Abstract
The Security Council proved to be correct in having applied Chapter VII peacekeeping provisions to the Rwandan situation as the refugee problem in Zaire did turn out to be a threat to regional peace and security, and the new ethnic realignment in Rwanda demonstratively had a destabilizing impact on neighboring Burundi. Unfortunately, however, UNAMIR had already departed and the United Nations exhibited great reluctance in deploying troops yet again. The spillover effect from the Rwandan genocide then gathered momentum, culminating in the downfall of the Mobutu government in Zaire and the virtual erasure of state boundaries. Sovereignty fell by the wayside, as ethnicity came to the fore. External ties strongly based on kinship superseded citizenship as the legal norms of the international system gave way to new realities that transcended statehood. African countries therefore must grapple with powerful primordial forces as they seek to establish a structurally sound framework for order in the wake of the Rwandan tragedy.
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Notes
For an effective summary of events in eastern Zaire, see Gerard Prunier, ‘The Great Lakes Crisis,’ Current History, vol. 96, no. 610 (May 1997): 193–99.
The New York Times October 13, 1996, p. 12 and Peter Schraeder, ‘France and the Great Game in Africa,’ Current History, vol. 96, no. 610 (May 1997): 210.
The New York Times April 20, 1994, p. A18 and Ali Mazrui, ‘The Blood of Experience,’ World Policy Journal, vol. XII, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 31.
Sylvestre Ntibantunganya in Traits d’Union Rwanda 5 (November 1994): 46.
Acting separately in West Africa, Nigeria has intervened militarily in the affairs of Liberia and Sierra Leone. For an examination of the new emerging order in Africa, see Edmond Keller and Donald Rothchild, eds, Africa in the New International Order: Rethinking State Sovereignty and Regional Security ( Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996 ).
Evan Luard,‘Human Rights and Foreign Policy,’ International Affairs vol. 56, no. 4 (Autumn 1980): 599.
Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal, Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance (London: African Rights, 1994), pp. 632–33; Omaar and de Waal, revised edition, 1995, pp. 1070–71
and de Waal and Omaar, ‘The Genocide in Rwanda and the International Response,’ Current History, vol. 94, no. 591 (April 1995): 158–59.
Alain Destexhe, Secretary-General of Doctors Without Borders, writes that the UN should not have been neutral and should have sided with the RPF. See ‘The Third Genocide,’ Foreign Policy, no. 97 (Winter 1994–95): 9. The Economist noted at the height of the genocide: ‘In the short run, the best hope of peace, and of survival for those Tutsis left alive, would probably be a quick victory in war for the RPE’ See ‘Rwanda: The Art of Death,’ vol. 331, no. 7865 (May 28, 1994): 36. See also Simon Jenkins, The Times in World Press Review, vol. 41, no. 9 (September 1994): 12.
Bruce Jones, ‘“Intervention Without Borders”: Humanitarian Intervention in Rwanda, 1990–94,’ Millenium, vol. 24, no. 2 (Summer 1995): 245; testimony of Destexhe in ‘Crisis in Central Africa,’ Subcommittee on African Affairs, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 26, 1994 (Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1994), pp. 79–80; Destexhe, ‘The Third Genocide,’ p. 13;
and Alain Destexhe, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1995), p. 58. In regard to Hutu refugees in Zaire, it has been argued that repatriation is a humanitarian solution that does not adequately address the resolution of the underlying political problems.
See John Borton, Emery Brusset and Alistair Hallam, ‘Humanitarian Aid and Effects,’ in The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience ( Copenhagen: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, Copenhagen: 1996 ), vol. 3, p. 156.
Ben Barber, ‘Feeding Refugees, or War?,’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 4 (July/August 1997): 11.
Bruce Wallace, ‘Aftermath of Genocide,’ Macleans (February 6, 1995): 34
Charles David-Smith, ‘The Geopolitics of Rwandan Settlement: Uganda and Tanzania,’ Issue, vol. XXIII, no. 2 (1995): 55; and de Waal and Omaar, p. 161. Some relief workers in Rwanda during the summer of 1994 didn’t want to carry out missions there, but they were informed by their headquarters that fund raising would suffer if they were inactive.
See David Rieff, ‘Charity on the Rampage,’ Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, no. 1 (January/February 1997 ): 134. Rieff’s essay is a critique of Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity ( New York: Free Press, 1997 ).
Philip Gourevitch, ‘Letter From Rwanda: The Return,’ The New Yorker vol. 72, no. 43 (January 20, 1997): 52.
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© 1998 Arthur Jay Klinghoffer
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Klinghoffer, A.J. (1998). Sovereignty’s Death Throes. In: The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375062_16
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