Arms Over Plowshares

Abstract

The Security Council’s enfeeblement of UNAMIR soon produced a backlash at the United Nations, leading to renewed efforts to resolve the Rwandan crisis. Nevertheless, there was a notable lack of progress due to protracted bureaucratic wrangling, limited funds, and the absence of a sense of urgency despite continued mass killings. From May 22–27, Boutros-Ghali’s personal two-man mission (director of peacekeeping operations Iqbal Riza and military adviser J. Maurice Baril) surveyed the Rwandan quagmire and concluded that a political rather than a military solution was the only way out of the morass¹. The UN then proved to be incapable not only of effecting such a solution but of accomplishing steps in that direction such as arranging a ceasefire or separating the combatants. The genocide then subsided, not because of any UN accomplishment, but as a result of the battlefield advances made by the RPE The Security Council did authorize French military intervention in Rwanda, but its narrow success in saving lives within the southwestern security zone had little impact on stopping the broader genocide. The RPF’s victory ending the devastating conflict was achieved despite France’s role, not as its consequence.