UN pays tribute to Genocide victims, reflects on failure to prevent killings

The United Nations today held a session to honour more than a million innocent Rwandans who were brutally killed during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Speaking during a memorial session held under the theme, “Genocide: A Preventable Crime”, at the UN headquarters in New York, diplomats reflected on the international community’s failure to prevent the killings despite warnings made several months before the killings started in April that year. “A million lives could have been saved had the world reacted in January 1994,” Mathilde Mukantabana, Rwandas Ambassador to the United States, said at the event, in reference to the fax then commander of a UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda, Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, sent to the UN warning the world that a genocide was imminent in the country. “Do we act differently today?” Mukantabana posed, urging governments around the world and the UN system to do everything possible to always detect and prevent possible genocides anywhere in the world. Speaking at the same event, Dallaire, now a senator, reiterated that the world failed Rwanda in 1994, adding that the remembrance and renewed commitment to ‘Never Again’ was “a great sign that there is a different perspective on the prevention of genocide.” “We must create a new multi-dimensional framework of conflict and mass atrocity prevention,” he said.

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UN pays tribute to Genocide victims, reflects on failure to prevent killings