He notably was the force commander of UNAMIR , the ill-fated United Nations peacekeeping force for Rwanda between and , and for trying to stop the genocide that was being waged by Hutu extremists against Tutsis. Dallaire came to Canada with his mother as a six-month-old baby on the Empire Brent , landing in Halifax on December 13, He spent his childhood in Montreal.
In , 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.
On July 3, , he was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general. He then commanded the 5th Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group. Rwanda was in the middle of a civil war between the extremist Hutu government and a small Tutsi rebel faction. When Dallaire arrived in Rwanda, his mandate was to supervise the implementation of the Accords during a transitional period in which Tutsis were supposed to be given positions of power within the Hutu government.
FAR was the Hutu army under Habyarimana's control. Dallaire was unable to seize the weapons, as this would have violated his UN mandate. The Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army told Dallaire that since the munitions were ordered before Arusha, the UN was not allowed to detain the shipment, and displayed paperwork showing that the weapons had been sent by Belgium, Israel, France, Britain, the Netherlands, and Egypt.
In addition to the arms deliveries, troops from the Rwandan government began checking identity cards which identified individuals as Hutus or Tutsis. These cards would later allow Hutu militias to identify their victims with accuracy.
