“Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda”
The book “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda”, by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire and Major Brent Beardsley has recently been published by Yurinkom Inter.
Back in 1993, General Dallaire commanded the UN peacekeeping contingent in Rwanda. Circumstances unfolded in such a way that his team found itself at the very center of the events, where members of the Hutu ethnic group killed 800,000 people from the Tutsi ethnic group in just 100 days. It is clear that without adequate support from the UN, General Dallaire and his small international peacekeeping contingent could not have stopped the mass killings.
“Over the past 25 years, so much has been written and said about mass atrocities, yet we still haven’t found an answer as to how to prevent them,” writes Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire in his memoirs.
His words ring particularly true against the background of russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, during which russian troops also carried out mass killings of Ukrainian civilians. In this situation, the UN also demonstrated its ineffectiveness and complete helplessness.
It is evident that the current system of international security and law is facing a profound systemic crisis. If this problem is not resolved in the near future, it is quite possible that the currently localized armed conflict between russia and Ukraine could very quickly escalate into a full-scale Third World War.
To prevent future mass killings of civilians, General Dallaire proposes that all people join forces and make maximum use of the relevant political, informational, legal, and military resources to resolve this problem.
It is the author’s firm conviction that his book should “help preserve the memory of the genocide and its lessons for humanity”, which will subsequently enable a better understanding of the nature of this phenomenon and the development of effective international legal mechanisms to prevent its recurrence in the future.
As we have learnt, Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire is expected to visit Ukraine in the near future. In addition to the presentation of his book, a high-level expert discussion on the issue of genocide and other war crimes could be organized. In the future, this would provide an opportunity to bring together a broad range of international experts to address the most critical issues in the field of global security in the interests of all humanity.
Oleh Bereziuk,
Institute for Global Politics
