The Genocide in Rwanda

For example, in 1994, just three years after American and Russian leaders signed the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), the international community failed to provide a coherent response to the genocide in Rwanda.

Graveyard in Rwanda. AP/Wide World Photo.

The nature and scale of this genocide have prompted substantial study and analysis, along with deep soul-searching among policy-makers and observers.

In an attempt to eliminate Rwanda's Tutsi minority, the Hutu majority systematically slaughtered 800,000 individuals, most of them civilians, in just 100 days, a rate of killing that rivals the worst in human history.

Armed with machetes, the killers were both vicious and organized, torturing their victims, murdering them in cold blood, and dumping their bodies in mass graves. In numerous cases, such killing took place while international peacekeepers stood by helplessly.

The Rwandan genocide exposed glaring weaknesses in the capacity of international and multilateral institutions to prevent or respond to such violence, while raising troubling questions about international willingness to do so.