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Portrait of The Rwandan genocide

History · The 20th century

The Rwandan genocide

April–July 1994

The genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and the failure of international intervention

Over roughly a hundred days from 7 April 1994, Hutu extremists in Rwanda organised the mass killing of the Tutsi minority and of Hutu who opposed them. The trigger was the shooting down of a plane on the evening of 6 April carrying President Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi; within hours roadblocks were up in Kigali and killing had begun. Army units, the presidential guard and the Interahamwe militia did much of the killing, with radio stations, above all Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, broadcasting incitement and naming targets. The United Nations force already in the country was cut back rather than reinforced, and the killing ended only when the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-led rebel movement commanded by Paul Kagame, took Kigali on 4 July and completed its victory that month. Estimates of the dead vary by source: the United Nations speaks of more than a million, the Rwandan government's 2004 census of victims recorded 1,074,017 names, and many academic estimates fall between 500,000 and 800,000.

How to spot them

  • ▸A hundred days, from the shooting down of a presidential aircraft in April 1994 to the fall of the capital in July
  • ▸A radio station whose name means 'of the thousand hills', used to broadcast incitement
  • ▸A militia whose name is usually translated as 'those who attack together'
  • ▸A Canadian force commander whose warning cable of January 1994 went unheeded
  • ▸The first international tribunal to convict anyone of the crime of genocide, sitting at Arusha in Tanzania

What happened

The 1993 peace agreement signed in a Tanzanian town, meant to share power and end a civil war (1993)

The Arusha Accords of August 1993, whose implementation the extremists were determined to prevent.

The shooting down of a Falcon 50 over Kigali on the evening of 6 April 1994, killing two heads of state (1994)

Juvénal Habyarimana of Rwanda and Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi died; responsibility is still disputed.

The murder of the prime minister and ten Belgian peacekeepers guarding her on 7 April (1994)

Agathe Uwilingiyimana; Belgium withdrew its contingent, gutting the UN force.

A Kigali radio station, founded in 1993, that read out names and urged listeners to 'cut the tall trees' (1993)

Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines; its executives were later convicted of incitement to genocide.

A cable of 11 January 1994 from a force commander in Kigali to UN headquarters, warning of arms caches and lists (1994)

The so-called genocide fax from Major-General Roméo Dallaire, head of UNAMIR.

A French-led operation authorised by the Security Council in June 1994, which created a 'safe humanitarian zone' in the south-west (1994)

Operation Turquoise, criticised for allowing perpetrators to escape into Zaire.

The 1998 conviction of the former mayor of Taba, the first for genocide by an international court (1998)

Jean-Paul Akayesu, convicted at Arusha on 2 September 1998; the judgment also treated rape as an act of genocide.

Community courts, revived from a traditional form of dispute settlement, which heard over a million cases before closing in 2012 (2001)

The gacaca courts, set up to clear a prison population the formal justice system could not try.

Quick-fire facts

  • •The killing is conventionally dated from 7 April to mid-July 1994, about a hundred days
  • •The Rwandan Patriotic Front captured Kigali on 4 July 1994, now marked as Liberation Day; 7 April is Kwibuka, the national day of remembrance
  • •The Interahamwe was the youth militia of the ruling MRND party; the CDR party had its own militia, the Impuzamugambi
  • •Many victims were killed in churches and schools where they had gathered for safety, among them Nyarubuye, Nyamata and Ntarama, now memorial sites
  • •UNAMIR's strength was cut from about 2,500 to 270 by a Security Council vote on 21 April 1994
  • •The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda sat at Arusha from 1994 to 2015 and convicted 62 people
  • •Jean Kambanda, prime minister of the interim government, became in 1998 the first head of government to plead guilty to genocide
  • •Félicien Kabuga, accused of financing the militias and RTLM, was arrested near Paris in 2020 after 26 years at large; he was found unfit to stand trial in 2023
  • •President Bill Clinton and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan both later apologised for the failure to act; a French commission under Vincent Duclert reported in 2021 on France's 'overwhelming responsibilities'
  • •Paul Kagame, who commanded the RPF, has been President of Rwanda since 2000

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Sources