20 years since LGen Roméo Dallaire warned of genocide in Rwanda

2014 marks the 20th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide. Twenty years ago, on January 11, 1994, United Nations military commander LGen The Honourable (Ret’d) Roméo Dallaire sent a fax to UN Headquarters in New York, warning his superiors of a plan to exterminate Tutsis. But U.N. member states, led by the five permanent members of the Security Council, refused to listen and watched as over the course of hundred days from 500,000 to 800,000 Tutsis were deliberately massacred. As Roméo Dallaire recalled in a press conference last Tuesday “The international community did its best to ignore Rwanda. It wasn't on their radar, it was of no self-interest, it had no strategic value."

To commemorate the anniversary of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the United Nations and the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect organized “Genocide: A Preventable Crime,” a panel discussion continuing the global conversations advancing understanding of early warning of mass atrocities. The event featured a keynote address by MIGS’ Distinguished Senior Fellow, LGen The Honourable Roméo A. Dallaire (Ret’d) as well as presentations by Jan Eliasson, UN Deputy Secretary-General; H.E. Mrs. Mathilde Mukantabana, Ambassador of the Republic of Rwanda to the U.S;, Eugenie Mukeshimana, a Rwandan genocide survivor; and Dr. Stephen Smith , Executive Director of the Shoah Foundation. 

See the file below for more information.

LGen the Hon. Roméo Dallaire is a Canadian Senator, was Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) prior to and during the 1994 genocide, and is one of The Simons Foundation's Peace Leaders.