In 1994, Rwanda became the scene of one of the worst failures in human history. While the United Nations headquarters in New York ordered peacekeepers to leave at the height of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, a group of African officers in Kigali defied the order. They stayed. They defied the orders because they could not abandon people to certain death. Their courage speaks louder than all the excuses written later. These officers, currently on a tour in Rwanda 31 years after they took this dangerous but noble stand, remind us of a truth that is often forgotten. A peacekeeper without empathy cannot bring peace. A soldier who sees his work only as duty will follow orders, even when those orders mean silence in the face of killing. But a peacekeeper who feels the pain of the people they are sent to protect will stay, even when the world turns away. The lesson is clear. Peacekeeping cannot be managed from far away offices. Decisions made in New York or Geneva, by those who will never face the cries of the victims, will always fall short. Rwanda proved this. General Roméo Dallaire who commanded the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) and his mission had warned of the genocide that was coming. Cables were sent with evidence that militia were being tooled to annihilate the Tutsi. Sadly, the orders he received were to do nothing. Bureaucrats in New York insisted the mission had no mandate to stop the killing. While bureaucracy argued, lives were lost. The African peacekeepers who stayed knew that their duty was not to a piece of paper. It was to the people in front of them. They knew that peacekeeping is not about standing still in uniform. It is about standing with humanity when humanity is under attack. The United Nations Security Council must face this truth. Peacekeeping missions must change. They must give real power to those on the ground. They must recruit and trust people who know the land, who share its history, who understand its wounds. Sending soldiers from far away, with no connection to the people, creates distance. That distance kills empathy. And without empathy there can be no protection. The survivors of the Tutsi genocide do not need reminders of what was lost. But the world must remember the lesson of those peacekeepers who stayed against orders. Their example shows the way forward. If the United Nations wants to prevent another Rwanda, it must reform peacekeeping so that empathy is not an afterthought but the very heart of the mission.
