16 December 1999
Inquiry Faults U.N. for Failing to Stop Rwandan Genocide
(Independent panel says world body should apologize) (1380) By Judy Aita Washington File United Nations Correspondent United Nations -- In failing to prevent or stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, the United Nations failed the people of Rwanda and should acknowledge this and apologize for not having done more, an independent inquiry has concluded. An independent three-member panel on December 16 released its report blaming the U.N. Secretariat, the Security Council, and U.N. peacekeepers for a series of missteps and failures, and a lack of political will to stop the genocide, which claimed the lives of some 800,000 Rwandans, primarily ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The panel, headed by the former prime minister of Sweden, Ingvar Carlsson, included Professor Han Sung-Joo, former foreign minister of South Korea, and Lieutenant General Rufus M. Kupolati of Nigeria. Secretary-General Kofi Annan commissioned the panel, giving it a mandate to establish the facts related to the U.N. response to the genocide in Rwanda, especially the U.N. Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), from October 1993 to July 1994 and make recommendations. The report came just weeks after Annan released a report on his review of the U.N. failings in the 1995 Serb massacre of civilians in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. And as the panel was releasing the report, the Security Council was meeting on the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DROC) and discussing how to proceed with a U.N. peacekeeping mission there. The Rwanda inquiry found that "the overriding failure in the response of the United Nations to the genocide was the lack of resources and political will to stop the genocide," Carlsson said. The U.N. peacekeeping mission "was not planned, dimensioned, deployed, or instructed in a way which would have enabled the mission to stop the genocide." But the panel also emphasized that UNAMIR "was also the victim of a lack of political will in the Security Council and on the part of member states." "UNAMIR failed in several instances to protect civilians, politicians, and national staff who were under its protection, although in other instances, members of UNAMIR also acted with courage to save lives as the killings spread," Carlsson said at a press conference December 16. The panel called "deplorable" what it saw as a lack of will to identify the massacres in Rwanda as genocide and cited the U.N. Secretariat, the Security Council, and UNAMIR for errors of judgment. In a statement issued December 16, Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged the U.N. failure and expressed his "deep remorse." Annan, who was undersecretary-general in charge of peacekeeping operations at the time of the genocide, said that "all of us must bitterly regret that we did not do more to prevent it. There was a United Nations force in the country at the time, but it was neither mandated nor equipped for the kind of forceful action which would have been needed to prevent or halt the genocide." In 1994 the United Nations and its member states failed to honor its obligation to prevent and punish the most heinous of crimes, Annan said. "Approximately 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered by their fellow countrymen and women, for no other reason than that they belonged to a particular ethnic group. That is genocide in its purest and most evil form." The inquiries on Rwanda and Srebrenica "reflect a profound determination to present the truth about these calamities. Of all my aims as secretary-general, there is none to which I feel more deeply committed than that of enabling the United Nations never again to fail in protecting a civilian population from genocide or mass slaughter," Annan said. The panel reviewed U.N. documents, talked with U.N. and Rwandan officials, as well as officials from governments who were members of the Security Council during that period; it also met with survivors of the genocide and visited massacre sites in Rwanda. Han said that the inquiry uncovered no evidence "of willful negligence" by the U.N., and even many of the Rwandan survivors he interviewed who saw the violence and mass killings unfolding in April 1994 did not realize it would end in genocide. "We do criticize the Secretariat for the lack of understanding of the situation, the lack of capability in UNAMIR and the Secretariat to understand the situation," Han said. The inquiry pointed out that the 2,500-troop UNAMIR was too small for the task. It also pointed out that the Security Council had cut the size of the mission originally recommended by the Rwandan officials who had turned to the U.N for help and did not approve all the elements of the mandate recommended by then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. "The mission ... was slow in being set up. It had administrative difficulties; it lacked well-trained troops and functioning materiel," Carlsson said. "There was a serious gap [between] the mandate and the political realities in Rwanda and also between the mandate and the resources." Boutros-Ghali himself rarely attended Security Council meetings and the lack of direct contact between U.N. departments concerned with Rwanda and the Council affected the quality of information provided to the Council, the panel said. The correspondence between UNAMIR and U.N. headquarters during the early days of the genocide shows "an operation prevented from performing its political mandate related to the Arusha agreement, incapable of protecting the civilian population or civilian United Nations staff, and at risk itself," the report said. In addition, France, Belgium, the United States, and Italy were conducting their own evacuations of their nationals, it said. General Kupolati pointed out, however, that it was not up to UNAMIR's commander to change the conditions of the mandate that were set by the Security Council. The panel's 75-page report detailed events surrounding a January 11, 1994, cable from UNAMIR force commander General Romeo Dallaire to senior U.N. officials outlining an informant's report of a major weapons cache and plans to exterminate Tutsis. Without sharing the information with Boutros-Ghali or the Security Council, the U.N. officials involved decided that the information might not be reliable and UNAMIR should not undertake reconnaissance to find the arms cache. Complicating the situation was the fact that Rwanda, represented by the Habyarimana government, was a member of the Security Council beginning in January 1994. Because one of the parties to the Arusha peace agreement had full access to the Council's decision, the Secretariat felt hampered by what intelligence it could provide the Council, fearing it would give one Rwandan party an advantage. The panel made 14 recommendations, the first being that the secretary-general should initiate an action plan to prevent genocide involving the whole U.N. system and ask for suggestions from the World Conference against Racism and Racial Discrimination, which will be held in 2001. The Millennium Summit and General Assembly, which will convene in September 2000, should be used to generate political momentum for new efforts to improve the U.N.'s peacekeeping capacities, the panel also said. Carlsson noted that "peacekeeping in the future will be of enormous importance to the world community. We should make use of the Millennium Summit to try to convince member states that peacekeeping is important and the U.N. must carry that out, but not without resources. "Rwanda shows clearly you must have the personal and military resources; otherwise, the damages could be larger," he said. The panel also said that "the United Nations -- and in particular the Security Council and troop-contributing countries - must be prepared to act to prevent acts of genocide or gross violations of human rights wherever they may take place. The political will to act should not be subject to different standards." The U.N. must also improve its early warning capabilities and flow of information on human rights issues as well as improve its ability to protect civilians in conflict situations, it said. "The international community should support efforts in Rwanda to rebuild the society after the genocide, paying particular attention to the need for reconstruction, reconciliation, and respect for human rights, and bearing in mind the different needs of survivors, returning refugees, and other groups affected by the genocide," the panel said. (The Washington File is a product of the Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State.)
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