Essay about Rwanda: Rwandan Genocide and Security Council

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International organisations such as the UN play a crucial role in mounting an effective response to human rights violations. Evaluate the extent to which the UN has been effective in responding to international crises. Refer to Rwanda and/or other contemporary crises in your response.

The Rwandan genocide began on April 6th 1994 between the Hutu and the Tutsi population. In 1994, Rwanda’s population consisted of three ethnic groups: Hutu (85%), Tutsi (14%) and Twa (1%). In the early 90s, Hutu extremists blamed the entire Tutsi population for the country’s increasing social, economic and political pressures. As reports of the genocide spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply more than 5,000 troops. By the time that force arrived in full, however, the genocide had been over for months. In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, many prominent figures in the international community lamented the outside world's general obliviousness to the situation and its failure to act in order to prevent the atrocities from taking place, the UN included. The UN did not act quickly or effective enough to protect Rwandan citizens, three months after the genocide had begun, 800,000 people had been killed: ¾ of the Tutsi population.
The UN assisted in Rwanda to a small extent. The ways the UN has been effective in helping to achieve safety and security in Rwanda started in 1993, when Rwanda and Uganda requested the deployment of military observers along the common border to prevent the military use of the area by RPF. The Security Council in June 1993 established the United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda (UNOMUR) on the Ugandan side of the border to verify that no military assistance reached Rwanda. The Security Council reduced UNAMIR's strength from 2,548 to 270 after an attack on UNAMIR, and despite its reduced presence, UNAMIR troops managed to protect thousands of Rwandese who took shelter at sites under UNAMIR control.
However, overall, the UN involvement’s with the Rwandan genocide was more inefficient and ineffective as it could and should have been. In April 1994, the President of Rwanda was killed while returning from a peace talk in Tanzania. The Rwandese plane crashed, in circumstances that are still to be
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