Intact/Dallaire Initiative Senior Fellow and Founder
Lieutenant General Romeo A. Dallaire | O.C., C.M.M. G.O.Q. M.S.C, C.D., (Retired)
The Honourable Romeo Dallaire had a distinguished career in the Canadian Military, achieving the rank of Lieutenant-General and Assistant Deputy Minister of Human Resources. After his retirement he founded the namesake organization The Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative in 2007 with the mission to end the recruitment and use of child soldiers globally. He currently spends his time shaping the dialogue within public discourse to create a momentum towards tangible solutions to the child solider issue, and works with the team at the Initiative to advocate their pioneer work.
In 1994, General Dallaire commanded the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR). His experiences there became the subject of the book Shake Hands with Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, which was awarded the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction in 2004 and was the basis of a full-length feature film released in 2007. Medically released in 2000 due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, General Dallaire has worked as an author, lecturer, and humanitarian, conducting research on conflict resolution and child soldiers at the Harvard Kennedy School. His most recent book, They Fight Like Soldiers Die like Children – The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers, introduces the child solider phenomenon and solutions to eradicate it. General Dallaire also helped reform the assistance provided to the new generation of Canadian Force’s veteran’s particularly affected by post-traumatic stress disorder.
He was appointed to the Senate effective March 24th, 2005 and was the Vice-Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence as well as President of the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and left in 2014 after a 9 year tenure to dedicate his time to humanitarian causes. He was appointed with Bishop Desmond Tutu to the United Nations Secretary General’s Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention in the spring of 2006 and is the Fellow at the Montreal Institute of Genocide Studies, Concordia University. He is an officer in the Order of Canada since 2002, a recipient of the Pearson Peace Medal in 2005, a Grand Officer of the Order of Quebec in 2006. He holds honorary doctorates and fellowships from over three dozen universities in Canada.