Mounting evidence of Hutu genocide by Tutsi in Rwanda and DRC
First let us recall the definition of genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force on January 12, 1951.
Article II of the Convention states “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (Human Rights Volume I (Second Part) Universal Instruments United Nations 2002).
The targeted killing or genocide of moderate Hutu and Tutsi that took place in Rwanda in 1994 shocked the world. There is ‘guilt of omission’ to act. The international community did nothing to prevent the genocide when sufficient advance warning had been made available (Mary Robinson A Voice for Human Rights 2006: 222).