Ghosts Of The Rwandan Genocide

Improved Essays
The Rwandan Genocide is unquestionably among the great tragedies of human history. In the short time span of just over 3 months, roughly 800,000 Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, marking the swiftest mass slaughter on global record and outpacing any other genocide in the world’s history. Ghosts of Rwanda, a documentary film published by the investigative journalism program FRONTLINE, examines the political and diplomatic failures that united to enable the genocide to occur. The realist approach of the United States, as well as the Belgian construction of an international norm of withdrawal and avoidance, further enabled the extremist Hutu government to commit the mass murder of 800,000 Tutsis in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.
The Rwandan genocide

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    She stresses the evidence the United States was aware of but argues that the United States did virtually nothing along the continuum of intervention from high level diplomatic denunciation to military presence in Rwanda. In Powers’ eyes, the U.S. passed up countless opportunities to intervene. The United States was aware of the birth of genocide within a week of the assassination of the Rwandan President. On the diplomatic level, the mention of genocide, or the g word, was avoided because using it otherwise would oblige the United States to take action. Powers argues that war was tragic but it did not create a moral imperative.…

    • 752 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rwandan Genocide Doc 1

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages

    After the Holocaust, the world had promised that they would “never again let anything like this happen.” In the spring of 1994, all hell broke loose as one million people died in the Rwandan Genocide. What happened to the promise to never let another genocide occur again Racism, competition of land between Hutu and Tutsi, and denying the situation in Rwanda as genocide, the killings occurred and continued for 100 long days. However, that all happened because of European colonization in Africa. Doc 1, by Gerard Prunier, states how the Belgians divided Rwanda people based on physical features.…

    • 695 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Despite the great name and power of the U.S. and the U.N., little was done to assist or prevent the Rwandan genocide. In 1993, the U.N. sent “peacemakers” to Rwanda with the simple task: keep any wars from starting. For the first month, all the peacemakers were ignorant to what was going on around them. Then Roméo Dallaire, commander of the peacemakers in Rwanda, began receiving tips and information on potential conflicts after Rwanda’s independence. In distress, Dallaire sent a message to the U.N. that mainly requested more troops and a way to get the Tutsi out of Rwanda.…

    • 937 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Rwandan genocide was a one hundred day slaughter of the Tutsi population. There were a number of factors leading up to this event and why nobody stopped the killings include worldly indifference, lack of information, fear of intervention, and the absence of resources and knowledge for help. In April 6th, 1994, an airplane holding President Habyarimana was shot down killing him and the rest of it’s passengers. Habyarimana was of the Hutu population and the Hutus believed that a member of the Tutsi population had to do with this killing.…

    • 1209 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    After reports of the genocide had spread across the globe, the United Nations embraced its role as a global peace force and created a commission of experts to investigate and review the situation in Rwanda. By October of 1994, the commission provided “undeniable and overwhelming evidence that actions against the Tutsi constituted genocide.” With the concurrence of the Rwandan government, the United Nations adopted Resolution 955, which ICTR, acting under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. Chapter VII grants the power to “determine the existence of any threat to peace, breach of peace, or act of aggression.” In addition, it gives the Security Council the power to “restore international peace and security,” but does not specify any…

    • 987 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Annotated Bibliography Livingston, S, Annan, K (Author), & Thompson, A. Ed). (2007). Limited vision: How both the American media and government failed Rwanda. The media and the Rwanda genocide (pp 188-197). Pluto Books.…

    • 1013 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1994, the world witnessed one of the most horrific genocides in recent memory. As reported by the BBC, in the small African country of Rwanda, the conflict between two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis, had been brewing for decades but throughout the colonial period, tensions rose substantially, ultimately ending in the bloody massacre now known as the genocide against the Tutsi. Belgian colonizers, who deemed the Tutsis to be preferable to the Hutus, created an even stronger divide by issuing ethnic identification cards and giving preferential treatment to the Tutsis. After Rwandan independence, the Hutus rose to power, proceeding to marginalize their adversaries and punish them for their years of Belgian favor.2 Finally, after nearly a century of build up, the war erupted after Hutu President Juvenal Habarimana’s plane was shot down on April 6, 1993.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Rwandans on the other hand knew the threat was real. There are many perspectives concerning the actions or inactions of the UN in the Rwandan genocide. Even more has been discussed on whether or not the genocide could have been prevented or foreseen, or if the UN failed to see the signs or simply ignored them. In Shaharyar Khan’s book The Shallow Graves of Rwanda, special attention is paid to discussing the responsibility of the UN. Shaharyar Khan was the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative in Rwanda during the genocide and he believes that the UN did not do enough to prevent or intervene during the conflict.…

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Back in 1994, Rwanda faced its darker period of time in its history. A horrifying and historical genocide took place over three months on Rwandan soil. The horror and brutality of that act has been compared to what happened in Nazi Germany over World War II. About one million Rwandan people got literally exterminated by their countrymen because of their ethnic group given by Belgian colonizers over occupation (1916-1962). Nevertheless, that tragedy could have been lower and prevented if some countries would have intervened and did not think to their own interests first.…

    • 324 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rwanda is a small, densely populated state located in East Africa. Already under German rule, but above all during the Belgian colonial rule after World War I, Christian missionaries became active in the country. This led to a predominance of Roman Catholics, who, shortly before the genocide accounted for some two-thirds of the population. The background to the Rwandan genocide is inseparable from the destructive legacy of first German, then Belgian and finally the French on the country’s inter-ethnic politics. Rwanda gained its independence from Belgium in 1961 after years of living in a society that promoted the Hutus as the colonial master’s preferred ruling elite.…

    • 553 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Due to the inaction of the international community, The Rwandan Genocide—a preventable event—is considered one of the greatest recent failures of international…

    • 1003 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Rwanda Genocide is the act of killing people of a particular ethnic group, or nation, attempting to wipe them out completely. “Killing members of the group or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” (How do you define genocide?) are few of the many things that the Hutus did to the Tutsi people. Preventing all genocide should be a duty and a need for a global response.…

    • 864 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    On 7th, April, 2004, the world observed a moment of silence to remember the victims in the Rwanda genocide. As the world remember the 10 year anniversary of the genocide, the country continued to live with the devastating affects of the brutal event. Some of the most significant aftermaths were the the lasting children suffrage, disproportion of men and women population, and the extreme slow recovery of the economic and education system. Rwanda, even now, is never fully healed from the massacre, and below show a detailed explanation of the consequences it still has upon the people and society of the country.…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Ghost Of Rwanda

    • 558 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the documentary “Ghost of Rwanda” we got to see true event of what had occurred to approximately 1,000,000 people of Rwanda. The film interviewed several people that stayed or were in Rwanda during the genocide, like Phillip Gaillard who was head of the international committee for the Red Cross and how he helped save hundreds of lives in the process. Other interviews told the stories of people like General Romeo Dallaire who was task to preserve the peace between the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the extreme Hutu nationalist which included the Interahamwe. I believe that this was a terrible event because an African tribe/clan was not being forced to leave but instead was almost getting eradicated. In the film they interviewed the leader of the RPF and how he wanted no help from the UN which kind of makes me question who actually started the war between both.…

    • 558 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Essay On Rwanda Genocide

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages

    The failure of the UN to act upon the reports of genocide in Rwanda caused an innumerable amounts of killing and anarchy. The problems started with the Belgium’s discrimination between the two populations. Going as far as to hire scientists to prove the Tutsi superiority, they only enabled the already present racism between the two groups. Then the Hutu population decided to act. After the president was shot down, supposedly by Hutu extremists, the anarchy began.…

    • 1149 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays