April 15, 2000
United Nations - Shamed by its inaction, the Security Council accepted responsibility Friday for failing to stop Rwanda's 1994 genocide and vowed to do more to prevent another slaughter of innocents. In their first formal response to a critical report of the U.N. role in the genocide, ambassadors acknowledged the expose's key findings: that world governments lacked the political will to stop the massacre of half a million people and deprived the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Rwanda of the resources needed to save lives.
"I doubt any in this chamber can look back at that time without remorse and a great deal of sadness at the failure to help the people of Rwanda in their time of need,'' said Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, who presided over an open meeting of the council. The brutality "made a mockery, once again, of the pledge 'never again,' '' he said, referring to the promise made after the Holocaust in Europe.
Although no formal statement or resolution was adopted, each of the 15 council members spoke, acknowledging the U.N. failures and vowing to do more, particularly with the new U.N. mission in Rwanda's neighbor, Congo. About 500,000 people, most of them minority Tutsis, were killed in the Hutu-sponsored genocide that began after the April 6, 1994, downing of the Rwandan president's plane.
The United Nations had a 2,500-member U.N. peacekeeping mission in the country at the time, but governments evacuated all but a few hundred Tunisian and Ghanian troops after 10 Belgian peacekeepers were killed. Annan was head of U.N. peacekeeping operations and was singled out in the December report for failing to pass on warnings about the impending genocide. He commissioned the report last year and said he fully accepted its conclusions.
