Image Source: U.S. Mission in Geneva, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
What Was the Accusation?
Kofi Annan faced criticism over the failure of the United Nations to prevent or halt the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Annan was not yet Secretary-General when the genocide occurred; he was the UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), commanded by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, had been deployed in 1993 to assist implementation of the Arusha peace agreement. On January 11, 1994, Dallaire sent UN headquarters information from an informant who described weapons caches, plans to kill Belgian peacekeepers, the registration of Tutsi civilians, and preparations that raised the prospect of mass extermination. Dallaire proposed raiding the weapons caches, but the Department of Peacekeeping Operations rejected the proposed operation as exceeding UNAMIR’s mandate and instructed the mission to raise the information with Rwandan political authorities instead.
When the genocide began in April 1994, the international response proved catastrophically inadequate. After ten Belgian peacekeepers were murdered and Belgium withdrew its contingent, the UN Security Council reduced UNAMIR rather than immediately reinforcing it. During roughly 100 days of organized killing, approximately 800,000 people were murdered, overwhelmingly Tutsi as well as Hutu and others who opposed the genocide. Critics later questioned whether Annan’s peacekeeping department had handled the January warning with sufficient urgency, whether significant information from Rwanda had been communicated effectively to the Security Council, and whether UN officials should have pressed member states more aggressively for intervention. An independent inquiry commissioned by Annan after he became Secretary-General concluded in 1999 that responsibility for the failure was shared by the UN Secretariat, the Security Council, UNAMIR, and the broader membership of the United Nations. It identified a lack of resources and political will, errors of judgment, and serious institutional failures before and during the genocide.
The issue returned forcefully in May 1998 after renewed reporting focused attention on Dallaire’s January 1994 warning and the response from UN headquarters. Annan disputed the idea that lack of information had been the fundamental cause of the failure, arguing instead that the central problem had been a lack of political will. During a visit to Rwanda later that week, he addressed the Rwandan Parliament and acknowledged that the international community and the United Nations had failed Rwanda. He said the world had to repent for that failure and emphasized that the international response had not been sufficient to prevent the genocide. His remarks were nevertheless criticized by some Rwandan leaders and survivors because Annan did not explicitly ask the Rwandan people for personal forgiveness. Rwandan political leaders subsequently boycotted a reception held in his honor, illustrating that his acknowledgment of institutional and collective failure did not satisfy everyone who wanted a more direct acceptance of personal responsibility.
Annan took additional steps after the 1998 controversy. In March 1999, he asked the Security Council to support an independent inquiry into the actions of the United Nations before and during the genocide. After the inquiry issued its report in December, Annan accepted its conclusions and formally expressed deep remorse on behalf of the United Nations. He also emphasized the need to learn from Rwanda so that the organization would be better able to prevent or halt future genocide and mass slaughter. The distinction between institutional and personal responsibility remained important to the controversy. A 2006 Heritage Foundation critique of Annan claimed that he had never apologized to Rwanda’s victims, but the official UN record documents his 1998 acknowledgment that the world and United Nations had failed Rwanda and his 1999 expression of deep remorse on behalf of the organization. The more supportable criticism is therefore not that Annan never acknowledged or apologized for the UN’s failure, but that critics believed his statements did not go far enough in accepting personal responsibility for decisions made while he headed UN peacekeeping.
Key Apologia Strategies:
Mortification, Defeasibility, Corrective Action
Video
Transcript
Kofi Annan Address to the Parliament of Rwanda — May 7, 1998:
I have come to Rwanda today on a mission of healing — to help heal the wounds and divisions that still torment your nation and to pledge the support of the United Nations so that once again we can become a partner and an ally in Rwanda’s search for peace and progress.
Four years ago, Rwanda was swept by a paroxysm of horror from which there is only the longest and the most difficult of escapes. It was a horror that came from within, that consumed and devastated entire communities and families. It was a horror that left you as survivors of a trauma which to the world beyond your borders was unimaginable, even though we all now know it happened.
We will not pretend to know how you must overcome the unimaginable. We can only offer, in humility, the hope and the prayer that you will overcome — and the pledge that we stand prepared to help you recover. We must and we do acknowledge that the world failed Rwanda at that time of evil. The international community and the United Nations could not muster the political will to confront it.
The world must deeply repent this failure.
Rwanda’s tragedy was the world’s tragedy. All of us who cared about Rwanda, all of us who witnessed its suffering, fervently wish that we could have prevented the genocide.
Looking back now, we see the signs which then were not recognized. Now we know that what we did was not nearly enough — not enough to save Rwanda from itself, not enough to honour the ideals for which the United Nations exists. We will not deny that, in their greatest hour of need, the world failed the people of Rwanda.
In your people’s agony, an ideology of hate and inhumanity tore the very fabric of existence and made victims of an entire people, turning every Tutsi man, woman and child into human prey in a concerted, planned, systematic and methodical campaign of mass extermination.
In the face of genocide, there can be no standing aside, no looking away, no neutrality — there are perpetrators and there are victims; there is evil and there is evil’s harvest. Evil in Rwanda was aimed not only at Tutsis. It was aimed at anyone who would stand up or speak out against the murder. Let us remember, therefore, that when the killers began, they also sought out Hutus now described as “moderate” — that is, Hutus who would not kill, Hutus who would not hate.
That fact is what gives us hope today and inspires confidence that you will succeed in rebuilding your One Rwanda on which future generations will build a tolerant society, defined by the quality of forgiveness which is inherent to our African heritage.
The return to peace, coexistence and reconciliation in Rwanda must begin with justice after the genocide. It must be guided by an unshakeable determination to end the culture of impunity and to prosecute and punish the genocidaires under the full force of the law.
Only thus can you begin to honour the memory of the multitudes cut down with such cruelty and cowardice.
As long as our world is one where you are more likely to be met with retribution if you kill one person than if you kill a thousand, justice cannot reign. But to be complete, justice must be carried out with due process and above reproach, so that it can promote the process of healing that is so vital to Rwanda’s future.
That is why our commitment to your future begins with the pursuit of justice. Here in Rwanda, we are assisting you in your efforts to strengthen your judiciary and improve your prisons. At the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the last six months have witnessed a fundamental change in the effectiveness of the Tribunal’s work. As you all know, the court witnessed a historic moment last week when the former Prime Minister pleaded guilty to genocide.
Related Apologia Cases
Readers interested in this international apologia case may also want to review:
Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda. (1999, December 15). Report of the Independent Inquiry into the actions of the United Nations during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (S/1999/1257). United Nations. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/405039
United Nations. (1998, May 4). Secretary-General says fundamental failure to prevent Rwanda genocide was lack of political will, not lack of information. United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases. https://press.un.org/en/1998/19980504.sgsm6545.html
United Nations. (1998, May 6). Secretary-General, in “mission of healing” to Rwanda, pledges support of United Nations for country’s search for peace and progress. United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases. https://press.un.org/en/1998/19980506.sgsm6552.html
United Nations. (1999, March 18). Letter dated 18 March 1999 from the Secretary-General addressed to the President of the Security Council (S/1999/339). United Nations Digital Library. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1491681
United Nations. (1999, December 16). Kofi Annan emphasizes commitment to enabling UN never again to fail in protecting civilian population from genocide or mass slaughter. United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Releases. https://press.un.org/en/1999/19991216.sgsm7263.doc.html
