The Rwandan genocide should have been avoided, and it easily could have been. This horrible crime was made possible not simply because of global indifference to the plight of this tiny central African country, but through the outright cowardice and willful lack of action by the United Nations and its member states, especially the USA.

The presence of several thousand troops on the ground from France, Belgium, Canada and the United States made little difference to the paramilitary Interahamwe, because they knew that unless the UN or its allies stepped into the fray, they could do as they pleased. Once the international community turned its back and fled Rwanda, the real killing began – just as General Romeo Dallaire, Force Commander of UNAMIR had warned. If General Dallaire had been given any sort of mandate to take charge amid the chaos, the situation would not have escalated into full-blown genocide. In Rwanda, the UN proved itself once again to be totally ineffective in the face of an actual, preventable crisis.

The United Nations is not allowed to undermine the sovereignty of any country it operates in, and they are only allowed into a country if the government (in whatever form that takes) invites them. Non-intervention is the key – countries can do as they please within their borders, and the UN can only observe and report back to UN Headquarters in New York City. Once the Peacekeepers are stationed in some far-off land, they are only allowed to stay if they act according to the host nation’s wishes. Almost always, UN troops are restricted to only shooting in cases of self-defense, and never at a host nation’s armed forces. This applies to all situations, and for the most part it makes perfect sense – the UN would never want to put its soldiers in danger of engaging forces from the host country. These protocols are all listed in the UN Charter, and it is the main reason Gen. Dallaire was told not to destroy the munitions at the Kigali airport. This policy of disengagement can lead to horrific consequences, however, such as when thousands died as UN troops looked on at Srebrenica in Bosnia and in Kibeho, Rwanda.

In both cases, UN troops were ordered not to intervene in genocidal acts while they were still happening, in real time. As General Dallaire repeatedly points out, he was more than willing to take appropriate action had he been given the green light. This leads to obvious questions regarding the overall effectiveness of the United Nations itself, who it actually serves, and what its ultimate purpose is.

Since its inception, the UN has been used as a political tool by the members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, Britain and the United States), and each member state has used their power to veto important resolutions; none more so than the USA.

As long as this one-vote veto power exists, there can be no true international justice – it’s as simple as that. The Security Council veto power is the primary reason why the United Nations is essentially a fraud and nothing more than a cover for global hegemons like the US to claim the moral high ground when the UN serves their purposes, and ignore it when it does not. In many cases, sending in UN troops becomes little more than a public relations exercise.

American foreign policy attitudes towards the extremist, ultra-right-wing government of Israel are a perfect example of this paradigm. The US has vetoed hundreds of UN resolutions which long ago would have brought peace and justice to the Middle East, but they refuse to hold the state of Israel accountable for any of its extremely grave crimes against the Palestinian people – in opposition to the entire international community and for political reasons which defy logic. Likewise, no other nation on earth has been allowed to purposely target UN peacekeepers (or US forces, for that matter) and kill them with impunity – as Israel has done many times since its creation in 1948. This sort of hypocrisy is not lost on the rest of the world.

The UN has also become a scapegoat for member states to use at will, something to blame for the failures that are usually the direct result of their own foreign policy objectives. But this was not strictly the case in Rwanda. In Rwanda, the UN simply did not act quickly enough, and they were severely restricted in their mission to protect the civilian population. Clearly, if ordered to do so, even the relatively small number of troops under General Dallaire’s command could have made a difference and prevented much of the bloodbath which followed the withdrawal of foreign troops. Even after the brutal murder of ten Belgian UNAMIR Peacekeepers, the order was still given to disengage – surely one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the UN.

I’ve grown tired of respected world leaders and their representatives claiming time and time again that “the situation on the ground was unclear at the time,” or that they “didn’t think it was possible.” These excuses are utterly disgraceful, they defy the historical record, and they are outright lies – at least in the case of Rwanda.

According to documents made available back in 2004 through the Freedom of Information Act and published at the time in the The Guardian newspaper, the Clinton administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide early in April 1994 but hid the information to justify its inaction. According to the declassified documents, senior officials privately used the word genocide within sixteen days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene. The National Security Archive, an independent non-governmental research institute based in Washington DC, went to court to obtain the material.

Intelligence reports showed that senior officials, including the president, had been informed of a planned “final solution to eliminate all Tutsis” long before the slaughter reached its peak. Documents acquired through the FOIA made it clear that during each stage of the genocide, detailed intelligence reports of the atrocities were reaching Washington. The reports totally undermine public claims by Clinton and his senior advisors that they did not fully appreciate the scale or the speed of the killings.

The CIA’s National Intelligence Daily, a secret briefing circulated to President Clinton, Vice-president Al Gore and hundreds of senior officials, included almost daily reports on the situation in Rwanda. The daily briefing for April 23, 1994 said the rebels would continue fighting to “stop the genocide, which is spreading south”.

The Clinton administration didn’t publicly use the word genocide until May 25th, and even then they diluted its impact by referring to the killings as “acts of genocide”. Officials feared that using the word genocide could create public outrage and eventually lead to a demand for some kind of action – and President Clinton staunchly refused to act.

The systems already in place at the time to prevent these kinds of atrocities worked as they were designed to work. The level of US intelligence gathering capability is way beyond the comprehension of most people. A huge array of critical information was available to officials in Washington during the genocide. Important information which could have prevented this tragedy was received up the chain of command in a timely manner – but other factors were also involved in the administration’s failure to act. According to The Guardian, “The administration did not want to repeat the fiasco of US intervention in Somalia, where US troops became sucked into fighting. It also felt the US had no interests in Rwanda, a small central African country with no minerals or strategic value.” So there you have it. Those are the conditions under which genocide is acceptable.

On a visit to Kigali in 1998, Clinton tried to apologize to the people of Rwanda for not acting quickly enough, or immediately calling the crimes genocide. He said, “It may seem strange to you here, especially the many of you who lost members of your family, but all over the world there were people like me sitting in offices, day after day after day, who did not fully appreciate the depth and speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror.” That may be true, but Bill Clinton was not one of those people. He was receiving daily updates on the situation in the plush surroundings of the Oval Office. He chose to do nothing.

Former President Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali (UN Secretary General at the time), Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and everyone responsible for allowing this genocide to happen should be tried as co-conspirators for crimes against humanity by the ICC.

Wishful thinking, I know.