In the ten years since the Rwandan genocide leaders of national governments and international institutions have acknowledged the shame of having failed to stop the slaughter of the Tutsi population. Here at the Stockholm International Forum, many international leaders renewed their commitment to halting any future genocide. Honoring that pledge will require not just greater political will than seen in the past but also developing a strategy to foresee and avert genocide.

Stopping a genocide requires action long in advance because genocides build slowly, over years, even if the initial onset of violence appears dramatically sudden, as did the genocide in Rwanda. The slaughter in Rwanda began immediately after the killing of the president, but the attitudes and practices that made it possible developed over a period of decades during which the government practiced discrimination against Tutsi, the people who would be targeted during the genocide. The post-independence government categorized citizens by ethnicity and, continuing a practice of the Belgian colonial regime, required all adults to carry documents identifying their ethnic group. These identity documents were used to select Tutsi for slaughter during the genocide.

During the three years before the 1994 genocide, government officials, soldiers, national police, and leaders of political parties incited and directed sixteen massacres of Tutsi, each of which killed hundreds of unarmed civilians. The army also killed hundreds of Hima, a people related to Tutsi, during a military operation in 1990. In addition, authorities permitted and in some cases encouraged violence against supporters of rival political parties.

Killers and other assailants went unpunished if their victims were Tutsi or members of parties opposed to the authorities.

The international community, including national and multinational donors, occasionally expressed concern about the human rights situation but failed to press effectively for an end to abuses or for punishment of the guilty. Even the slaughter of hundreds drew little or at most short-lived criticism.

Alertness to growing potential of violence should be coupled with great attention to any signs of preparations of imminent action. In 1993 and 1994 many Rwandans, diplomats in Rwanda, and United Nations (UN) officials knew that militia were being recruited and trained to kill, but even when an informant told UN peacekeepers that the militia were meant to attack Tutsi civilians, there was no effective intervention to halt militia activities. During the genocide, the militia mobilized and led the general population in killing Tutsi, often carrying out orders given them by soldiers and national policemen.

The distribution of arms to the civilian population was widely known and elicited no effective international reaction.

One particularly important domain to monitor is the media. For three years before the genocide in Rwanda, newspapers like Kangura had identified Tutsi as “enemies of the nation,” to be scorned and feared. Radio RTLM, supported by many influential government, military, and political figures, broadcast the same message with increasing virulence and effect in the nine months before the genocide was launched. The media went so far as to name individuals to be eliminated, including the prime minister.

It is also important to be alert to impact of negative models in nearby regions. In late 1993 and early 1994 tens of thousands of Hutu and Tutsi were slain in Burundi, a country demographically similar to Rwanda and adjacent to it. These killings, skillfully exploited by Rwandan propagandists, significantly increased tensions in Rwanda. Both the slaughter and the absence of international reaction to it encouraged the planners of genocide to proceed with the attempt to eliminate Tutsi in Rwanda. Propagandists frequently talked of the Burundian example on the radio, enhancing the impact of this negative model on Rwandans.

Any form of effective intervention depends on accurate information about what is happening on the ground. Genocides are complex phenomena, each with its own peculiar configuration and dynamics. Finding ways to influence developments from within the society, devising strategies to persuade people to shun the killing campaign, can slow the slaughter and increase enormously the impact of any armed intervention from the outside.