Underpowered and Mostly Unwanted: A Short History of unamir

This chapter is a short history of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (unamir). It is based on an examination of the Australian deployment to Rwanda undertaken as part of the five-volume Official History of Australian Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post-Cold War Operations. The chapter briefly charts the establishment, travails, reduction, re-establishment and then demise of this UN mission. In doing so highlights how unamir was perpetually dogged by having mandates that, while they seemed suitable when they were created in New York, were quickly overtaken by events in Rwanda. Moreover, after the genocide, the recreated unamir was forced to attempt to police the very people and institutions it was reliant on for its continued survival if it was to carry out its mandate.