Was There Help?"This happened two days before the UN security council was due to decide whether or not to send peace-keepers to Rwanda. With the support of Russia and the UK, America insisted on only a small, cheap peace-keeping effort. It would be limited to Rwanda’s capital city, Kigali, and there would be no seizing of weapons - only observing." "Surprisingly, throughout the genocide, the United Nations, the United States, and the world repeatedly turned a blind eye to the atrocities that were occurring in Rwanda, lending little, if any help to the thousands of innocent people who were being slaughtered daily." |
"Aware from the start that Tutsi were being targeted for elimination, the leading foreign actors refused to acknowledge the genocide. Not only did international leaders reject what was going on, but they also declined for weeks to use their political and moral authority to challenge the legitimacy of the genocidal government" "It is clear when considering the Rwanda genocide of 1994 that each of these steps progressed unhindered, all the way from bias to the extreme of genocide, following the steps Hicks lined out in her Pyramid of Hate" (Hicks, 2006). |
Overall, even with the extreme aspects of the Rwandan genocide, it took the United States and surrounding countries an overwhelmingly large amount of time to respond to the situation at hand, they were choosing to ignore the problem. The people didn't want to believe the genocide was truly occurring, much like that has happened in the past history seems to be repeating itself. Although they did eventually intervene, something should have happened sooner, the way the government handled things hasn't changed much, they were also waiting because of the costs, which shouldn't have been an excuse. I think people recognize this event but it has not exactly impacted the lives of everyone to a point where it can be totally prevented in the future.