‘Never again.’ Show we mean it

AFTER the horror of the genocide in which some 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in just 100 days, the world vowed ‘never again’.

Because the UN security council members demonstrated inexcusable apathy and wasted time debating semantics on whether or not genocide was taking place I, and my small UN peacekeeping contingent, were forced to watch the slaughter up close with no mandate to intervene.

Eleven years later, precious little has changed. Yet within the next fortnight, governments have the chance at the UN world summit in New York to make ‘never again’ a reality by agreeing to accept their responsibility to protect civilians in the face of brutal mass murder.