Alain Destexhe

Alain Destexhe is president of the International Crisis Group, a private organization. As director of Medicins sans Frontieries International (Doctors Without Borders) from 1991 to 1995, he was directly involved in relief operations in Rwanda in 1994. Destexhe later became a senator in Belgium’s parliament and initiated an official Belgian government inquiry into the Rwandan genocide. In the following viewpoint, excerpted from his book Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century, Destexhe argues that the actions of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) and Rwandan government in 1994 are directly comparable to Nazi Germany’s genocide against Jews during World War II. Perpetrators of the genocidal actions in Rwanda must be condemned and punished by the global community to enact justice and to prevent the repetition of such tragedies.

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