UN General Assembly
1994

international community, is riddled with unfortunate events, the most recent of which is the genocide Rwanda has just experienced. This genocide, which rivals the Nazi holocaust of the 1940s, is somewhat paradoxical because since the end of the Second World War the international community has tried to build a civilization on the foundations of respect for the fundamental rights of human beings. While the international community was pooling its efforts to put an end to racism and racial discrimination, particularly apartheid in South Africa - whose participation in the forty-ninth session is a felicitous turn of events - at the same time an ideology akin to apartheid was evolving in our country. That ideology, which was publicly professed by the public authorities - more 3 precisely, by the National Revolutionary Movement for Development (MRND) and the Coalition for the Defence of the Republic (CDR) parties of the late President Habyarimana - cleared the way for genocide. Plans for extermination were being openly prepared for a long time, with no trepidation whatsoever, since the power structure