Human Rights and Genocide

Washington, DC, May 21, 2014 – The Arusha Accords, a peace agreement between the Rwandan government and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) signed in August 1993, failed in the worst way peace accords can fail — genocide. Documents posted today by the National Security Archive and the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum chronicle the international community's role in the failure to implement the demobilization program, a key part of the Arusha Accords, ultimately leading to genocide in April 1994.

Washington, DC, April 7, 2014 –The complete series of daily and weekly situation reports (sitreps) written by UN peacekeepers in Rwanda — published today by the National Security Archive for the first time in full — provides a detailed, on-the-ground perspective on the genocide in Rwanda that started twenty years ago today.

Washington, DC, March 31, 2014 – During the months leading up to the genocide in Rwanda, United Nations officials and western diplomats became increasingly concerned by the threat to political stability posed by millions of refugees and internally displaced persons in the Great Lakes region. Attempts by the international community to address the refugee crisis became enmeshed in political in-fighting inside the country.

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Warnings of Catastrophe
French, US, UN, and Belgian Documents Foreshadow the Genocide in Rwanda 1994.
March 6, 2014

The Rwanda Sitreps
Daily Pleas to New York Detail How International Failure Left Peacekeepers Ill-Equipped to Respond to Rising Violence in January 1994
February 3, 2014

The Rwanda "Genocide Fax": What We Know Now
New Documentation Paints Complex Picture of Informant and his Warnings
January 9, 2014

Washington, DC, March 6, 2014 – Concerned about the possibility of "a new bloodbath" in Rwanda, the Belgium foreign ministry issued a dramatic diplomatic dйmarche on February 25, 1994, calling for a strengthening of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Central African country. According to Belgium government dispatches, the initiative failed because of opposition by the United States and the United Kingdom and resistance from the United Nations Secretariat.

Washington, DC, February 3, 2014 – Three months after its arrival, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) remained ill-equipped and unprepared to respond to the rising threat of violence and political instability, according to the first of dozens of UNAMIR situation reports (sitreps) being posted by the National Security Archive as part of the “#Rwanda20yrs” Project.

Washington, DC, January 9, 2014 – Twenty years ago this week, the commander of United Nations peacekeeping forces in Rwanda (UNAMIR) wrote a "Most Immediate" cable to his superiors in New York that has come to be known as the "Genocide Fax." Dated January 11 but received in New York at 6:45 p.m. on January 10, the fax from General Romeo Dallaire cited information from "a top-level trainer" for a pro-regime militia group known as the Interahamwe, and warned of an "anti-Tutsi extermination" plot.

Washington, DC, December 4, 2013 – The landmark report on the Guatemalan police archives, From Silence to Memory: Revelations of the AHPN, has been made available in a new English translation issued by the University of Oregon. The publication — with a preface by the National Security Archive's Kate Doyle — is a history of the National Police before and during Guatemala's armed conflict.