The international reaction is what the United Nations did not do rather than actually did to help. In 1994, the U.N. Security Council voted to withdraw the U.N. peacekeeping operation. That organization had been created the previous fall to aid with the government transition of including the RPF. Even after it had become indisputable that what was going on in Rwanda was a genocide, American officials had shunned the g-word, fearing that it would cause demands for intervention. As more reports of the genocide spread, the the U.N. Security Council voted in late-May to provide 5,000 troops. By then the damage was done and genocide was already over. In a separate French intervention, French troops entered Rwanda in late June. The RPF already had gained control so they limited their intervention to a humanitarian relief, saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives but also helping some of the genocide's plotters (allies of the French during the Habyarimana administration) to escape. In October 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, was established as an extension of the International Criminal Tribunal, the first international tribunal since the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-46 and the first with the mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide. According to the national security archive, "In 1995, the ICTR began indicting and trying a number of higher-ranking people for their role in the Rwandan genocide; the process was made more difficult because the whereabouts of many suspects were unknown. The trials continued over the next decade and a half, including the 2008 conviction of three former senior Rwandan defense and military officials for organizing the genocide." This was a nice effort but the damage was already done. The Rwandans are responsible for the organization and execution of the genocide, governments everywhere all share in the shame of the crime because they failed to prevent and stop this killing campaign.
Celebrating Tutsi rebel victory