Thirty years ago, on January 11, 1994, the Commander of the United Nations Peacekeeping Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR), Lt Gen Romeo Dallaire, sent a distressing message to the UN General Secretariat. The message was prompted by information he received indicating that members of the then Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana’s inner circle (Akazu) were planning the extermination of the Tutsi in the country.

Dallaire's informant, Jean Pierre Turatsinze, formerly a member of Habyarimana's security staff, was at the time involved in drawing lists of the Tutsi to be killed and training the Interahamwe militia to carry out targeted killings.

According to Dallaire's informant, the plan of          Habyarimana’s regime was to provoke a civil war by attacking the Belgian contingent of UNAMIR, which was well equipped compared to contingents from Bangladesh, Ghana, and Senegal.

The genocidal regime intended to attack the Rwandese Patriotic Army troops (then armed wing of RPF) to create chaos.

Dallaire's message, titled "Request for Protection for Informant," detailed the imminent threat of the Tutsi extermination campaign.

Everything Dallaire's informant warned about unfolded three months later. Habyarimana was killed by Hutu extremists, providing a pretext to execute their plan to exterminate the Tutsi.

Belgian soldiers were targeted daily on hate Radio RTLM.  Following Habyarimana's death, 10 Belgian peacekeepers were captured, tortured, murdered, and mutilated.

Belgium subsequently withdrew its forces, leading to the collapse of the UN mission.

Turatsinze's information was not an exaggeration, as the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi unfolded with a daily death toll surpassing his reports.

Turatsinze offered to assist the UN in raiding Interahamwe weapons caches, but the UN turned a deaf ear.

Dallaire, eager to act, announced his intention to raid an arms cache within 36 hours and urged for the evacuation of the informant from Rwanda.

Instead of a decisive response, Dallaire was instructed to share the information with Habyarimana and inform him of the clear threat posed by the Interahamwe to the peace process.

Dallaire was additionally told to inform the Ambassadors to Rwanda from Belgium, France, and the United States, sponsors of the Arusha Peace Agreement, about the issue.

The consequences of ignoring Dallaire's urgent message were severe and far-reaching. Over one million Tutsi were killed within 100 days, leaving indelible scars on Rwandan society.

The UN's failure to act highlighted its incompetence, hindering effective intervention in future conflicts, with the "Rwanda stigma" lingering over peacekeeping operations.

The Genocide against the Tutsi fuelled the Hutu Power ideology, posing a continued threat to regional stability, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) where the genocidal forces and Interahamwe militia found a safe haven. They founded the FDLR terrorist group, which is active in eastern DRC, getting more of its logistics from Kinshasa.

The FDLR has, for three decades, been documented in mass killings targeting Congolese Tutsi, looting their properties and burning down their houses with the knowledge and support of successive Congolese governments.

The UN's obligation under the Genocide Convention to prevent and punish genocide crimes raises ethical and legal concerns about the international community's responsibility to protect vulnerable populations.

The world's inaction during the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi remains questionable. It serves as a stark reminder of the human cost of inaction and underscores the importance of international cooperation in addressing humanitarian crises.  

Dallaire's fax stands as a symbol of the UN's failures, offering a crucial case study in the ongoing debate about the principle of responsibility to protect (R2P), whereby states are supposed to act to prevent mass atrocity crimes and protect all populations from risks related to their occurrence.