The forces that committed genocide in Rwanda more than a decade ago remain active in the region and must be countered with international action, the country’s President told the United Nations General Assembly today.

“While our continent has been consolidating peace and security, there are persistent problem areas that need attention,” Paul Kagame told the Assembly’s annual high-level debate. “In the Great Lakes region, forces that committed genocide in 1994 continue their destructive operations,” he said.

“They rape, murder, terrorize and plunder with impunity,” he charged. “Their leaders are active in Europe, America and Africa where they continue to promote the ideology of genocide.”

He said the “costly UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo [MONUC] has not diminished their activities” and called on the international community, in collaboration with the Congolese Government, “to end the threat posed by these negative forces once and for all.”

An estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were murdered, mostly by machete or club, across Rwanda in less than 100 days starting in early April 1994. Later that year the Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda to deal with the worst cases.

In his speech today, President Kagame said Rwandans “need peace and stability so that we can concentrate on the business of economic growth and development.”