Senator Romeo Dallaire is stepping down from the Senate.

The man best known in Canada as the former commander of the U.N’s  ill-fated peacekeeping mission in Rwanda says he’ll leave the upper chamber on June 17th.

He says he will continue his campaign in support of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder following their service in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The retired lieutenant-general says the Rwanda genocide still haunts him today.

He says: “I live every day what I lived 20 years ago and it’s as if it was this morning. You can’t walk away from the destruction. Nor can you walk away from the sense of abandonment that my troops and I faced in the field.”

At a news conference , Dallaire said he’s been asked to spend a year at the University of Southern California studying PTSD. He’s also been tasked by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to visit conflict zones.

He’s also in the process of writing two more books.

The 68-year old Dallaire was appointed to the upper chamber in 2005 by then prime minister Paul Martin.