The Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi

Date

7 April – 19 July 1994

Category

Military & conflict

Region

Rwanda, East Africa

Era

Contemporary

Significance

Over roughly 100 days from 7 April 1994, members of Rwanda's Hutu-led government, army and allied militias such as the Interahamwe carried out a systematic genocide against the Tutsi minority, also killing moderate Hutu and Twa.

The killing began hours after the assassination of President Juvenal Habyarimana, whose aircraft was shot down on 6 April, and unfolded amid the wider Rwandan Civil War. Most scholarly estimates place the death toll between roughly 500,000 and 800,000, with the Rwandan government citing over a million; between 250,000 and 500,000 women were raped. Victims were frequently murdered by neighbours, often with machetes, while radio propaganda incited mass participation. A small United Nations peacekeeping force was unable to halt the slaughter, and the international community's failure to intervene became a defining indictment of post-Cold-War global institutions. The genocide ended when the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front captured the country in July 1994, triggering a vast refugee exodus into neighbouring Zaire that helped ignite later regional wars. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established to prosecute those responsible.

Empires active in 7 April – 19 July 1994

• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related military & conflict events

• The September 11 attacks
  11 September 2001
• Fall of Saigon and reunification of Vietnam
  30 April 1975 (reunified 1976)
• Khmer Rouge Seize Cambodia and Declare Year Zero
  1975
• Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine
  24 February 2022
• The 7 October Hamas attack and the Israel–Gaza war
  7 October 2023
• Cuban Missile Crisis
  16–28 October 1962

Further reading

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

The wider story

The State of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence

Martin Meredith

Gripping account of Africa's nations from independence to the present.

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