Advancing understanding.
Preventing atrocities.
Advancing understanding.
Preventing atrocities.
About General Roméo Dallaire
General Roméo Dallaire served as Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) from 1993-1994. In his over 40 years of military service, Dallaire rose to the position of Deputy Commander of the Canadian Army but was forced to retire from military service due to posttraumatic stress resulting from his experiences in Rwanda. Since then, he has devoted his life to preserving the memory of the Genocide in Rwanda and the prevention of further atrocities, as well as advocating for eradicating the use of child soldiers in all armed conflict. He has also spoken publicly about his struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to destigmatize it. During his more than four decades of public service, including a term as a Canadian Senator, Dallaire earned numerous awards including the Order of Canada, the Meritorious Service Cross, the United States Legion of Merit, and the Aegis Award on Genocide Prevention. He is the founder of the Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace, and Security, and has written several books on leadership and atrocity prevention, most recently The Peace: A Warrior’s Journey.
The Archive
In 2021, after a visit that included a series of talks and interviews, Lieutenant General (retd) Roméo Dallaire made the momentous decision to donate his personal papers from his time as the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda during the Genocide against the Tutsi to the Stewart and Lynda Resnick Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and to West Point’s Jefferson Library. General Dallaire’s personal archive is perhaps one of the most important genocide-related archives of the 20th century, consisting of letters, cables, telegrams, meeting notes, digital materials, maps, and annotated books.
In September 2023 and July 2024, faculty and staff from West Point’s Resnick Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies and the Center for Oral History travelled to Quebec City, Canada, to meet with General Dallaire for a series of talks and interviews – and to take possession of the archive and transport it to West Point, where it is now permanently housed in our Library’s Special Collections.
The Library and the Resnick Center inaugurated the Dallaire Archive in September 2024 by hosting an international conference featuring scholars and experts on the Genocide in Rwanda, as well as peacekeepers, journalists, and diplomats who personally experienced the genocide. The two-day event was both an intimate commemoration of the Genocide in Rwanda and a celebration of Roméo Dallaire and the ways his archive will help us to better understand, and hopefully learn to prevent, mass atrocities.
Because West Point is part of the federal government and part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the Dallaire Archive is open to all researchers.
Explore the Dallaire Archive
Search the collection and learn more about this extraordinary archive.