RWANDA GENOCIDE

Rwanda Genocide

Rwanda Genocide

Introduction

Of all the events that have shaped the contemporary humanitarian enterprise, none is more influential than the Rwandan genocide of 1994. While one of the proximate causes of the genocide was the failure of peacekeeping and a vacuum of political action, humanitarian action was implicated in its aftermath, and even in its antecedents, in ways that demanded profound changes in the organization and implementation of humanitarian action. Many volumes have been written on the genocide, the events leading up to it, and the accounts of states, institutions and individuals caught up in trying either to halt the genocide or to make excuses for their inaction. Here we attempt to distill out the critical impacts on the humanitarian system that resulted from both the humanitarian response to the genocide, and the refugee crisis that it spawned. (Myers, 37)

Discussion and Analysis

From the time of independence from Belgium in 1962 until the invasion by the Rwandan Tutsi rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) from their base in Uganda in October 1990, Rwanda had been considered a poster child for development orthodoxy. The country was considered stable, if not very wealthy, and its President, Juvénal Habyarimana, democratic (though he came to power in a coup d ' état ). Although the Hutu-Tutsi rivalry that partially drove the genocide was clearly evident in the country's history, the pogroms of the late 1950s that had driven the Tutsis to Uganda in the first place were forgotten or ignored by the international community, as was the “semi-official racism” in the national political system. The country's economic data was reasonably impressive. Economic growth was constant, if modest, child mortality was dropping, and the balance of payments—aided significantly by foreign aid—compared favorably to other nations in the region. That a “development success story” (if only a modest one) could descend into the nightmare of ethnic holocaust was simply unbelievable to many who knew the country well. But “development,” in this sense, was viewed as an entirely apolitical process. Hence the belief by the international community in Rwanda as a success story contributed to a collective disbelief that genocide was actually taking place in 1994, and hence to the virtually non-existent international response. Humanitarian action during the genocide itself was minimal. The ICRC maintained its presence in Rwanda through the crisis, and the UN set up a small humanitarian unit. But these were tiny operations ...