The role of France in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi has been a source of controversy and debate both within and beyond France and Rwanda. France actively supported the Hutu-led government of Juvénal Habyarimana against the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan Patriotic Front, which since 1990 had been engaged in a conflict intended to restore the rights of Rwandan Tutsis both within Rwanda and exiled in neighboring countries following over four decades of anti-Tutsi violence. France provided arms and military training to Habyarimana's militias, the Interahamwe and Impuzamugambi, which were among the government's primary means of operationalizing the genocide following the assassination of Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira on April 6, 1994.

Parts of this article (those related to 2021 historians' report ) need to be updated. (May 2022)

Near the end of the 100-day genocide, French troops were deployed to establish the Turquoise Zone, largely preventing further waves of genocide within the purported safe zone.^[1] In practice, the zone enabled many genocidal Hutus to safely escape to Zaire in advance of the victorious RPF soldiers. The facts related to the French role in the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi have formed the focus of ongoing debate, and diplomatic relations between France and Rwanda have frequently been strained since 1994.

As a result of these actions and subsequent tensions between the two governments, after a progressive rift with the Kagame-led regime that has ruled Rwanda since 1994 (described in greater detail below), Rwanda repeatedly broke diplomatic relations with France; the Rwandan government shut down all French institutions in Rwanda, including schools and cultural organisations, with only some being subsequently reopened; the language of instruction in Rwandan schools "has even been switched from French to English"; and Rwanda strove to join the British-led Commonwealth, thus becoming one of only two members that were not former British colonies.^[2]

In the analysis of investigative journalist Linda Melvern, documents released from the Paris archive of former president François Mitterrand show how the RPF invasion in October 1990 was considered as clear aggression by an Anglophone neighbour on a Francophone country.^[3] The documents are said to argue that the RPF was a part of an "Anglophone plot", involving the President of Uganda, to create an English-speaking "Tutsi-land" and increase Anglophone influence at the expense of French influence. In Melvern's analysis, the policy of France was to avoid a military victory by the RPF. The policy had been made by a secretive network of military officers, politicians, diplomats, businessmen, and senior intelligence operatives. At its centre was Mitterrand. As a matter for the French presidency, this foreign policy was not referred to parliament.^[3]

Melvern goes on to state that most of Rwanda's arms deals were negotiated through the Rwandan embassy in Paris, even if these weapons were not used for the genocide. When the genocide was over, according to her, extensive records were found in the embassy offices, but none of them concerned Rwanda's relationship with France, as the documents had been systematically destroyed by Colonel Sebastien Ntahobari, Rwanda's military attaché in France.^[4] The book also relates other forms of military assistance the government of France gave the Rwandan government, similar to what France was doing in many other African countries and part of the "Françafrique" politics:^[5]

• A French military co-operation team was openly acknowledged to be in Rwanda, and was thought to have included forty seven people. These people were attached to key units in the army and in the gendarmerie as "advisers" or "technical assistants".
• A list of Rwandan officers prepared by Rwandan army officers within the Rwandan Ministry of Defense and dated March 5, 1994, shows three French nationals working as "technical assistants" in the reconnaissance battalion.
• In the Rwandan air corps, there were two French flying instructors, a navigator, an air traffic controller, and a mechanic.
• In the para-commandos, under Colonel Aloys Ntabakuze,^[6] there were four French nationals including a major in the French Army.

Melvern attributes other forms of French support for the regime. She reports that, according to Belgian intelligence in Rwanda, French diplomats advised opposition politicians that if they wanted to stop the RPF, they had to give their support to President Habyarimana.^[5]

A report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) early after the genocide also reported on French armaments support for the regime.^[7] It states:

Official deliveries of arms by the French government to other governments are regulated by well-defined rules, but in the case of Rwanda – as in many others – the rules were rarely followed. According to the National Assembly investigative commission, thirty-one of thirty-six deliveries of weapons to Rwanda during the years 1990 to 1994 were made "without following the rules."

HRW went on to provide that a former French policeman who had also served as security consultant to Habyarimana, Captain Paul Barril, was hired by the Rwandan Ministry of Defense to conduct a training program for 30 to 60 men, eventually to grow to 120, at Bigogwe military camp in the northwest. He was to provide training in marksmanship and infiltration tactics for an elite unit in preparation for attacks behind the RPF lines.^[7] Further, a Col. Didier Tauzin (who was later to re-enter Rwanda during the genocide under a fake name Col. Didier Tibault) was head of the French operation that had helped the Rwandan forces "spectacularly save the situation" in turning back the RPF offensive in February 1993.^[7] The French claim no evidence exists that these French officers were directly involved in the genocide.^[8]

The French report claimed that the HRW and Melvern analyses omitted countervailing facts known as of their writing – specifically, that there were no arms delivery by France or facilitated by France once it deemed large-scale killings likely, let alone during the mass genocide proper; and that one of the tasks that the Rwandan regime hired Barril for was to recover a pre-payment for a likely fraudulent arms delivery deal, that was stopped by the French authorities.^[8]

During the first few days of the genocide, France launched Amaryllis, a military operation involving 190 paratroopers, assisted by the Belgian army and UNAMIR, to evacuate expatriates from Rwanda.^[9] The operation was later described by Gerard Prunier as a "disgrace," as the French and Belgians refused to allow any Tutsi to accompany them; those who boarded the evacuation trucks were forced off at Rwandan government checkpoints, where they were killed.^[10] The French also separated several expatriates and children from their Tutsi spouses, rescuing the foreigners but leaving the Rwandans to likely death.^[10] The French did, however, rescue several high-profile members of Habyarimana's government, as well as his wife, Agathe;^[10] in some instances, French troops used UNAMIR vehicles, without the permission of head of UNAMIR Roméo Dallaire.^[11] The French abandoned their embassy in Kigali, in the process shredding hundreds of documents containing details of their relationship with the old regime.^[12]

In late June 1994, France launched Opération Turquoise, a UN-mandated mission to create safe humanitarian areas for displaced persons, refugees, and civilians in danger; from bases in the Zairian cities of Goma and Bukavu, the French entered southwestern Rwanda and established the zone Turquoise, within the Cyangugu–Kibuye–Gikongoro triangle, an area occupying approximately a fifth of Rwanda.^[13] Radio France International estimates that Turquoise saved around 15,000 lives,^[14] but the timing of the invasion, with the genocide coming to an end and the RPF's ascendancy, led many Rwandans to interpret Turquoise primarily as a mission to protect Hutu from the RPF, including some who had participated in the genocide.^[15] The French remained hostile to the RPF, and their presence temporarily stalled the RPF's advance.^[16] According to HRW, Opération Turquoise had another purpose: Preventing a victory by the RPF. HRW reported that some military officers in Paris had talked openly of "breaking the back of the RPF."^[7] According to France's National Assembly, there were no documented large-scale killings in Zone Turquoise once it was established. By that same source, it seems the French intervention did provide some significant humanitarian relief in the areas it controlled.^[8] However, the French military presence effectively helped the perpetrators of genocide to escape from the RPF and flee into neighboring Zaire.^[17][18]

On November 27, 2004 in a televised debate on France 3, after the showing of the French film "Tuez les Tous" (Kill Them All), created by three students of political science, the president of the parliamentary mission for information for Rwanda, former minister Paul Quilès stated that "France asks to be pardoned by the people of Rwanda, but not by their government".^[34]

In 2010, during a visit to Rwanda, French President Nicolas Sarkozy acknowledged that France made "mistakes" during the genocide, although, according to a BBC report, he "stopped short of offering a full apology".^[2]

In April 2016, 2017 conservative presidential candidate,Alain Juppé, who was also French foreign affairs minister during the 1994 genocide, tweeted that "implicating France in the Rwandan genocide is a disgrace and a historical distortion."^[35]

In May 2021, Emmanuel Macron apologized to the Rwandan people and said that France had not heeded warnings of impending carnage and had for too long "valued silence over examination of the truth". Macron also noted that France had not been an accomplice in the killings. Rwanda's president, Paul Kagame, praised Macron's statements saying that it was "an act of tremendous courage", "more valuable than an apology" and "the truth".^[36]

• France–Rwanda relations