I was reading about the bravery, and perhaps luck of Ghanian peacekeepers in being able to negotiate for the safety of 80 people who were marked for death by the interhamwe, when I started asking myself perhaps for the first time in earnest, how Rwanda and the world came to that point known as the genocide.

Previously, it was all too easy for me to say the genocide was a result of 'negative ethnicity' and I thought it a good thing that the country and government now put little emphasis on ethnicity. But I now believe I was misguided.

The problem was, is, and continues to be about how power is acquired, distributed, and safeguarded. And on this measure not just Rwanda, but the world in general is napping and similar catastrophes aren't far off.

The French are boycotting this year's commemorations, yet can they truly deny their complicity? In my view they stepped into Belgian shoes, shoes left to them by the Germans. The Germans who wore the shoes given to them by the Tutsis.

The current government in Rwanda may boast of economic health, and some of us may covet the feat, but that's so shortsighted. We need to evaluate Rwanda and any other state on the parameters of power and power distribution and on this scale there's very little to smile about.

20 years later, with the old world order gone, its demise prompted by the Rwanda Genocide, genocide still occurs.

To what purpose then is the world order? What promise does it hold that there will be no more genocide?

Your first paragraph is 'enigmatic'. But true in our context. The old world order is phasing out.

In the new world order we should look forward to swords becoming ploughs.

Revising the imagery leaves me with no strength to do anything else but reflect deeply on certain things. If that is the purpose of the commemoration, let it be.