Dear friend,On this day, 21 years ago, the Rwandan genocide began, and in just 100 days between 500,000 and one million Rwandans, predominantly Tutsi, were killed.

This genocide remains one of the most horrifying examples of state-directed mass violence against civilians since the Holocaust.

The Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide is today releasing the findings from a conference examining the failure of the international community to prevent or effectively respond to the genocide and exploring whether and how it might have been averted. Review the findings now.

Co-organized by the Museum, the National Security Archive at George Washington University, and The Hague Institute for Global Justice, the conference, held in June 2014, brought together former peacemakers, peacekeepers, and peace monitors from more than a dozen countries.

The conference findings include an annotated transcript of the discussion, with references to over 100 newly declassified documents; a report detailing the main areas of discussion, debate, and lessons learned that emerged; and a compendium of original source documents that reconstruct key moments in the international decision-making up to and throughout the genocide.

This Rwanda conference is part of a broader Museum initiative to examine pivotal moments when international action could have prevented genocide. In the coming months and timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the event, we will analyze the international decision-making surrounding the fall of the “safe area” of Srebrenica in July 1995, termed a genocide through ICTY proceedings in 2004, where over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.

We hope this initiative will lead to greater understanding of the causes of genocide and how to prevent it, as well as new scholarship and research about these tragic events.

Sincerely,

Cameron Hudson
Director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide

Photo: A display of victims’ photographs at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda. US Holocaust Memorial Museum