France’s Role In The 1994 Rwandan Genocide
In April 2021, a report commissioned by the Rwandan government placed “significant” responsibility on the French government for “enabling a foreseeable genocide”. In April and May of 1994, an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutu militia. Despite evidence of a planned Tutsi extermination, France willingly supported the Rwandan government and subsequently endeavoured to conceal its role in the aftermath of the genocide. While the report clears France of any complicity, it outlines France’s stringent commitment to geopolitical aims in the face of a genocidal regime.
Years of ethnic tension and animosity culminated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where members of the Hutu ethnic majority set out to exterminate the minority Tutsi population. The genocide lasted for a period of around 100 days with shocking speed and brutality that left the world in categoric disbelief. In the aftermath, importance was placed on efforts to provide an understanding and awareness of the factors that contributed to such a horrifying reality. The most recent effort is the Rwandan-commissioned report.
The 600-page report, commissioned in 2017, was carried out by US law firm Levy Firestone Muse and is based on documentary evidence from several sources and accounts of approximately 250 witnesses. It concludes that France enabled the 1994 genocide and accused the French government of withholding “critical documents and testimony” in the decades following the genocide. France’s actions as a bystander meant it did nothing to stop the slaughter of ethnic Tutsi and therefore holds significant responsibility for the events that transpired.
ONE STEP CLOSER TO TRANSPARENCY
Widely seen as an effort to improve bilateral relations, the Rwandan commission came just weeks after a comparable report was published by the French government in which similar, albeit not identical, conclusions were reached. Commissioned by current French President Emmanuel Macron, the French report asserts that French authorities had been blind to the preparations for genocide and then reacted too slowly to appreciate the extent of the killings and to respond to them. The designation of “blind” is contentiously refuted in the Rwandan report, stressing greater culpability. In a blatant rebuttal, this report contended that the French government was “neither blind nor unconscious about the foreseeable genocide”. As the President of Rwanda Paul Kagame put it, “Rwandan lives were just pawns in France’s geopolitical game”.
Despite the differing thresholds of liability, both reports can be seen as solid efforts to move towards a more transparent view of history between the two countries. To further this effort, on April 7, the day of commemoration of the genocide, the French president announced the decision to declassify and make accessible to the public the archives from 1990-1994. Previously, all requests for these documents had been denied, as under French law, documents that regard military and foreign policies can remain classified for decades. This had been a source of great tension between Rwanda and France, thus the move to declassify signals the acknowledgement that transparency is needed in order to have a better understanding of the past.
It is the hope of both President Macron and President Kagame that a new relationship will be formed between the two countries, with transparency being the antidote to the poisonous relationship that existed because of France’s role in enabling the Rwandan genocide. With a common understanding of the past, it is much easier to look towards a common future. Rwanda is a small but strategic country. Now France’s geopolitical goals depend on the acknowledgement of its previous humanitarian failings when presented with geopolitical opportunity.
While the court of public opinion will be scrutinising this blossoming relationship, President Kagame now believes that France and Rwanda have reached a stage of “unprecedented political trust”.
Leah is a Master's student at University College Dublin, studying International Relations. She has a background in human rights advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa and hopes to pursue a career as a journalist focusing on international human rights issues.