Shortly after my conversation with Kagame, I ran into an American military-intelligence officer, who was having a supper of Jack Daniel’s and Coca-Cola at a Kigali bar. “I hear you’re interested in genocide,” he said. “Do you know what genocide is?”

I asked him to tell me.

“A cheese sandwich,” he said. “Write it down. Genocide is a cheese sandwich.”

I asked him how he figured that.

“What does anyone care about a year-old cheese sandwich?” he said. “Genocide, genocide, genocide. Cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich, cheese sandwich. Who gives a shit? Crimes against humanity—where’s humanity? Who’s humanity? You? Me? Did you see a crime committed against you? Hey, just a million Rwandans. Did you ever hear about the Genocide Convention?”

I said I had. It was passed by the United Nations in 1948, in the days after Nuremberg; it has been ratified by scores of countries; and it says that they will all undertake to prevent and punish genocide if it should ever happen again. “That convention,” the American at the bar said, “makes a nice wrapping for a cheese sandwich.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/12/18/after-the-genocide