Genocide Prevention in Rwanda and Abroad
Senior 6 · History
Genocide Prevention in Rwanda and Abroad
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
In April 1993 the UN Security Council declared the town of Srebrenica, in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, a "safe area" for the Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) people who had fled there during the war. A small battalion of Dutch peacekeepers was stationed nearby. On 11 July 1995 Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić took the town. In the following days they separated the men and boys from the women and killed about 8,000 of them. It happened a year after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, when the world had already said "never again". This lesson asks why prevention keeps failing, and what can be done about it.
Important
What the courts decided about Srebrenica
Definition
Political will: the readiness of leaders to spend money, take risks and accept costs to act, for example to stop an atrocity in another country.
Sovereignty: a state's authority over its own territory, and the principle that other states should not interfere in its internal affairs.
Veto: the power of each of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) to block a decision.
Revisionism: rewriting the history of a genocide to change its meaning, for example by reversing the roles of victims and perpetrators. In Rwandan law it is linked to denial and minimisation.
Fugitive: a person charged with a crime who has escaped arrest.
| Challenge | Example | Possible solutions |
|---|---|---|
| Lack of political will | in April 1994 the Security Council cut UNAMIR instead of reinforcing it | early action, which is cheaper than intervention; public pressure; the Responsibility to Protect |
| Sovereignty and the veto | divisions among the permanent members can block action on mass atrocities | the Code of Conduct agreed by many states in 2015 not to vote against action on mass atrocities; since 2022 the General Assembly meets to debate every veto; regional action under the AU's Constitutive Act |
| Peacekeepers without a mandate or means | UNAMIR in 1994; the small Dutch battalion at Srebrenica in 1995 | clear mandates to protect civilians; the Kigali Principles on the Protection of Civilians (2015) |
| Slow justice and fugitives | Félicien Kabuga, accused of financing the genocide and the RTLM radio station, was arrested near Paris only in May 2020; in 2023 the judges found him unfit to be tried | international cooperation to track fugitives, as the IRMCT does; universal jurisdiction; national courts |
| Denial, revisionism and hate online | false claims and hate speech spread on social media, often from outside the country | laws such as Law N° 59 of 2018; archives, testimony and court records; teaching; reporting hate speech; the UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech (2019) |
| Armed groups that keep the ideology alive | the FDLR in the east of the DR Congo, whose founders included people accused of taking part in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi | regional cooperation, disarmament, demobilisation and the arrest of indicted leaders |
| Poverty, inequality and trauma | exclusion and unhealed trauma can be exploited by extremists | fair development, support for survivors, psychosocial care, reconciliation |
From April 1975 to January 1979 the Khmer Rouge ruled Cambodia. They emptied the cities, forced the population into labour camps and killed anyone they saw as an enemy. An estimated 1.5 to 2 million people died from execution, starvation, forced labour and disease, out of a population of about 8 million.
Justice came very late. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a court set up by agreement between Cambodia and the United Nations, began trials only in the late 2000s, three decades later. On 16 November 2018 it convicted two surviving leaders, Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan, of genocide against Cambodia's ethnic Vietnamese; Nuon Chea was also convicted of genocide against the Cham, a Muslim minority. Most of the Khmer Rouge's victims, however, were Khmer, killed for political or social reasons, which fall outside the 1948 definition (Lesson 1). Their deaths were tried as crimes against humanity.
Analysis. Cambodia shows three challenges together: justice delayed for decades, while perpetrators and witnesses grow old and die; a legal definition that does not cover every mass killing; and Cold War politics that let the Khmer Rouge, and later a coalition that included it, keep Cambodia's seat at the UN through the 1980s, so that its leaders faced no trial for years.
| Rwanda (1994) | Srebrenica (1995) | Cambodia (1975–1979) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Warning given? | yes: reports in 1993, the cable of January 1994 | yes: the enclave had been besieged for three years | refugees reported killings, but the country was closed to outsiders |
| Main failure | political will; the UN force was cut | a "safe area" without the means to protect it | isolation, then Cold War politics |
| Who stopped it? | the Rwandan Patriotic Front, by July 1994 | it was not stopped; the war ended later in 1995 | the Vietnamese army's invasion in January 1979 |
| Justice | ICTR, national courts, Gacaca, courts abroad | ICTY, ICJ, national courts | ECCC, decades later |
In none of the three cases did the international system stop the killing in time. The lesson that genocide prevention scholars draw is that the key decisions come early: removing impunity, stopping incitement and protecting civilians before the killing starts.
Warning
Compare to understand, never to rank. Comparing genocides helps to see how they happen and how they can be prevented. Do not argue about which group suffered "more", and do not use one genocide to excuse, minimise or deny another. Each one must be named correctly and remembered on its own terms.
Tip
Challenge, evidence, solution, limit. For a "challenges of genocide prevention" essay, give each challenge a real example, propose a solution, and then say what limits that solution. For instance: the veto (challenge), Security Council inaction (evidence), voluntary restraint on the veto (solution), but it is not binding on any permanent member (limit).
Important
Discuss. Which challenge in the table can young Rwandans do most to meet, in school, online and in their communities? Agree on three actions your class could take during the next Kwibuka.
Aegis Trust: "Srebrenica 30 - solidarity with survivors and the Srebrenica Genocide Memorial" (2025, about 2 minutes). Staff of the Kigali Genocide Memorial, including survivors of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, send a message to the survivors of Srebrenica. Listen for what they say about denial, and about why survivors of different genocides stand together.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the analysis, the tables and the exercises.
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
