Rwanda's genocide, twenty years ago this month, symbolizes the zenith of ethnic violence in Africa and international indifference toward it. How did this defining event change our world? It is true that mass atrocity is still not a ghost of the past and international inaction in the face of it is still not an unthinkable choice.
Events in the Central African Republic and Syria today serve as dark reminders of each of these realities. Yet we would be overly cynical to think nothing has changed. The hundreds of thousands of lives so brutally taken in Rwanda left a mark on the world's conscience and moved us a little closer toward making 'never again' a credible promise.
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