How Did Dallaire Contribute To Humanitarianism?

A history of globalization and European colonialism has left prolonged damage to the economies and traditions of other cultures such as the Rwandan and Congolese peoples. In evaluating this issue, it is clear that we should embrace the humanitarian views expressed in the source because there has been a history of solvable problems becoming nearly, if not entirely, unsolvable due to a lack of compliance from both individuals and authorities. While it is important to take action in solving humanitarian issues, it must also be understood that some problems are still incredibly far away from a solution. The industrialized countries who benefited from globalization should be held accountable for the problems that they have caused for the nations

Despite the efforts of Lieutenant-General Dallaire and his soldiers, the mission was a failure and an estimated eight hundred thousand lives were lost. The mission’s failure can be attributed to the UN’s excessive limitations and strict protocol. The Rwandan peacekeeping mission was extremely underfunded and General Dallaire’s requests for more troops was dismissed, leaving him with only a handful of poorly trained and under-supplied men sent from developing countries to aid him in his mission to prevent the massacre of the Tutsis. Most of these men were from Bangladesh, while others were from Ghana, Senegal, Tunisia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo, Mali and Uruguay. Many of the so-called soldiers the UN had provided General Dallaire with arrived without sleeping bags, helmets, radios, or vehicles. Furthermore, many of General Dallaire’s attempts to stop or slow down the genocide were also denied, including his request for permission to raid a major Hutu weapons cache, claiming that such actions went against the mission’s mandate. In a 2004 interview Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Secretary-General of the UN during the time of the genocide, claimed that “[The UN was] not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide” and admits that this wrong perception of genocide was “one of [his] greatest failures”. Although the

However, the Prime Minister was assassinated and all fifteen of the soldiers who were sent to protect her were captured. The Ghanaian men were released, but the ten Belgians were tortured and murdered. After receiving the news of the men’s deaths, the remaining Belgian soldiers fled Rwanda and returned to Europe- abandoning the country they had forsaken once before. The Belgians should have been held accountable for the problems they had previously created for Rwanda, instead, they gave up on the nation in order to save themselves. It is believed that all human lives should be considered equal, yet the Belgians valued their own lives more than the lives of the Rwandans. Ten years after the Rwandan Genocide, a survivor said that “Talking about [the genocide], even if the talking in itself is a big step, is not enough; there must be also actions, concrete actions… If we want to prevent genocide, if we want to use learned lessons, we must face this reality and agree that failing the survivors now, ten years later, is another way of denying that this has happened and that many have a responsibility in what happened.” This quote strengthens the “stop talking, start doing” attitude that is present in the