Originally published on the CGS blog on July 18, 2014.
In Canada, Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire is a household name. When asked in elementary school to write a composition on a Canadian Hero, students invariably gnash their teeth in frustration as they find themselves presenting eight or nine identical essays on the famed commander of the ill-fated 1994 UNAMIR mission in Rwanda.
In his bestselling Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Dallaire recounts his experiences as a witness to the horrific mass murder of 800,000 men, women and children despite his peacekeeping force’s best attempts to prevent the slaughter.
The titled failure of humanity refers not only to the massacres, but also to the murderous passivity of the international community, whose failure to intervene despite Dallaire’s pleas and whose lethal withdrawal of resources and support from UNAMIR depleted Dallaire’s forces, abetting the killing of civilians for months.
Dallaire’s experience in Rwanda left him with devastating PTSD which resulted in a suicide attempt. He has courageously shared his continuing struggle with the public and become an outspoken advocate of veterans suffering from PTSD. He is a celebrated humanitarian and a tireless campaigner for human rights, genocide prevention, and the Responsibility to Protect. He is the founder of the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative and the Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire Foundation. A recipient of the Order of Canada and advocate of veterans suffering from PTSD, he has served on the UN Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention and has testified at the International Criminal Court.
In 2005 Dallaire was named to the Canadian Senate. On June 5th, 2014, he announced his retirement from Parliament, citing a need to dedicate himself more directly to the causes he had championed for years.
Dallaire, long critical of the member states’ unwillingness to move past self-interest for the sake of humanitarian intervention, reaffirmed his calls for action in his final speech as a Senator to his nation.
Dallaire accused Canada of “dancing around the words ‘responsibility to protect‘ and the International Criminal Court, and the term ‘child soldiers’” for fear of needing to turn “principled foreign policy” into “principled action.” Today, he alleged, we have “more empty calls for respect for human rights and less actual engagement with the violators.” He urged Canada to re-assume leadership in resolving international conflicts and preventing atrocities in keeping with its tradition of globally championing human rights.
Dallaire’s words are for Canada, but the United States should heed his calls and his critiques. Dallaire urges the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine in the Central African Republic via peacekeeping; reinforcing the African Union; issuing sanctions where necessary; holding accountable those who recruit child soldiers as weapons of war; and helping the country rebuild its economic, security and educational institutions.
Readers should also note Dallaire’s chosen date of departure. June 17th was 20 years after he was informed of Operation Turquoise, a belated attempt to intervene in the genocide less for humanitarian purposes than for the national interests of former colonial powers, giving protection to the perpetrators of Rwanda. Dallaire denounces the strategic interests that invariably temper the interventions led by colonial powers and superpowers (the latter a category in which he places the United States). Dallaire’s criticism is well-founded. Superpowers, in tailoring their humanitarian impulse to areas of national interest or in committing colonial-minded interference in vulnerable states, fail in their Responsibility to Protect. The United States must heed the criticism of past interventions; its global leadership in humanitarian intervention should spring not from national interest, but from a true recognition of its responsibility to protect.
As Dallaire leaves politics to focus his energies on the plight of child soldiers, PTSD-affected veterans, and genocide prevention, his speech should be a call to awaken to the Responsibility to Protect in both Canada and the United States; his lifelong dedication to humanitarian causes a model for their citizens and policy-makers.
