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Instances in humanity’s past have demonstrated that the planet’s inhabitants do not have the motivation or ability to protect the rights of those less fortunate. Treaties, economic pressures, and the lack of interest in third world politics from first world societies, have left many lives in ruins or lost by wars and oppression. Society failed to stop a mass genocide in Rwanda even though there was a UN peacekeeping force in the country at that time trying to keep the peace after the war. Russia invaded Chechnya in 1993 to expand its territory, keeping the Chechen people oppressed by the Russian ways. The apartheid in South Africa ruined the spirits of South Africans who are still on the road of recovery and rebuilding what they had lost. The world has lost lives and morality because society has not stood up to protect the rights of peoples who are in need of help. Because of this, human rights are never going to be universal. Many of these acts are against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Between April 6 and mid-July, 1994, over 800 000 Rwandans of Tutsi or moderate Hutu descent were killed in a mass genocide. Carried out by hard line Hutu’s, this incident was in retaliation of the deaths of the Hutu presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. In defiance of the Untied Nations and the Universal Declaration of Rights and Freedoms, the extremist Rwandan government and its militias attempted to exterminate the Tutsi tribes. The Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), made up of mainly Tutsis, was formed to counteract the actions of the government. In 1993, the fighting between these two forces led to the Ashura Agreement, a peace accord calling the parties to end the fighting and asks the United Nations to provide a force of 2,500 troops to monitor the agreement. This force, called the UNAMIR, was in Rwanda in 1994 when tensions started to grow. In the week of killings following the assassinations of the two Hutu presidents, the UNAMIR force did nothing in response. On the tenth of April the Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana, and her ten Belgian guards were brutally murdered by government soldiers causing the Belgian government to withdraw its contingent of troops. Ten days later, the United Nations Security Council voted to reduce its troops from 2,500 to 270. This reduction made it harder to protect the Tutsi citizens of Rwanda from the militia forces. Furthermore, the UNAMIR troops did not have the power to stop the killings of civilians, but to only assist the delivery of humanitarian aid and to act the mediator between the RPF an the Rwandan government.
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