Despite political gestures from the RPF toward Rwanda’s Hutu majority, there remained substantial distrust of Hutus toward the Tutsi-dominated RPF, based on a number of factors: killings of Hutus by the RPF both in Rwanda and later in Congo, plus mass arrests of suspected genocide perpetrators.

Genocide. After the genocide and the Tutsis’ regaining control, about 1.3 million Hutus fled to Burundi, Tanzania4 (from where more than 10,000 were later expelled by the government), Uganda, and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the great focus of Tutsi-Hutu conflict is today.

Rwanda is a constitutional republic dominated by a strong presidency. The ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front led a governing coalition that included four smaller parties. In 2017 voters elected President Paul Kagame to a third seven-year term with a reported 99 percent of the vote and a reported 98 percent turnout.

In January 1994, the United Nations forces in Rwanda warned that larger massacres were imminent. On April 6, 1994, President Habyarimana was killed when his plane was shot down. The Belgian peacekeepers were killed the next day, a key factor in the withdrawal of U.N. forces from Rwanda.

On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda.

Juvénal Habyarimana

Kennedy Jr., the son and namesake of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, died when the light aircraft he was flying crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts….John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash.

This was one of the worst massacres of the century and the UN Security Council had been seen to be doing nothing about it. The Council voted to send troops back to Rwanda but the US – still reluctant to get involved because of fear of the ‘Somalia Syndrome’ – delayed releasing the resources.

Casualties. Twenty-seven members of UNAMIR – 22 soldiers, three military observers, one civilian police and one local staff – lost their lives during the mission. The genocide and the spectre of mission failure had a profound effect on Dallaire.

Although it succeeded in protecting many civilian lives and distributing humanitarian aid, UNOSOM II did not—and could not—fulfill its mandate, and the population continued to suffer from all it had endured from 1992 onward. In addition, the mission was plagued by rampant mismanagement and corruption.

Following sixteen years of intense diplomatic pressure by the US, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379, which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism”, of 1975 was revoked in 1991 by resolution 46/86 as a precondition for the participation of Israel to the Madrid Conference.