After a period of inertia, the Belgian administration became actively involved in Ruanda-Urundi between 1926 and 1931 under the governorship of Charles Voisin.

Contemporary racial science and eugenics led Belgian administrators to believe that the Tutsi were genetically more closely related to Europeans than the Hutu superior and deserved power.

Some scholars circulated, including John Hanning Speke, propagated the Hamitic hypothesis which held that the Tutsi were descended from "black Caucasians" who invaded Europe and were the ancestors of all the more "civilised" African peoples.

[5] The newly independent Republic of Rwanda, under its first President Greogire Kayibanda, immediately established formal diplomatic relationships with Belgium.

[citation needed] The Arusha Accords of 1993, the peace treaty which initially ended the Rwandan Civil War, led to the United Nations approving the mandate of UNAMIR as a peacekeeping force.

[8] En route to protecting then-Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyama, fifteen Belgian UNAMIR peacekeepers were taken prisoner by the Rwandan Army.

As Human Rights Watch's Allison Des Forges points out, these murders were "the first step in the plan revealed in the January 11 cable for getting rid of an effective UNAMIR force".