Journal of International Criminal Justice Advance Access originally published online on August 12, 2005
Journal of International Criminal Justice 2005 3(4):847-860; doi:10.1093/jicj/mqi065
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I. How Could it Happen? |
The Security Council in the Face of Genocide
* Honorary Fellow at the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; author of A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000) and Conspiracy to Murder: The Rwandan Genocide (New York: Verso, 2004). [linda{at}melvern.co.uk]
The genocide in Rwanda will define for our generation the failure to intervene in the face of mass human rights abuses. The UN Security Council (the Council) was intimately involved in this terrible event, with the decisions it took from October 1993, when a peacekeeping mission was created for Rwanda, having a decisive effect on what happened. This article details the crucial meetings held by the Council in secret and informal sessions and describes how a serious assessment of the situation in Rwanda was simply missing. It shows how the peacekeepers of the Council's mission to Rwanda were abandoned during the genocide and how the efforts of these UN personnel to ease the suffering of the Rwandan people were ignored by the Great Powers.
1 UNAMIR would eventually total 2,548 all ranks, with a majority of troops provided by Bangladesh and Ghana. A contingent of 450 para-commands from Belgian provided the backbone for the force.
2 Just before the genocide began, so concerned at the deteriorating security situation, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Médécins sans Frontières had begun contingency planning for a huge number of casualties and erected tents outside Kigali's central hospital for extra capacity.
3 ‘The SC Role in the Rwanda Crisis’, statement by Ambassador Colin Keating, Permanent Representative of New Zealand to the UN, at the Comprehensive Seminar on Lessons Learned from UNAMIR, 12 June 1966, unpublished.
4 12th Report of the Panel on UN Peace Operations, Executive Summary, UN doc. A/55/305.
5 International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH), Africa Watch, Inter African Union of Human Rights, and International Centre for Rights of the Person and of Democratic Development. Report of the International Commission of Investigation of Human Rights Violations in Rwanda since 1 October 1990, 7–21 January 1993.
6 S. Smith, ‘Massacres au Rwanda’, in Libération, 9 February 1993.
7 It has since been acknowledged that the UK government was also reading Dallaire's increasingly desperate and detailed cables from the field.
8 See in this Journal R. Dallaire, K. Manocha and N. Degnarain, ‘The Major Powers on Trial’.
9 One of the ambassadors occupying a non-permanent seat, Karel Kovanda of the Czech Republic, recalled the initial period: ‘No one was sure what, if anything, needed to be done. Into this absolutely bizarre situation came the big powers ... who said they could do nothing’, interview with Permanent Representative of the Czech Republic, Ambassador Koral Kovanda, July 1994.
10 Rwanda had officially put forward its candidacy as a non-permanent member at the General Assembly in October 1993. Its candidacy was endorsed at the summit meeting of the OAU in June 1993.
11 Unpublished, on file with the author.
12 ‘The stopping of the massacres may become more and more difficult as the local groups/militia are becoming seemingly bolder ... . The ethnic killings are continuing and in fact unconfirmed reports indicate it is even increasing in scale and scope in the areas just ahead of the RPF advance’, ibid.
13 ‘It appears now that the Presidential Guard initiated the ethnic attacks and then handed this task over to the militia like the Interahamwe ... and then withdrew to Butare and Gitarama. In Kigali, frequent roadblocks are established, ID cards checked and Tutsis executed on the spot. These massacres have been witnessed from a distance by UN troops.’ ‘The militia have displayed drunkenness, drug abuse and sadistic brutality. They do not respect the UN flag, the red cross or any other human symbol. They will not hesitate to stop any convoy and attack its Rwandese passengers or even the UN guards. Without our present rules of engagement we are confronted with the dilemma of enforcing the security of persons under our protection. We have attempted to smuggle out small numbers and have been successful to date but it is only a matter of time until a confrontation occurs’, ibid.
14 ‘Does UNAMIR risk an armed confrontation, for which we are not equipped, protected or mandated, at considerable risk to the safety of our own troops, to attempt to save these people, or do we leave them for possible extermination?’, Dallaire cabled, ibid.
15 ‘If this mission is to be changed into a peace enforcement scenario to stop the massacres and rescue threatened civilians then a change in mandate will be required and the mission must be reinforced with men, weapons and equipment’, ibid.
16 Later, an internal Bangladeshi report noted: ‘When the crisis began discipline deteriorated ... some soldiers refused to obey orders, arguing that ... this was not in a peacekeeping mandate ... exaggerated reports were sent back to the ministry of defence and there was panic ... . We saw men crying. Our level of training and motivation for peacekeeping was a shame for us’, on file with the author.
17 According to James Woods, Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the Department of Defense: ‘Never mind that the American press, which was poorly represented anyway, hadn't quite got it right yet, at all, in fact ... there was plenty of evidence around if you'd wanted to use it.’ There had been information for a couple of years, Woods said, that extremists in Rwanda were planning to do something like this. ‘It was known that this was planned, premeditated, carefully planned, and was being executed according to a plan with the full connivance of the then Rwandan government. This was known.’
18 ‘The SC condemns all the breaches of international humanitarian law in Rwanda, particularly those perpetrated against the civilian population, and recalls that persons who instigate or participate in such acts are individually responsible. The SC recalls that the killing of members of an ethnic group with the intention of destroying such a group in whole or in part constitutes a crime punishable by international law.’