Abandoned stockpile bastion5/6/2023 The UN and the Organization of African Unity as well as the French National Assembly and the Belgian Senate held inquiries about the 1994 events, hoping that understanding the past would make it easier to prevent such tragedies in the future. Belgium and Switzerland prosecuted and convicted persons accused of genocide and war crimes in Rwanda in 1994 and at least two other countries are investigating such crimes and may prosecute them.Ĭonscious of their own culpability for not halting the genocide, many national and international leaders apologized to the Rwandan people. In addition, several governments adopted laws permitting prosecution of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in their own courts. Eight years later, the International Criminal Court was created to sanction and hopefully to deter genocide as well as other grave violations of international humanitarian law. By doing so, it sought to provide justice for the crimes of the immediate past and also spurred the development of judicial precedents for the prosecuting genocides of the future, no longer unimaginable as they had been a year before. In 1994, the United Nations Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to judge those who had once been permitted to kill without hindrance. Through these changes international institutions may regain some of the credibility lost by their inaction during the genocide. And yet national governments and international institutions refused to intervene, backing away from a crisis that was politically complex but morally simple.Īs the extent of the catastrophe became increasingly clear, the international community was forced to reconsider its ideas and practices in the realm of international justice and in the protection of civilians in times of conflict. Throughout the second half of the twentieth century, we had seen ordinary people deliberately slain in many conflicts, but not since the Holocaust had we seen civilians massacred so rapidly, so systematically, and with such a blatantly genocidal objective. The Rwandan genocide forced us to confront the massive killing of civilians in a way we had not done for fifty years. Those further from Rwanda pay the price of their failure to protect others, both in guilty consciences and in the material costs of humanitarian aid and assistance in rebuilding shattered societies. Those living in the region have suffered from subsequent wars of unimaginable cruelty and from the consequences of millions of people in flight, both refugees and killers. Yet the consequences of this genocide, enormous as they are for Rwandans, do not stop at the border of that one small country but spill onto the people of neighboring countries and far beyond. They struggle daily to heal broken bodies and traumatized psyches, to seek justice, and to recreate trust among themselves. It ended the illusion that the evil of genocide had been eradicated and spurred renewed commitment to halting genocides in the future.įor Rwandans, whether inside the country or abroad, the consequences of the genocide are direct and tangible. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 was one of the defining events of the twentieth century. Any views expressed are solely those of the author or publisher and do not necessarily reflect those of UNHCR, the United Nations or its Member States. UNHCR is not responsible for, nor does it necessarily endorse, its content. Within one hundred days, they slaughtered more tha half a million people, three quarters of the Tutsi o Rwanda. They used state resources and authority to incite-or force-tens of thousands of Rwandans to kill the Tutsi minority. In 1994 a small elite chose genocide to keep power in Rwanda. Human Rights Watch, Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda, 1 March 1999, 1711, available at:
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