Addressing correspondents at the UN on the twelfth anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide, the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide, Juan Mendez, said that the international community should use the occasion to renew its commitment to ensure it does not let genocide happen again.

He said that, “As we remember almost 1 million victims, we also have to remember that the international community failed to protect those victims”. On Darfur he emphasized, that protection in particular was a serious matter and critisized the international response. "In effect, for the last two years we have engaged in half measures, and those half measures, one, have not been sufficient to protect and, two, they're showing signs of unraveling,".