Course and interventions in Rwanda (History HL)

The big idea: Between April and July 1994, extremists in Rwanda murdered around 800,000 people in about 100 days — most of them Tutsi, plus Hutu who opposed the killing.

The world had peacekeepers on the ground but chose not to stop it. This micro tracks the course of events and the interventions that failed.

Rwanda is a small country in central-east Africa whose people share one language and religion but were split into two main groups: the Hutu majority and the Tutsi minority. Belgian colonial rulers had hardened this divide, and after independence in 1962 a Hutu-led government often treated Tutsi as outsiders.

In October 1990 a mostly-Tutsi rebel army, the RPF, invaded from Uganda and began a civil war against President Juvénal Habyarimana's government. That war is where the story of the genocide begins.

Spot it: the three stages: War (1990) leads to a peace deal (1993), which collapses into genocide (1994). Keep this spine in your head and every date will slot into place.

To answer exam questions well, you need the events in the right order and you need to know what each outside group did — or failed to do. Let's take the course of events first, then the interventions.

Now the interventions. The hard truth is that the outside world had the information and the people on the ground to act, yet the major powers held back.

Here is what each did.

UNAMIR and the UN — pulled back, not sent in: General Dallaire warned the UN before the genocide that weapons were being stockpiled, but he was told not to act.

When ten Belgian peacekeepers were murdered on the first day, Belgium withdrew its troops, and in late April the UN Security Council cut UNAMIR to a few hundred soldiers instead of reinforcing it.

The great powers — a wall of words: The United States, still stung by losses in Somalia in 1993, refused to lead and even avoided the word 'genocide' to dodge any duty to act.

The UN passed a plan for a larger force (UNAMIR II) in May, but troops and equipment arrived far too late to save lives.

France — Opération Turquoise, June 1994: In late June, France launched Opération Turquoise, a UN-approved 'safe zone' in the south-west.

It did shelter some civilians, but critics argue it also let members of the defeated Hutu government and killers escape, because France had backed that government before.

The aftermath spills over: The genocide did not end cleanly in July 1994. Around two million Hutu, including many killers, fled into refugee camps in neighbouring Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). From 1996 to 1998 those camps and cross-border raids helped drag the wider region into war — the violence outlasted 1994.

Belgium — the fullest case study of a single actor

Belgium's withdrawal, 7 April 1994: Belgium supplied UNAMIR's largest national contingent — around 450 of Dallaire's roughly 2,500 troops — so what Belgium did next mattered more than any other single country's choice.

On 7 April 1994, the morning after the plane was shot down, ten Belgian paratroopers were sent to guard Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana. Hutu extremist soldiers captured, tortured and murdered all ten Belgian paratroopers, alongside the prime minister herself.

The killers' aim worked exactly as intended: Belgium, shocked by the loss and unwilling to risk more soldiers, withdrew its entire contingent from Rwanda within days — stripping UNAMIR of its best-equipped troops right as the killing was accelerating.

Belgium's exit helped trigger the UN drawdown: Belgium's full withdrawal was not a side event — it directly fed into the UN Security Council's decision in late April 1994 to slash UNAMIR from about 2,500 to a skeleton force of around 270.

Cause and effect for the exam: ten paratroopers murdered (7 April) → Belgium pulls out its whole contingent → UNAMIR loses its strongest unit → the Security Council votes to shrink the mission rather than reinforce it. Each link connects to 'reasons for inaction' and the 'role of ... Belgium' named in the syllabus.

Belgium's colonial responsibility: Belgium's role did not begin in 1994. As Rwanda's colonial power (taking over from Germany after the First World War and ruling until independence in 1962), Belgium had issued identity cards classifying every Rwandan as Hutu, Tutsi or Twa, and had favoured Tutsi for administrative privilege for decades before reversing that favouritism at independence.

This hardened flexible, pre-colonial social categories into fixed, rigid ethnic identities — the same categories extremist propaganda later exploited to organise mass killing. The syllabus lists 'colonial legacy' as a cause of the conflict for exactly this reason: Belgium was both a cause of the underlying divisions in 1994 and, decades later, the country whose peacekeepers' deaths helped cut short the response to the genocide they had helped make possible.

How this is tested (Paper 1): Paper 1 is source-based, but the final 9-mark question also needs your own knowledge. A common task is to judge whether the international response failed.

Don't just describe the killing — weigh the actions and inaction of the UN, the great powers and France against each other.

Common mistakes: Don't just narrate the 100 days — marks come from weighing who was responsible. And don't blur the groups: the UN, the great powers and France each acted differently, so treat them separately.