The forsaken people

This study explores how constructivism's view of we and them have affected Belgium and France in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, as well as how their actions with a starting point in soldairty affected UN's actions during the genocide in Rwanda. With a qualitative text analysis and a constructivist reading, official documents from the UN are analysed. The analysis shows that Belgium, France and the UN based on a constructivist reading, act because the feeling of we and them, which results in Belgium recalling their troops in Rwanda as well as their cooperation with France in the humanitarian rescue of foreign citizen which were based in Rwanda in the start of the genocide. The humanitarian rescue as well as the recalling of troops, could with a starting point in constructivism, explain that they acted from a we point of view and that they saw the citizens of Rwanda as them, which they did not feel solidarity to. With no solidarity, they did not act as if Rwanda and the UN, France and Belgium represented a we with a similar identity. The study also discusses the complexity in trying to explain different causes and reasons to someone's behaviour and that the research question itself is complex and could be explained in many perspectives. But in the conclusion the study answer the research question, that a perspective with the feeling of we and them could explain why France, Belgium and the UN acted in that way in the geoncide in Rwanda.