RECENT DEVELOPMENTS

Extract

In July 2000, several months after the United Nations produced an independent report citing the failures of the organization in relation to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (the Carlsson Report), the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) Summit in Lomé, Togo, was presented with a several-hundred page report from its International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events (IPEP). While the Carlsson Report focused exclusively on the responsibility of the UN, the IPEP had a wide mandate to examine the situation which led to the genocide and the failures of the Genocide Convention, and to make recommendations for redress and action to prevent it happening again. Similarly, although the UN document does acknowledge that the OAU failed to prevent the genocide, attributing this to a lack of resources and political will, the IPEP Report is more forceful in its condemnation of the influence and responsibility of several European states and the USA. The Panel considered the part played by these states as essential to an understanding of the genocide, despite the fact that its intention was not to determine the guilt of various actors. This note provides a descriptive summary of the contents of the Report.