'Horrendous' genocidal situations in foreign lands should bring intervention from Canada, report says

Former diplomat who was held hostage for four months calls for stronger response

By Norma Greenaway, Canwest News ServiceSeptember 22, 2009

At a time when Canadians are increasingly questioning the country's involvement in Afghanistan, a new report says Canada should pour more diplomatic and military resources into preventing or stopping genocides in far-off places.

The report says the refusal by Canada, the United States and other countries to intervene in atrocities such as the Rwandan genocide in the early 1990s must be turned into a "will to intervene" diplomatically as early as possible to prevent catastrophes.

If the genocide is already in progress, it says, Canadian, U.S. and other world leaders must be prepared to intervene militarily to stop the slaughter of humans.

"By continuing to drag our feet when prevention is required, we risk watching more crises turn into catastrophes," said the report, which was issued by the Will to Intervene Project at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University.

The report's conclusions were passionately embraced Tuesday by retired diplomat Robert Fowler, author of a hard-hitting memorandum to Liberal cabinet ministers in 1994 about the mass slaughter going on in Rwanda that in the end, he says, was ignored. Making a rare speaking appearance since being held hostage for four months by al-Qaida in Africa, Fowler said, in effect, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out when outside intervention is warranted.

"The things I am talking about are not debatable," he told a news conference. "They are simply so horrendous that they require engagement."

He said the situation in Afghanistan doesn't qualify as genocide.

"It's a miserable situation. Certainly people's lives are being diminished, are being ruined in many cases," he said, "but unfortunately there are other places in the world where that is the case as well."

Fowler was joined at the news conference on the report by Senator Romeo Dallaire, who commanded the small UN force in Rwanda at the time of the genocide, former NDP leader Ed Broadbent and Tory Senator Hugh Segal. All stressed the report was in no way suggesting turning Canada or the United States into the "world's policeman," bent on setting everything right around the globe.

Fowler said the failure of western governments to intervene in Rwanda -- where, his 1994 memo estimated, up to one million people had been killed -- was morally offensive. He acknowledged Canada doesn't have the military, diplomatic or development assistance capacity at this time to implement the report's recommendations.