Rwandan Civil War and Genocide

What happened

Rwanda's 1994 genocide erupted after a Hutu extremist shot down President Juvénal Habyarimana's plane in April. Within hours, Hutu militias and ordinary citizens began systematically hunting Tutsis and moderate Hutus. Local broadcasters incited killings while roadblocks separated victims by ethnicity. Neighboring Tutsi forces under Paul Kagame fought back, eventually halting the genocide by July. Estimates suggest 800,000 to 1 million people died in the fastest mass slaughter of the 20th century. Roughly 2 million Hutus fled Rwanda as Kagame's army advanced, creating a humanitarian crisis across Central Africa.

Why it mattered

The genocide shattered international peacekeeping doctrine and exposed the UN's inability to prevent atrocities. It led to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda—the first modern tribunal prosecuting genocide. Today, Rwanda's recovery model and Kagame's authoritarian stability represent both post-conflict resilience and contested justice. The genocide fundamentally changed how the world thinks about humanitarian intervention and the phrase 'never again' has become hollow to many.