Rwanda Genocide Research Paper

The aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide shone a deeply critical light on the actions not taken by the international community to prevent the 1994 genocide.

This essay will examine three arguments as to why the international community would not prevent the Rwandan genocide.

Firstly this essay will analyse sources specifically attributing the 1994 genocide to ‘eco-violence’ , the social and ecological preconceptions in Africa that were used by the international community to rationalise the cause of violence without acknowledging it as genocide.

Secondly, this essay will examine how the “shadow of Somalia” which, fresh in the memory of the United States and the UN, caused a crucial politicized decision to avoid another blow to the UN’s peace

Many studies of the Rwandan conflict acknowledge the role that ecological scarcity and land distribution played in the genocide, calling it instead, a case of severe eco-violence .

It would be easy to oversimplify the genocide and attribute it purely to ethno-tribal conflicts. Stephen Brosha argues ‘it may be easier to accept [genocide] as somehow being “unavoidable” if left in ethnic terms’ . With a great deal of study done on Rwanda’s declining overall agricultural production due to over population and degradation of forest resources , it should be argued that this unrest should have been acknowledged and eliminated long before it ever took form.

Thomas Homer-Dixon argues that ‘environmental degradation and other issues related to the scarcity of renewable resources will be the root of serious violent conflict in coming years’ which has the potential to obscure conclusions like ‘genocide’ from the international community when the cause was so readily apparent as simply civil

On any assessment, why the UN and America could not or would not prevent the genocide is, without question, a dire culmination of circumstances.

The Shadow of Somalia, eco-violence, national interests in the implementation of the term, genocide, were all part of a rhetoric devised to avoid the necessity to launch a peacekeeping mission. With overwhelming evidence that America was fully aware that what was occurring was a genocide, Lemkin’s definition did nothing but provide the international community time to consider their own appearance and perception instead of preventing the atrocity.

All three of these factors were key in why the international community did not act in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994, a clear warning to future humanitarian efforts that the political agendas of the United Nations should not pervade into the decisions that impact hundreds of thousands of lives. Through an active avoidance of the evidence placed in front of them to drive their own agenda, the international community failed the people of