Foreign Relations of Rwanda

Rwanda has been the center of much international attention since the war and genocide of 1994. Rwanda is an active member of the United Nations, having presided over the Security Council during part of 1995. The UN assistance mission in Rwanda, a UN chapter 6 peace-keeping operation, involved personnel from more than a dozen countries. Most of the UN development and humanitarian agencies have had a large presence in Rwanda.

However, during the height of the crisis, a three-month period in 1994, the UN removed most of its peacekeepers, and virtually all other formal foreign support fled as well. The only other nation to directly involve itself at that point was France, which sent a contingent of soldiers to create a safe haven for the perpetrators of the genocide, under the pretense that those genocidaires represented the legitimate government embroiled in a defending itself against a foreign insurgency . The genocidal Hutu government was francophone whereas the rebel RPF was invading from anglophone Uganda. While the Rwandan Civil War was a complex sequence of violent episodes which included killers and victims on all sides, most historians agree with RPF's assertions that the 1994 genocide was a deliberate, methodical Hutu campaign to completely exterminate the Tutsis, and that plans for the genocide were well known in advance by European, American, and UN officials.

While formal foreign assistance evaporated at the height of the emergency, more than 200 non-governmental organizations were carrying out humanitarian operations. Several west European and African nations, Canada, People's Republic of China, Egypt, Libya, Russia, the Holy See, and the European Union maintain diplomatic missions in Kigali.

Rwanda is a member of the United Nations, African Union, Commonwealth of Nations since November 2009; and the East African Union, which may become the East African Federation.