Never Again Means Now
From Rwanda to Palestine, the Consequences of International Inaction
In 1994, the world stood by and watched as Rwanda descended into one of the bloodiest genocides of the 20th century. Over 800,000 people, mostly Tutsis, were slaughtered in just 100 days. The international community had warning signs, intelligence, and the power to intervene—but it didn’t. Instead, global leaders issued apologies after the killing had stopped, after the bodies had been buried, and after Rwanda had become a graveyard of what-ifs. The phrase “Never Again” became a hollow promise, repeated like a tired refrain after each mass atrocity that followed. Today, as Palestinians face systematic destruction under Israel’s military onslaught, the echoes of Rwanda are deafening.
The parallels between the Rwandan Genocide and the ongoing crisis in Palestine are not merely rhetorical—they are grounded in fact. Both involve the deliberate targeting of a specific ethnic or national group, both have been justified through state-backed dehumanisation, and both have been met with international inaction despite clear evidence of mass atrocities. Yet, just as in Rwanda, Western governments refuse to act, paralysed by political alliances, media distortions, and a fundamental unwillingness to apply international law when it does not suit their interests.
This article will explore the historical realities of both the Rwandan and Palestinian genocides, examining their causes, the failure of global institutions to prevent them, and the disturbing precedent such failures set for the future. If the world allows Palestine to suffer the same fate as Rwanda, it does more than condemn an entire people to destruction—it reinforces a global system where genocide is only acknowledged in hindsight, never prevented in real time. This cycle of indifference does not just endanger the victims of today but also ensures that tomorrow’s atrocities will be met with the same deadly silence. In the sections that follow, we will unpack the legal definitions of genocide and state responsibility, critically examine the failures of international intervention in Rwanda, and explore how those same patterns are unfolding in Palestine. Ultimately, this piece will argue that inaction today fuels the inevitability of future genocides—until the world finally learns that “Never Again” must mean now, not after the fact.
If history teaches us anything, it is that the definition of a crime is meaningless without the will to enforce it. The term genocide was first coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944, in response to the Holocaust. Lemkin defined genocide not just as mass murder but as the systematic destruction of a people’s identity, culture, and way of life (Lemkin, 1944). His tireless advocacy led to the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) in 1948, a landmark treaty that legally binds its signatories to prevent and punish acts of genocide wherever they occur (United Nations, 1948).
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group (United Nations, 1948, Article II).
While the definition is clear, its enforcement has been anything but. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, introduced by the UN in 2005, was supposed to ensure that states could not use sovereignty as a shield for committing genocide or crimes against humanity (Evans & Sahnoun, 2002). Yet, in practice, R2P has been selectively applied, invoked in Libya (2011) and Kosovo (1999) but ignored in Rwanda (1994) and Palestine today. This inconsistency exposes the reality that international law is not enforced based on moral principles but on geopolitical interests. In the case of Rwanda, the world refused to act despite intelligence reports confirming mass killings (Des Forges, 1999). Similarly, in Palestine, reports from Amnesty International (2022), Human Rights Watch (2021), and the United Nations (2023) have all documented Israel’s deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure, systematic targeting of Palestinian populations, and policies amounting to apartheid—yet no intervention has been made. The reluctance to name the crime for what it is reflects a dangerous precedent: genocide is only acknowledged when it is politically convenient to do so. If international law is to have any credibility, it must be applied universally. The failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda led to mass death and irreversible trauma. If the same mistake is repeated in Palestine, the world will once again be left issuing apologies when it is far too late.
The Rwandan Genocide stands as one of the most horrifying failures of international intervention in modern history. In just 100 days, from April to July 1994, an estimated 800,000 to one million Tutsi men, women, and children were slaughtered by Hutu extremists (Des Forges, 1999). The international community did not lack information; it lacked the will to act. Intelligence reports, firsthand testimonies, and even direct warnings from UN peacekeepers on the ground were ignored as the world’s most powerful nations turned their backs. This was not a case of the world being caught off guard. It was a case of deliberate inaction.
Decades of colonial interference had set the stage for genocide in Rwanda. Belgian rule had artificially deepened ethnic divisions, elevating the Tutsi minority while alienating the Hutu majority (Gourevitch, 1998). After independence in 1962, cycles of violence became ingrained in the country’s political fabric, culminating in a civil war between the Hutu-led government and the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front in 1990. A fragile peace agreement was brokered in 1993, but it collapsed in April 1994 when President Juvénal Habyarimana’s plane was shot down. What followed was not an explosion of spontaneous violence but a meticulously planned extermination campaign. Hate radio stations, such as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines, flooded the airwaves with dehumanising rhetoric, branding Tutsis as “cockroaches” (Melvern, 2006). Militia groups, armed with machetes and firearms, set up roadblocks across the country, systematically identifying and executing Tutsis. Families were torn apart, children slaughtered alongside their parents. In many cases, victims were betrayed by their own neighbours, proof that propaganda had not just sanctioned violence but made it a moral duty in the eyes of the killers. Despite the carnage unfolding in real time, the world chose indifference. The United Nations, bound by bureaucracy and a lack of political will, refused to acknowledge the unfolding genocide and withdrew most of its peacekeeping forces just as the killings escalated. The United States, still haunted by its disastrous intervention in Somalia, actively avoided using the term “genocide” in official statements, knowing it would trigger legal obligations under the Genocide Convention (Power, 2002). France, meanwhile, maintained its strategic alliance with the Hutu-led government, providing diplomatic cover and, in some cases, direct military assistance to those orchestrating the massacres (Prunier, 1995). On the ground, UN peacekeepers, led by General Roméo Dallaire, sent desperate warnings to UN headquarters months before the genocide began. One cable, sent in January 1994, explicitly stated that a mass extermination was being planned and that the international community had an opportunity to prevent it (Dallaire, 2003). The response was silence. It was only when the killing stopped that world leaders found their voices. Bill Clinton later admitted that the U.S. had failed Rwanda, that it “did not act quickly enough” (Clinton, 1998). Kofi Annan, then head of UN peacekeeping, acknowledged the United Nations’ deep failures (Annan, 1999). But apologies do not resurrect the dead. Nearly a million lives were lost, not because intervention was impossible but because it was inconvenient. The precedent was set: powerful nations could turn away from genocide without consequence. Rwanda became a case study in moral failure, a lesson in the politics of selective outrage. Yet, as history repeats itself in Palestine, that lesson remains unlearned. The mechanisms of indifference have not changed, and once again, the world is watching in silence.
The lesson of Rwanda should have been clear: when the world watches genocide unfold without intervening, it signals to future perpetrators that mass extermination can proceed with impunity (Power, 2002). Yet, despite the retrospective soul-searching from world leaders, the same paralysis now defines the response to the ongoing atrocities in Palestine. The mechanisms of violence differ, but the pattern is unmistakably familiar. Civilians are being slaughtered en masse, dehumanised by state-sponsored propaganda, and left to fend for themselves as the world debates definitions rather than preventing deaths (Des Forges, 1999).
The genocide unfolding in Gaza has not been hidden from view. Unlike Rwanda in 1994, where journalists struggled to gain access and the full scale of the horror emerged only after the fact, Palestine’s suffering is being streamed in real time. Entire neighbourhoods are reduced to rubble by precision-guided bombs. Hospitals, already crippled by decades of blockade, operate beyond the brink of collapse. Children, burned, mutilated, or crushed beneath the remains of their homes, are counted among the tens of thousands of dead (Weizman, 2017). Journalists on the ground risk their lives daily to document the destruction, only to be dismissed by Western leaders who refuse to acknowledge the gravity of what they are witnessing (Melvern, 2006). In a grotesque echo of the Clinton administration’s refusal to use the word “genocide” in relation to Rwanda, politicians today dance around the language of international law, avoiding terms that might require action (Gourevitch, 1998). The evidence is overwhelming, but the response remains the same: delay, deflect, and do nothing.
Once again, the perpetrators are operating with impunity, shielded by diplomatic alliances and the inertia of global institutions. Just as France armed and defended the Hutu regime as the killings in Rwanda escalated (Prunier, 1995), the United States and its allies continue to provide military and political cover for Israel, ensuring that any meaningful international intervention is blocked. The United Nations, hamstrung by veto power and diplomatic gridlock, issues condemnations that carry no weight (Sluka, 2010). The International Criminal Court, which was created in part to ensure that another Rwanda never happened, is slow to act. If there was any doubt that international law is applied selectively, Palestine has erased it.
What is most striking, however, is the way in which Western media and political discourse continue to dehumanise the victims, just as they did in Rwanda. In 1994, Hutu propaganda painted the Tutsi as an existential threat, using fear as a weapon to justify mass slaughter (Dallaire, 2003). In Palestine, the same tactics are used to rationalise indiscriminate killing. Palestinians are called “human animals” by government officials, a deliberate choice of language that echoes the very dehumanisation that has preceded every genocide in modern history (Power, 2002). The systematic destruction of homes, schools, hospitals, and places of worship is framed not as an atrocity, but as self-defence (Melvern, 2006). The world’s most powerful nations, which claim to uphold human rights, accept these justifications without question, just as they accepted the excuses of the Hutu government while bodies piled up in the streets of Kigali (Gourevitch, 1998).
History is not just repeating itself—it is being actively rewritten in real time. In Rwanda, world leaders later admitted their failure, but only after it was too late (Des Forges, 1999). Today, those same leaders are complicit in ensuring that Palestine follows the same trajectory. The consequences of this inaction extend far beyond the immediate suffering of the victims. They reinforce a world order in which genocide is tolerated as long as the perpetrators are aligned with Western interests. They send a message to future regimes that mass murder, if framed correctly, will be ignored. The precedent set in Rwanda was not just that genocide can happen—it was that genocide can happen without consequence. Palestine is the result of that precedent, and if the world does not act now, it will not be the last.
The promise of international institutions has always been that they exist to prevent atrocities before they happen, to hold war criminals to account, and to ensure that genocide is never repeated. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the world swore “never again,” a phrase that has since become as hollow as the institutions meant to uphold it (Power, 2002). The United Nations, the International Criminal Court, and regional alliances like NATO all claim to stand for justice, yet their record in stopping genocide tells a different story. In Rwanda, the UN had the intelligence, the personnel, and the ability to act before the killings began, but political hesitation rendered it impotent. General Roméo Dallaire, who led the UN peacekeeping mission, warned of an impending massacre, but his pleas for reinforcements were ignored until it was too late (Dallaire, 2003). By the time the world reacted, 800,000 people lay dead. The genocide was not unstoppable; it was simply allowed to happen.
The same institutions now watch as Palestine is reduced to rubble, bound by the same bureaucratic inertia that ensured inaction in Rwanda. The UN Security Council, which holds the power to intervene, is paralysed by the veto of the United States, a staunch supporter of Israel (Sluka, 2010). Resolutions calling for ceasefires and investigations into war crimes are dismissed before they reach the floor, ensuring that the machinery of genocide continues unchallenged. The International Criminal Court, created to hold war criminals accountable, has hesitated to act decisively despite mountains of evidence of war crimes committed in Gaza (Weizman, 2017). Meanwhile, Western nations that claim to champion human rights not only refuse to intervene but actively supply the weapons being used in mass killings (Melvern, 2006). Just as France continued to support the Hutu government in Rwanda despite evidence of its genocidal intent, the United States and its allies provide unwavering military and financial backing to Israel, shielding it from consequences.
Even humanitarian organisations, once thought to be above political influence, are now caught in the web of international inaction. In Rwanda, the Red Cross and various NGOs struggled to provide aid in the face of mass slaughter, often working under the watchful eyes of the same governments committing atrocities (Des Forges, 1999). In Palestine, humanitarian workers are being killed, hospitals are being bombed, and aid is being blocked with full knowledge of the international community (Weizman, 2017). The very institutions that exist to protect civilians are rendered powerless, not by lack of will, but by the political realities that dictate who is deemed worthy of protection.
What makes this moment particularly damning is that Palestine, unlike Rwanda, is not a crisis unfolding in secrecy. In 1994, global leaders could claim ignorance, however dishonestly, and insist that they had not fully understood the scale of the horror until it was too late (Power, 2002). Today, that excuse does not exist. Every bombing, every massacre, every moment of suffering is documented and streamed to the world in real time. The failure of global governance is no longer a failure of information—it is a failure of will. The world does not lack the ability to stop genocide; it simply lacks the resolve to act when the victims do not serve geopolitical interests.
The implications of this failure extend far beyond Palestine. If the precedent stands that certain states can commit genocide with impunity, then every international treaty, every convention on human rights, and every law designed to protect civilians is meaningless. The Rwandan Genocide was supposed to be a lesson, a moment of reckoning for the world. Instead, it has become a blueprint for how inaction enables mass atrocities. Palestine is not just a tragedy—it is a damning indictment of a world order that rewards power over justice, silence over action, and complicity over humanity.
There is no genocide that exists in a vacuum. Behind every mass atrocity lies a web of geopolitical interests, strategic alliances, and economic incentives that dictate whether a crisis will be met with condemnation or complicity. The Rwandan Genocide was not simply the result of deep-seated ethnic tensions, as often portrayed in Western narratives, but the culmination of political and economic calculations that saw the region as little more than a pawn on the global chessboard (Prunier, 1995). France, for example, maintained military and financial support for the Hutu-led government even as it became clear that mass killings were imminent (Melvern, 2006). The United States, meanwhile, refused to intervene—not out of ignorance, but out of a calculated decision that Rwanda lacked strategic importance (Power, 2002). It was not the lives of Rwandans that determined the response; it was the fact that their suffering had no bearing on Western economic or military objectives.
Palestine finds itself trapped in a similar geopolitical reality, except this time, it is not neglect that fuels the inaction, but active complicity. The Israeli occupation is not just about land—it is about maintaining Western hegemony in the Middle East. Israel functions as a strategic foothold for the United States and its allies, serving as both an arms depot and a political buffer against nations that resist Western influence (Sluka, 2010). Billions in military aid continue to flow into Israel’s arsenal, ensuring that the country remains a dominant force in the region, regardless of the humanitarian consequences (Weizman, 2017). In this equation, Palestinian lives are collateral damage, an inconvenient consequence of maintaining global power structures. The weapons used to bomb hospitals, schools, and refugee camps are not just Israeli—they are American, British, and European, supplied with full knowledge of their intended use (Fisk, 2005).
The economic dimension cannot be ignored either. Just as Rwanda was carved up by colonial and post-colonial economic interests, Palestine is a territory where land, resources, and strategic trade routes play a crucial role. The Israeli occupation is not only a military project but an economic one, with settlements expanding over Palestinian land to serve Israeli and international corporate interests (Pappé, 2017). Meanwhile, Gaza is kept in a state of permanent economic suffocation, ensuring that its people remain dependent, displaced, and powerless. Western corporations profit from both sides of the conflict—selling weapons to Israel while funding reconstruction efforts once the dust settles, creating a cycle where destruction and profit feed into each other seamlessly (Chomsky & Pappé, 2015).
Yet the greatest geopolitical driver of inaction is the precedent it sets. If the world allows genocide to unfold unchecked in Palestine, it signals to every authoritarian regime, every occupying force, and every military aggressor that mass killing can be justified if framed correctly. Rwanda demonstrated how easy it is for Western powers to ignore genocide when there is no geopolitical gain in intervention. Palestine demonstrates how easy it is to justify genocide when the perpetrator is a Western ally. Both crises expose the moral hypocrisy of the global order, where human rights are upheld only when they do not interfere with military and economic interests.
This moment is not just about Palestine—it is about the future of global governance. If genocide can be committed with impunity, then no people, no nation, and no region is safe. The West may believe that its distance from such atrocities grants it immunity, but history suggests otherwise. The same forces that tolerate genocide abroad will not hesitate to turn a blind eye when the structures they enable inevitably collapse. Every empire that sowed chaos beyond its borders eventually faced it within. If the world refuses to stop genocide now, it will one day find itself unable to stop it when it comes knocking at its own door.
History is full of moments where the world could have acted and didn’t. Rwanda in 1994 was one such moment, where bureaucratic inertia and political convenience allowed nearly a million people to be slaughtered in a matter of months. The echoes of that failure still ring through diplomatic halls, invoked as a solemn promise of “never again,” yet never backed by action when it truly matters. Today, the world faces another such moment in Palestine—another genocide unfolding in real time, another opportunity for intervention wasted on performative outrage and empty resolutions. The question is not whether history will judge those who stood by; it is whether we will continue to let history repeat itself, condemning millions to suffering while we excuse inaction with the same old rationalisations.
The consequences of failing to act are not confined to Palestine. Every time genocide is tolerated, it becomes easier to justify the next. If Israel is permitted to erase an entire people under the guise of security, then other nations will see their own violent ambitions legitimised. If the international community normalises the mass slaughter of civilians, the use of starvation as a weapon, and the deliberate targeting of hospitals and refugee camps, what is to stop any future aggressor from doing the same? The very foundation of international law—the post-WWII consensus that crimes against humanity will not go unpunished—begins to crumble. What value does the term “war crime” hold when its enforcement is dictated by political alignment rather than principle?
The hypocrisy of the Western response to Palestine will not remain an external problem forever. The global order that allows this genocide to continue is the same order that prioritises profit over people, war over diplomacy, and power over justice. When that system inevitably begins to fail—when the violence it exports abroad finds its way home—there will be no moral authority left to defend. The West has long assumed it is insulated from the brutality it enables elsewhere, but history offers a stark warning. Empires that thrive on oppression eventually collapse under the weight of their own contradictions. The precedent set in Gaza today could become the justification for another state’s atrocities tomorrow. And one day, those atrocities may not be happening in some far-off land, but in the streets of those who once believed themselves untouchable.
The choice before us is not just about Palestine; it is about whether we continue to accept a world in which genocide is a policy tool rather than a crime. It is about whether international law is upheld only when convenient, or whether it stands for something beyond the ambitions of powerful states. The world failed Rwanda. It is failing Palestine. If nothing changes, it will fail again, and again, until the structures that protect the powerful at the expense of the vulnerable no longer function. When that day comes, the West will not be able to claim ignorance, nor innocence. It will simply reap what it has sown.
The only way forward is to reject complicity—not after the fact, when the death toll forces reflection, but now, while there is still time to intervene. Governments will not act unless forced to, and history has shown that change is rarely born from the halls of power, but from the voices of those who refuse to accept the world as it is. The question is not whether genocide will happen again—it is whether enough people will have the courage to stop it before it does.
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