Roméo Dallaire
Roméo Antonius Dallaire OC CMM GOQ MSC CD (born June 25, 1946) is a retired Canadian politician and military officer who was a senator from Quebec from 2005 to 2014, and a lieutenant-general in the Canadian Armed Forces. He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR, the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between 1993 and 1994, and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire is a Senior Fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) and co-director of the MIGS Will to Intervene Project.[4][5]
Roméo Dallaire
Early life and education[edit]
Roméo Antonius Dallaire was born in Denekamp, Netherlands to Staff-Sergeant Roméo Louis Dallaire, a Canadian non-commissioned officer, and Catherine Vermeassen, a Dutch nurse. Dallaire came to Canada with his mother as a six-month-old baby on the Empire Brent, landing in Halifax on December 13, 1946. He spent his childhood in Montreal.
He enrolled in the Canadian Army in 1963, as a cadet at Le Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean. In 1970 he graduated from the Royal Military College of Canada with a Bachelor of Science degree and was commissioned into The Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.
In 1971, Dallaire applied for a Canadian passport to travel overseas with his troops and was surprised to discover that his birth in the Netherlands as the son of a Canadian soldier did not automatically make him a Canadian citizen.[6] He has subsequently become a Canadian citizen.
Dallaire has also attended the Canadian Land Force Command and Staff College, the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, VA, and the British Higher Command and Staff Course.
He commanded the 5e Régiment d'artillerie légère du Canada. On July 3, 1989, he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He then commanded the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. He was also the commandant of Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean from 1990 to 1993.
In the media[edit]
In Samantha Power's 2002 landmark work on genocide in the 20th century, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Sen. Dallaire features largely in the recounting of the Rwanda Genocide. Power also wrote the foreword to Dallaire's book, Shake Hands with the Devil. In a 2004 opinion article published by the New York Times, Dallaire called upon NATO to intervene militarily alongside African Union troops to abort the genocide in Darfur. He concluded that, "having called what is happening in Darfur genocide and having vowed to stop it, it is time for the West to keep its word as well."[26]