Rwanda 1994

On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down over Kigali. Within hours, Hutu extremist militias and soldiers began a planned campaign to exterminate Rwanda's Tutsi minority and Hutu who opposed them. In about 100 days an estimated 800,000 people were killed. The roots lay partly in colonial rule: Belgian authorities had issued ethnic identity cards in the 1930s, turning flexible social categories into fixed ones and favoring Tutsi, which later fed Hutu resentment.

Radio broadcasts spread hate and directed killers. The world largely stood by. The small UN peacekeeping force, led by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, had warned of the danger, but after Belgian peacekeepers were killed, the Security Council cut the force drastically. Western reluctance followed the 1993 deaths of US soldiers in Somalia. The genocide ended when the Rwandan Patriotic Front took control in July. Its legacy includes the first international conviction for genocide and a global debate on a 'responsibility to protect'.