Analysis of UNAMIR role and its incongruity during the Rwanda Civil War (1993-1996)

Abstract

This article analyzes the role played by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) between 1993 and 1996, as a response by the UN Security Council to the genocide that took place in that country. The analysis contemplates the causes of the civil war from the historical process of the recent formation of Rwanda as a consequence of the Belgian colonialist influence and the international context in the beginning of the post-Cold War, resulting in the genocide of the Rwandan population between Tutsis and Hutus (its main ethnicities) and the peace mission undertaken to contain it. The analysis shows that UNAMIR was a mission that was inconsistent with the principles and nature defined by the United Nations, thus questioning its efficiency. The central question of the research is focused on the fact that after three decades of the events, the doubt remains about what was the justification behind the incongruity of the UN Security Council peace mission, in authorizing the change of nature of UNAMIR and then enacting its immediate cancellation leaving the way clear for genocide to take place. The objectives of this research are to highlight the reasons that led to the cancellation of UNAMIR while the conflict between the ethnic groups was still happening; to understand the impacts of the legacy of German and Belgian marginal colonization in the country, and its influence on combatant groups, as well as to verify, from a critical and post-colonial theoretical perspective, the consequences of the genocide from the point of view of the ineffectiveness of UNAMIR. This study followed the procedural guidelines of an empirical and bibliographical research, focusing on the performance of UNAMIR and its responsible role in the development of the genocide produced by the civil war in Rwanda.