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The Rwandan genocide was the systematic ethnic cleansing and mass murder of ethnic Tutsis during the Rwandan Civil War. Over the course of 100 days beginning on 7 April 1994, approximately 800,000 Tutsis, as well as some moderate Hutu and Twa, were slaughtered by armed militias organized by the Rwandan government, led by the far-right National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND) party.

In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from their base in Uganda, initiating the Rwandan Civil War. Neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage in the war, and the Rwandan government, led by President Juvénal Habyarimana, signed the Arusha Peace Accords with the RPF on 4 August 1993. On April 6, 1994, Habyarimana was assassinated, creating a power vacuum and ending peace accords. Genocidal killings began the following day when prominent Tutsi and moderate Hutu military and political leaders were executed. Historians believe that the genocide had been planned for at least several years.

The scale and extreme brutality of the genocide caused shock and outrage worldwide, however, no countries intervened to stop the killings. Most of the victims were killed in their own villages or towns, many by their neighbors and fellow villagers. Hutu gangs searched out victims hiding in churches, mosques, and schools. The militias murdered victims with machetes and rifles. Sexual violence was rife; an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped during the genocide. Once the killings began, the RPF resumed the civil war and eventually captured all government territory, ending the genocide on 15 July 1994 and forcing the government and génocidaires into Zaire.

The genocide had lasting and profound effects. In 1996, the RPF-led Rwandan government launched an offensive into Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), home to exiled leaders of the former Rwandan government and many Hutu refugees, starting the First Congo War and killing an estimated 200,000 people. Today, Rwanda has two public holidays to mourn the genocide, and "genocide ideology" and "divisionism" are criminal offences. International Day of Reflection on the Rwandan genocide is observed globally on 7 April every year. Although the Constitution of Rwanda claims that more than 1 million people perished in the genocide, researchers state that this number is scientifically impossible and exaggerated for political reasons.