Repeating the Mistakes of Rwanda in Iraq

In 1994, I was tasked with stopping a genocide waged, in part, by children and youth. At the time, I was the United Nations Force Commander for the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda. My opponents, the Interahamwe,were highly organized in their recruitment and training of youth, well before the killing began. I saw firsthand the way they used children, some as young as 13, to commit horrific acts. The experience of facing a child soldier from the barrel of a gun left me questioning the world’s very moral fabric. Despite my efforts, 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days. Preventing this genocide was possible; it was our moral obligation. And it’s a failure that has haunted me every day for the last 20 years. Now, the early warning signs of genocide are sounding once again, in Iraq. Yet again, children are being used as fighters and weapons of war. And still, the world does little to stop it.