Romeo Dallaire- Rwanda and the World's Responsibility

Romeo Dallaire, general; commander of Rwanda international peacekeeping mission :"no human is more human than any other".

Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire was born on June 25, 1946 to a Canadian non-commissioned officer and a Dutch mother in Denekamp, Netherlands. He came to Canada at the age of 6 months and spent his childhood in Montreal. He discovered in 1971 when he went to apply for a passport that he was not actually a Canadian citizen and then took steps to become officially Canadian. In 1963 he enrolled as a cadet at Le College Militaire Royale de Saint-Jean and he graduated fro the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery. He has been a Canadian Senator, humanitarian, author and a retired general.

He served as Force Commander of UN AMIR during the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis and Hutu moderates about which he wrote the book “Shaking Hands with the Devil’. The atrocities and the lack of power he felt in the face of the horror combined with the lack of will of those who were in charge of the mission, left him with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and he attempted suicide after returning to Canada. This has made him an outspoken advocate for mental health intervention for Canadian soldiers. He is now a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies and Co-Director of the MIGS “Will to Intervene Project” that recently released a policy recommendation report called “Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities”.

IN 1995 he won the Vimy Award. In 1996, Dallaire was made an Officer of the Legion of Merit in the United States, the highest military decoration for his service in Rwanda. Dallaire was also awarded the inaugural Aegis Trust Award in 2002, and on October 10 of the same year, he was inducted as an Officer in the Order of Canada. He was ranked 16th in the CBC’s “The Greatest Canadian’ program which placed him as the highest ranked military figure. He is also the 25th recipient of the Pearson Peace Medal which was awarded by Governor General Adrienne Clarkson. In 2006, Daillare was awarded the Human Security Award from the Centre for Unconventional Security Affairs at the University of California, Irvine. He has also received numerous doctorates from Canadian and American Universities including: U of Saskatchewan, St. Thomas U, Boston College, The U of Calgary, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Athabasca U, Trent U, U of Western Ontario, Simon Fraser U, U of Lethbridge, Ryerson Polytechnic U,the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and Queens College of the City University of New York (CUNY).His book "Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda", was awarded the Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2004.

For more information about this amazing Canadian, please see his website at:

http://www.romeodallaire.com/



Rowanda