Marking the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Credit: UN Photo/Violaine Martin
 
“We mourn the more than one million children, women, and men who perished in one hundred days of horror 29 years ago,” António Guterres said in his annual commemorative message, April 2023, on the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda.

By Alice Wairimu Nderitu and Romeo Dallaire
NEW YORK, Nov 19 2024 (IPS)

Last April, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. At the Rwandan capital, Kigali, at United Nations Headquarters, in New York, and across the world, we remembered the immense suffering this genocide caused on so many innocent civilians, who were targeted because of their identity, because of who they were.

In honoring them, we also renewed our commitment for the prevention of genocide, the gravest of crimes, the crime of crimes. We did so by reiterating that genocide does not happen overnight and that this crime is the result of a process which unfolds well before the actual killing starts. In Rwanda, the murder of thousands of innocent civilians took place in a very short period of time.

The alarm was raised, yet genocide happened. This shocked the world and raised the unavoidable question of what we could have collectively done to prevent this horror from happening in the first place.

At the same time, the conditions which facilitated this terrible tragedy were a long time in the making. Dehumanization of a specific group had been taking place well before the genocide took place.

Hate speech and incitement to violence found fertile ground in those terrible days of April 1994. The prevalence of genocide ideology preceded, and fueled, the commission of the acts of genocide. Commemorating this genocide and honoring the victims also meant remembering that genocide is a process, that there are risk factors and indicators for this crime, and that it is essential to act when they are present in order to prevent the worst possible outcome.

Accountability for past violations constitutes an important mitigating measure. Justice is essential not only for the cause of justice itself, to bring solace to the friends and relatives of those who perished, but also for reconciliation, for moving forward in peace, for building a future in which such crimes cannot be committed again. For the prevention of future crimes.

Yet, today, more than 1,000 fugitive génocidaires from Rwanda are still at large, despite existing indictments and international arrest warrants in place. This is according to the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, the IRMCT, which has carried forward the work of bringing international accountability to the horrible crimes committed in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda after the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) concluded its work in 2015

Let us underline this in no unequivocal way: More than thirty years after those tragic events, which were caused by specific individuals, with specific and vicious aims, and with strong allegations of an intent to destroy an entire group from the face of the Earth, more than 1,000 of those individuals, indicted by an impartial and independent court of justice for allegations of commission of the crime of genocide, are not finding their day in court.

Many are enjoying spaces of immunity that allow them to remain at large. Spaces where past acts of genocide may be denied. Spaces such denial is being promoted. Today, there are States that are hosting alleged génocidaires. This is unacceptable.

States must ensure that there is no space for such impunity. In a world community where the global commitment to prevent genocide is reiterated each 9 December, when we mark the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide, there cannot be space for impunity being facilitated by States unwilling to take the necessary action for justice to prevail.

The space for impunity must shrink and the space for accountability must widen. States in which alleged perpetrators are found must prosecute or extradite them without delay. States in which individuals indicted by the ICTR are present must take active and immediate steps to ensure that those individuals can be brought to justice without further delay.

For this, the ball is in the court of national jurisdictions. Many are leading by example and are taking the right steps and playing a leading role, not only in bringing perpetrators to justice, but also in actively seeking the assistance they need to ensure that all evidence is taken into account. To this day, the IRMCT has been providing assistance to national jurisdictions in response to specific requests for assistance in no small amount.

In the last two years alone, in relation to Rwanda, the residual mechanism has assisted 10 different Member States, handing over 5,000 documents and facilitating the participation of 69 witnesses in national proceedings and providing investigative plans. In June, just two months after the official commemorations of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the United Nations Security Council heard from the President and the Prosecutor of the IRMCT, Judge Santana and Prosecutor Brammertz, on the important progress made by the IRMCT over its almost 15 years of existence in continuation of the justice work not only by the ICTR but also by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Thanks to this, it has been possible to complete the work initiated by the ICTR and the ICTY and account for all 253 persons indicted by these Tribunals for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. These are the gravest international violations. These are crimes that target civilian populations explicitly. In the case of genocide, for targeting a specific, protected group with the intention to destroy the group in whole or in part. We reiterate: for wanting to erase a national, ethnical, racial or religious group from the face of the Earth.

But more action is needed. Justice has not been fully met. Full accountability has not been achieved. In Rwanda, the country itself walked the talk of healing and reconciliation with efforts at the community level to bring people together. This includes through the gacaca courts, which became an example of effective transitional justice mechanism and a model for the world.

But as long as fugitives remain at large, the scar of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi will continue bleeding. The entirety of the international community has a responsibility to ensure that all perpetrators are brought to account.

Of course, nothing can return those who were killed to their families, their friends and relatives. But justice and accountability can help bring closure to survivors and can reassure them that their suffering is and will be recognized, and their sacrifice is and will be honored.

Only when all perpetrators have been held into account, we will we be able to uphold the expectations that all victims rightly possess: that their voices are heard, that their suffering is acknowledged, and that there is justice for the crimes committed against their loved ones.

Because too many victims of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda are yet to find this solace, it is imperative that the wheels of justice continue turning and that all alleged perpetrators are brought to justice without delay. No effort must be spared to achieve this end.

United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu and Lieutenant-General (ret’d) The Honourable Romeo Dallaire.

IPS UN Bureau

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April 7th 2024 marked the start of Kwibuka 30, the 30th commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi, which began on April 7th 1994.

By Alice Wairimu Nderitu
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 9 2024 (IPS)

One should never lose sight that for people who experienced genocide, the warning signs were there. Genocide is a process. It requires preparation and capacities to carry it out.

The 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, in which Hutu and others who opposed it were also killed, was made possible because of decades of stigmatisation, marginalisation, and discrimination, aggravated by hate speech against the Tutsi.

The Tutsi were dehumanized, called “inyenzi” – cockroaches – to ensure that when the call to kill and exterminate went out, it was taken up. This call, fed by dehumanisation, made it possible for tailors, cobblers, farmers, teachers, priests – ordinary people – to kill unarmed men, women, old people, and children.

People whose only crime was the identity they held.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu

Others have descended on the path of denying that the genocide happened. Denial or distorting the facts of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, coming in the form of hate speech or not, constitutes an indicator of risk for the commission of genocide.

Genocide deniers

Despite the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda having proved repeatedly, conclusively, in lengthy legal processes and applying international fair trial standards and the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt, that the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda happened, revisionists and genocide deniers continue to ignore judicial decisions.

These trends are particularly worrisome as we are marking the 30th commemoration of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This time should be spent honouring and commemorating victims, remembering, and learning from the past.

We are instead faced with the challenge of addressing growing trends of denial and distortion or these tragedies.

Hate speech, especially on social media, is helping spread and amplify denial at alarming rates. Genocide denial impacts directly on victims who are retraumatized and faced with the burden of having to justify and explain the crimes they endured, despite the courts having conclusively determined that the crimes occurred.

Denial has a serious detrimental impact on healing and reconciliation. I have seen this too often. Victims understand very well that genocide denial refers to the past, but that its impact is felt in the present and will be felt in the future. They do not want the young generations to experience what they have experienced.

The story of Rwanda in the past 30 years is a story of deep learning and drawing of lessons from the past to ensure that future generations do not experience the same horrors.

Those whose lives and futures were taken must be remembered, always. There is an everlasting pain in remembering, but there is also strength.

There must be determination in ensuring that these lessons learned from Rwanda are truly learned, risk factors mitigated early, and populations protected from another genocide. This determination and efforts remain essential.

This is why Kwibuka30 is especially important today: to remind us of our obligation to learn, to prevent, to act. This is important, especially, for those whose lives were taken away in the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and for all those at risk across the world today.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu is UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to the United Nations Secretary General.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

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Genocide Convention @75: A call for its application as a 'living force in world society'.
 
“Large countries can defend themselves by arms; small countries need the protection of laws.” Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who gave the crime of genocide its name, knew well what he was conveying with that note as he approached the diplomats at the United Nations ahead of the first regular session of the General Assembly in 1946.

By Alice Wairimu Nderitu
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2024 (IPS)

It was a notion which haunted him well before the Second World War – from the history books his mother would read him, to the following of the 1921 trial of young Armenian Soghomon Teilerian.

Why, Lemkin asked his law school Professor, is there a name for the killing of one person, murder, but none for the killing of several people on the basis of their identity? The horrors of the Second World War, in which he lost forty-nine members of his family, further refined his understanding that genocide – a crime without a name – was a coordinated plan with different actions aiming to annihilate individuals because they belonged to a certain identity group.

On 9 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – its first human rights treaty – by unanimous vote. It affirmed that genocide is a crime under international law, whether committed in times of peace or in times of war.

Alice Wairimu Nderitu

Despite this recognition, Lemkin was not restful. “The nations which have ratified the Genocide Convention must now make this convention a living force in their societies by introducing appropriate domestic legislation which will carry in itself a great educational message of respect, love and compassion for human beings beyond their boundaries, irrespective of religion, nationality and race.”

Lemkin was on point and his call could not be more urgent today. As back then, ratifying the Convention constitutes a first step but it is far from being enough. Ratification must be followed by concrete implementation, including through domestication at national level through establishing national legal and policy tools aimed at identifying and addressing early warning signs and ensuring accountability when the crime has been committed.

We know today that the commission of genocide constitutes the end result of a process for which there are warning signs. We also know that whether or not States have ratified the Convention, they are bound by the principle that genocide is a crime under international law, and they have an obligation to prevent and punish it.

In the 75 years since the adoption of the Convention, we have seen that when protection fails, it fails those who need it most. We are seeing this today, live-tweeted and streamed from more than a few places across the world.

Yet, nothing is preordained, and no outcome is inevitable, and the call for prevention resonates today even more strongly when and where the risk of this crime is higher.

At this juncture time in history, while acknowledging the tremendous challenges which continue to hinder our collective ability to prevent and respond, we must also pause to reflect on the road that has been traveled.

Since the moment of its adoption, the Convention has played a vital role in the development of international criminal law as we know it today. It defined the crime of genocide as the intended destruction, in whole or in part, of a racial, national, ethnic or religious group.

The formal definition of the crime in the Convention has been subsequently included in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998, as well as in the statutes of other jurisdictions, such as the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, and the Extraordinary Chambers in Cambodia.

It has been ratified or acceded to by 153 States. Yet, 41 United Nations Member States have not done so.

As every 9 December, which is now a date internationally marked as the Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, we will continue honoring all those who have lost their lives to genocide, the “crime of crimes.”

On the particular occasion of this 75th anniversary, with the legacy of the Convention at hand, we are urging all nations to renew their commitment to the Genocide Convention as a ‘living force’ in our societies.

There is much work ahead, for which the lessons learned from these past 75 years

Alice Wairimu Nderitu is Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide to the United Nations Secretary General.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

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