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The UK Government and the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

The genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994 will remain, for our generation, the enduring failure to intervene in the face of massive human-rights abuse. The genocide lasted for three months, and during that time an estimated one million people were killed. The killing was organized in advance; it was the direct result of a deliberate government policy and was carried out according to an explicit strategy. The combination of revelations about the scale and the intensity of the genocide, the failure to intervene to prevent it or to stop its progression country-wide, and the suppression of information about what was actually happening is a shocking indictment not just of the UN Security Council but of governments and individuals who knew what was happening and who chose to remain silent. The failure of UN policy toward Rwanda, a policy devised by members of the Security Council, had a decisive effect on events. It merits precise documentation. The focus of this article is the role of the British government led by Prime Minister John Major. While the United Nations has shown its willingness to uncover how and why it reacted the way it did, in the United Kingdom there continues to be a reluctance to try to account for Britain’s policies toward Rwanda. Neither press nor Parliament has shown any enthusiasm to scrutinize this particular part of history or to explain why the United Kingdom, a country with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, should have chosen to influence events in the way it did. Britain, far from taking a back seat, was instrumental in shaping the UN response to the crisis, and this leaves unanswered a central question: Was the United Kingdom, a country with special power and privilege in the Security Council, impotent or unwilling to implement the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG), either to prevent the occurrence of genocide in Rwanda or, once it began, to stop it from spreading? In the United Kingdom, a country where secrecy pervades most aspects of government, the issue of Rwanda is particularly sensitive. There are continuing attempts to obscure individual responsibility in the decision-making process. There is even a claim that, in the archives of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in Whitehall, the paper trail on Rwanda, 1990–1994, has been weeded. There is resistance to release any of the diplomatic cables that passed between the policy makers in London and Britain’s UN mission in New York. Some officials involved at the time are reluctant even to discuss Rwanda, a reluctance bolstered by the ongoing failure of press and Parliament to examine this episode in British foreign policy. In the writings and memoirs of those concerned, there is hardly a relevant word—in John Major’s case, the genocide has completely vanished from the public version of his period in office.