The UN Security Council, Indifference, and Genocide in Rwanda

Habyarimana of Rwanda had mysteriously crashed as it approached the Kigali airport. My first response was to study the photograph of the dead president; after closely covering his comings and goings for the past several months, it struck me as odd that the first time that I would see his face was in a newspaper article announcing his death. Then I felt frustration bordering on exasperation. As a political officer at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations who was assigned to cover Rwanda, I had spent the last part of March consumed by the negotiations on the mandate extension of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR). Although many of the Security Council debates on whether to extend a mandate and under what conditions have a scripted quality that foreordain renewal, this instance was uncharacteristically lengthy and contentious. UNAMIR was charged with overseeing the implementation of the Arusha Accords, the blueprint to end the civil war between the Tutsi-backed Rwandan Patriotic Forces (RPF) and the Hutu-dominated Rwandan government, and to install a new, more representative, government. For some months, the Rwandan government had been dragging its heels and failing to produce the transitional government, leaving many on the Security Council increasingly irritated. The U.S. position was that the Rwandan government should be notified that unless it quickly established the transitional government, the UN operation would be ended. How strong these signals should be, and how serious the threat to close the operation should be, was a principal point of contention during the negotiations over the mandate's extension. The Security Council approved an extension just as the mandate expired in early April, the United States was satisfied that its concerns had been communicated to the Rwandan government, and I was relieved to have Rwanda off my desk and be able to turn my attention to other matters. The president's death changed all that, for bad and for good. Exhausted from the hectic pace, I would now not have my long awaited break. Still,