French arms, war and genocide in Rwanda

Abstract

France is now the world's second largest arms exporter, and the largest supplier of weapons to the developing world. The record of France's involvement in Rwanda from 1990 to 1994 has motivated the NGO lobby within France to subject French government policy -towards the developing world in general, and on arms supplies in particular - to unprecedented scrutiny. Accordingly, the level and volume of criticism of French involvement in Rwanda resulted in the first ever parliamentary commission to scrutinise French military activity overseas, although this and other official inquiries stopped short of identifying arms supplies as instrumental in exacerbating the Rwandan crisis.1 A consideration of French arms supplies to Rwanda can offer a template by which to measure the nature and degree of France's support for the Habyarimana regime which planned, and the Sindikubwabo interim government which oversaw, the 1994 genocide in that country. Moreover, French arms supplies after France's own and the UN's arms embargo demonstrate how a process of unchecked militarisation may involve the supplier as well as the supplied in illegality.