On May 8 1994, my husband was brutally murdered by armed militias in Rwanda. His parents, sisters, his uncles, aunts and cousins were also killed. My name was on a list to be killed the next day. At midnight I escaped, carrying my three small children and two others whose parents had also died. I was pregnant and my youngest child was 11 months old. We walked 18km to a small town called Nyanza, where two sisters agreed to hide us in their home, and we survived.
This is what genocide means to me. My family and friends were victims of a systematic attempt to exterminate the entire Tutsi ethnic group. While the world watched, at least 800 000 people were massacred in the space of 100 days. Along with all the Tutsis who fled or lost their lives, many members of the rival Hutu group also died, and many more risked their lives to save us. I would not be here today if it wasn’t for those two Hutu sisters.
Yet, if genocide were looming today, would people be saved? The United Nations Security Council members — France, the United States, Britain, China and Russia — could have supplied the crucial mandate for UN troops to intervene in Rwanda. Instead they pursued selfish foreign policies, leaving the tiny UN force in Kigali unable to protect innocent civilians.
In a fortnight, at the UN summit in New York, presidents and prime ministers gathering at the largest ever meeting of world leaders may sign an agreement to enshrine their responsibility to protect civilians and stop brutal mass killings.
The agreement would establish the responsibility of governments to take quick collective action to protect civilians from large-scale killing, including genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The international community would be forced to act where a national government was unwilling or unable to do anything.
A range of tools could be used, with force, exercisable by the UN Security Council, a last resort. Such agreement could help save thousands of innocent civilians in places like Darfur, where many are suffering.
All nations realised the world’s failure in Rwanda. Yet, since then, more than 40-million people have fled their homes in fear, and millions have died in terrible conflicts.
The Rwandan government and South Africa, Tanzania, Australia, Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Singapore, Japan and all European governments support the proposed agreement and are working to make it a reality. But the US, India and Brazil are trying to weaken the measure, so they would not be obliged to act to save lives. Egypt, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Malaysia and Venezuela are among those determined to block the move.
Any weakening of this measure could allow nations, faced with a situ-ation of ethnic cleansing, to wiggle out of their obligations and renew the posturing and politicking that prevented action in Rwanda in 1994.
If world leaders do not agree to act swiftly to protect people, millions could once more be slaughtered while govern-ments discuss procedures in New York.
In Rwanda, 11 years later, we are slowly healing, and realise the need to coexist no matter what has happened in the past. Peace-building is the national pastime. I now help train ex-soldiers, women and men in how to deal with conflict.
My children have grown up without a father. Their earliest memories are of watching our house burn to the ground, and running for their lives. Their dreams are still interrupted by horrific nightmares. They, and all those who have survived or currently live in fear, deserve to know that their nightmares will not be repeated for generations to come.
Grace Mukagabiro is the Oxfam Programme Coordinator in Kigali, Rwanda