Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Honors Captain Mbaye Diagne, Senegalese Hero

Ambassador Marcia Bernicat and General Fall with Captain Mbaye’s widow. (Dpt of State)

On Wednesday, April 6, 2011, the U.S. State Department celebrated the 60th anniversary of the 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees.  Seven persons of courage were recognized for their bravery and selfless humanitarian acts.  Among them was Senegalese Captain Mbaye Diagne, honored for his actions in Rwanda in 1994.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presided over the ceremony, which was held in the Benjamin Franklin reception rooms at the State Department.  More than 60 invitees joined the ceremony via digital video conference at the American Center in Dakar in the presence of Ambassador Marcia Bernicat and General Fall, head of the Senegalese Armed Forces, and the family of the late Captain Diagne.

Ambassador Bernicat presented a certificate of recognition to Captain Mbaye’s widow.  Ambassador Bernicat said that “the entire Senegalese nation is honored through Captain Diagne’s actions.”

Captain Diagne was a member of the UN Peacekeeping force in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide.  During the genocide, Captain Diagne personally rescued more than 600 Tutsis who were in danger of being killed, by helping them to get past road blocks held by the perpetrators of the genocide.  He himself was killed during one of his rescue missions.

Other heroes who were honored during the ceremony included Joséphine Dusabimana, a Hutu who secretly gave refuge to 8 Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide; Mina Jahic, who helped a seriously injured man after his escape from a Serbian death squad during the war in Bosnia; and Larry Hollingworth, head of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) operation in Sarajevo, was one of the most prominent, innovative, and relentless international relief workers in Bosnia during the conflict and ethnic cleansing there in the 1990s.