Rwanda Genocide
By: Max • Essay • 365 Words • May 25, 2010 • 1,867 Views
Rwanda Genocide
The Rwandan Genocide was the systematic murder of the Rwanda's Tutsi minority and the moderates of its Hutu majority, in 1994. This was both the bloodiest period of the Rwandan Civil War and one of the worst genocides of the 1990s. With the preliminary implementation of the Arusha Accords, the Tutsi rebels and Hutu regime were able to agree to a cease-fire, and further negotiations were underway. The diplomatic efforts to end the conflict were at first thought to be successful, yet even with the MRND and RPF (political wing of the RPA) in talks, certain Hutu factions, like the CDR, were against any agreement for cooperation between the regime, and the rebels, to end Rwanda's ethnic and economic troubles and progress towards a stable nationhood. The genocide was primarily the action of two extremist Hutu militias, the Interahamwe (military wing of the MRND) and the Impuzamugambi (military wing of the CDR), against dissenters to their Hutu extremism. Over the course of about 100 days, from April 6 to mid-July, at least 800,000 Tutsis and thousands of Hutus were killed during the genocide.[1] Some estimates put the death toll around the 800,000 and 1,000,000 marks.[2]
With the genocide, and the resurgence in the civil war, Rwanda's conflict was thought by the United Nations to be too difficult and volatile for it to handle. Eventually, the