The 20th century witnessed the emergence of organized genocide and carries the dubious distinction of being the most genocidal century in history. In the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916, around 1,5 million Armenians died, followed by the Greeks and Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman Turks and Kurds. The Nazi German Holocaust resulted in the death of some 6 million Jews (according to Jewish sources) and remains the most horrific example of the planned extermination of one ethnic group by another, at least according to Western writings.

However, at the same time, in the Far East of Asia-Pacific, Japanese soldiers exterminated around 16 million Chinese people from 1931 to 1945. At the end of the century, in 1995, the ethnic Hutu majority in Rwanda launched a genocidal campaign against the ethnic Tutsi minority, claiming the lives of at least 800.000 to 1 million people within a span of three months. The genocide was followed by more than two million Rwandan refugees spilling over into neighboring states, fostering intra-ethnic tensions in Burundi and Zaire.

Rwanda in equatorial Africa (??26,338 sq km, population 14.26 million in 2024) borders Uganda to the north, Tanzania to the east, Burundi to the south, and DR Congo (Zaire) to the west. Rwanda is densely populated, about 84% of the population are Banti-black tribes of which the Hutu is the largest. About 15% of the population is Tutsi, who immigrated from Egypt and Ethiopia. About 1% belongs to the oldest indigenous, pygmy Batua tribe, who live around Lake Kivu. The Hutu tribe is mainly engaged in agriculture, the Tutsi in animal husbandry, and the Batua in hunting.

A smaller number of Europeans and Asians also live in Rwanda. Several cities were built by European colonizers. The capital is Kigali. The official language is French, but at the local level, the Banti-black dialect is most spoken, and in shopping centers, the Kiswahili dialect.

Rwanda is an economically underdeveloped agricultural country. The Belgian administration developed plantations for the export of coffee, tea, tobacco, cotton, and oil palm. Animal husbandry is one of the most developed economic branches (cattle, goats, sheep). Lake fishing is also important. The mineral wealth has not been fully explored.

In the 19th century, with the arrival of European colonial explorers and Western Christian missionaries into Central Africa, Rwanda and Burundi came under the Second German Reich in 1890 by agreement between Great Britain, Belgium, and Germany at the Berlin Conference in 1885. In the First World War, in 1916, Belgian troops from Zaire entered Rwanda. After the war, Rwanda and Urundi (today Burundi) was handed over to Belgium as a mandated area by the League of Nations in 1923.

Belgium united this area in 1925 administratively and economically with Zaire (Congo) and puts under the administration of a Belgian vice-governor, who headed a council made up of Europeans and natives. The Belgians and the ruling Tutsi tribe kept all others in subjection. In 1928, an uprising of the natives drowned the Belgian and British troops in blood.

During Belgian colonial rule, the economic, health, and cultural level of Rwandans remained very low. In 1927, about 100,000 inhabitants died of hunger, and in 1943, about 50,000.

After 1945, Rwanda-Urundi was under the protection and guardianship of the UK, but in 1946 re-administered to Belgium. Since 1952, a movement for liberation from Belgium and the Tutsi tribe has been developing there. The Hutu rose in 1959, overthrew the Tutsi tribe, and expelled the king. A large number of Tutsi perished, and about 14,000 fled to neighboring countries.

In 1964, discord between the Hutu and Tutsi tribes saw a great slaughter of the Tutsi tribe; about 12,000 fled to neighboring countries. The army coup of July 5, 1973 was led by the Minister of Defense. The President of the Republic was overthrown, Parliament dissolved, and political parties banned. The National Committee for Peace and Unity was formed, which functioned as the Government.

After Rwanda’s proclamation of independence in 1962, Tutsi supremacists in exile created guerrilla militias (“cock-roaches”) which infiltrated Rwanda. In December 1963, 10,000 Tutsis were massacred in retaliatory attacks. In 1964, the number of Tutsi refugees was 150,000. The killing of Hutus by Tutsi soldiers in Burundi in 1972 created strong anti-Tutsi feelings among Hutus in Rwanda. In the mayhem that ensued in 1973, a moderate Hutu General Juvénal Habyarimana overthrew President Grégoire Kayibanda.

A new president banned PARMEHUTU (Hutu political party), discouraged ethnic politics, and emphasized the economic development of Rwanda. However, he prevented the return from exile of the Tutsis under the argument that the country could not support them because of an acute shortage of land and limited opportunities for jobs. The Government terrorized Rwandan Tutsis in different ways, imprisoned 8,000 Tutsis without trial, and executed more than 1,000.

Poverty, indebtedness, unemployment, and mismanagement exacerbated the economic-political crisis in Rwanda. Over-reliance on coffee and tea precipitated a food crisis and made Rwanda vulnerable to the vagaries of global commodity markets. In 1990, the cost of health and education was creating mass poverty due to sharply rising debts and the imposition of structural adjustment programs. In an ethnicity-defined political and social order, the Tutsi minority bore the brunt of these economic woes and retrenchment policies.    

To add to all other regional problems in the early 1990s, the Tutsi refugees from Rwanda located in the US-backed Uganda created a political-military organization, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). Soon, its military wing started to make incursions into North Rwanda (1990-1993). This devastated the Rwandan economy, undermining food and coffee production, and the Rwandan tourist industry. The Government increased spending on the military at the expense of health provision and food production. The Hutus have been afraid of Tutsis (called “cock-roaches”) because of their night attacks across the border with the intent of seizing power in Rwanda and taking back the land given to the Hutus. Underlying the RPF insurgency was the question of the citizenship, return, and security of over 2 million refugees. Nevertheless, the military attacks by the Tutsi RPF served as a convenient pretext for the Hutus to arrest, persecute, and kill domestic Tutsis.

The Arusha Peace Accords of August 1993 created conditions for a ceasefire between the RPF, which occupied North Rwanda, and the Hutu Government in Kigali. The accords called for a transitional phase of Hutu-Tutsi power-sharing until an election could be held, offered security to refugees and returning Tutsis, and promised new elections by 1995. Finally, the Arusha Peace Accords created an OUN peacekeeping force (the UNAMIR), commanded by Canadian General Roméo Dallaire, to be deployed in Rwanda.

However, this mobilized the Hutu extremists critical of the long-time moderate Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana to demand that their privileges be protected against potential Tutsi military advances. The Hutu extremists led by the Hutu intelligentsia, who opposed accommodation with the Tutsis and democratization of the political system, assassinated President Juvénal Habyarimana, which opened the doors to a genocidal campaign.

At the time as the attacks by the Tutsi RPF, the radical youth wing of the political party of the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana created militia groups trained by the Rwandan police and army. These groups, called “those who attack together,” played a focal role in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The growing nationalism and extremism of the movement of Hutu Power and the anti-Tutsi radical propaganda of the Hutu extremist radio station contributed to the deterioration of Hutu-Tutsi relations after the 1993 Arusha Peace Accords.

Canadian General Dallaire was worried that the Hutu militia would kill Belgian soldiers and parliamentary deputies. The UN peacekeepers discovered an arms cache, and on January 11, 1994, he faxed his superiors at the UN asking permission to confiscate the arms, but they denied his request. He had information from a Hutu informant that the Hutu militia is trained to exterminate up to 1.000 Tutsis per 20 minutes. That was the state of Rwanda when, on April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying the Rwandan and Burundian Presidents back from peace talks in Dar-es-Salaam was shot down over Kigali airport. Though it was unclear who shot down the plane, the Hutus immediately accused the Tutsis of this crime, and the conflict started.

The bloodiest conflict in the modern history of Africa started with the genocide of ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 by ethnic Hutus. Historically, for centuries, Tutsi kings in Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi had imposed a feudal system in which Hutus had been serfs. Both German and Belgian colonial rulers in the region had supported Tutsi political and economic domination. Three years before Rwandan independence in 1962, ethnic violence erupted when elections led to a Hutu-dominated authority. Thereafter, periodic clashes of tribal violence continued in both Rwanda and Burundi. In 1990, the Tutsi-dominated RPF began an effort to overthrow the Hutu Government from their bases in Uganda.

According to militant Hutu propaganda, President Habyarimana was killed by Tutsi armed men. Immediately after the announcement that the Rwandan President (Hutu) was killed, the Presidential Guard, under the orders of the improvised Hutu Power Interim Authority led by Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, started the execution of influential Tutsi politicians and of Hutu known to be sympathetic to a coalition of the Hutu-Tutsi Government. Ministers from the coalition Government were first to be killed, including the Prime Minister, the president of the Supreme Court, and almost all the leaders of the Social Democratic Party.

Rwandan army soldiers, as predicted by Canadian General Dallaire’s message to his superiors, executed ten Belgian UN peacekeepers and prompted the withdrawal of the Belgian contingent in the UNAMIR, effectively undermining the UN’s real military potential for preventing the conflict and genocide. In the murderous weeks that followed, up to one million Tutsis were executed, often by machete-wielding Hutu neighbors, many of whom were forced to join the massacre by militants. Tutsis were either exterminated on the spot or arrested and placed in detention camps. Lists of Tutsis and moderate Hutus circulated within the militias, who hunted them down and killed them. However, after the experience of Somalia in 1992, the US and other Western states, although aware of the genocide, were unwilling to intervene.

The perpetrators looted after killing and stealing Tutsi property, burning down their houses so that they would not return. Tutsi women and girls were often raped before being killed. The raping was so systematic and widespread that the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) included it in the genocide indictment.  

In three months of 1994 (between April 6, when the President’s plane crashed, and July 18, when the Tutsi RPF created the interim Government and took control of Rwanda), the Hutu Government and its army, composed of many extremists, succeeded in exterminating two-thirds of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda. The Hutu warriors used firearms, machetes, and garden implements in the genocide of the Tutsis. They killed between 800,000 and one million Tutsis and politically moderate Hutu. As many as 50,000 of those killed in Rwanda were Hutus. If the RPF had not intervened, no Tutsi would likely have escaped the genocide of the Rwandan Hutu Government.

This is said to be the fastest and most efficient genocide of the 20th century. The Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) was largely impotent to stop the genocide. A request by the UN for up to 5,000 troops was finally approved at the end of May 1994, but in the face of uncertainty over the right to use force, many of the UN member states delayed contributing troops. By the time UNAMIR reached full strength, the Rwandan genocide was already over. Given the scale of the killings and UNAMIR’s very limited mandate and inadequate resources, the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda was deemed a major failure.