“We were not realizing that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide.”

I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor.

Rwanda was considered a second-class operation because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they’d accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.

For us, genocide was the gas chamber – what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.

It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended.

There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.

I believe the only time when we can call for intervention is when there is an ongoing genocide.

Commanded love of all men indiscriminately is an obliteration of distinction between love and hate, and therefore is not love at all.

What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.

So let us call genocide, genocide. Let us not minimize the deliberate murder of 1.5 million people.

Some argue that recognition of the genocide has become even more problematic now

Yet, history has shown that if material force can defeat some ideologies it can no longer obliterate a civilization without destabilizing the whole planet.