). Even though the UN sent Dallaire to assess the possibility of a broader UN mission in Rwanda, he was given clear instructions that any such operation would be subject to strict restrictions. Despite the urgent need for greater assistance during the genocide, the UN deployed only a limited number of troops for a small mission.
At the start of the genocide, Dallaire asked for UN permission to intercept and seize weapons that had been acquired by the Hutu elite. The UN denied the request and confined its engagement in Rwanda to the Arusha Accord and the small UNOMUR mission. The organization rejected Dallaire's request on the grounds that the weapons had been shipped before the signing of the Arusha Accord, implying it had no authority to act. While Dallaire had done his best to address the situation, the United Nations' insistence on limiting its engagement to the Arusha Accord stands as a clear demonstration that the world turned its back on Rwanda in 1994.
Conclusion
The Rwandan Genocide was one of the most devastating events in the history of the world after the Holocaust with regard to the number of deaths associated with it. This event was largely driven by ethnic tensions and violence between Hutus and Tutsis, which generated considerable political differences. Beyond these ethnic divisions, the United Nations and the international community have rightly been criticized for turning their backs on Rwanda. This was evident in the UN's failure to provide protection and its withdrawal of troops before launching a small, constrained mission led by Roméo Dallaire; the UN's decision to restrict its engagement to the Arusha Accord; and the broader failure of the international community to initiate peace enforcement interventions. Ultimately, the Rwandan Genocide was the product of both Hutu–Tutsi ethnic conflict and a world that chose to look away.
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