Featured in this essay:
Michael Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002).
Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2001).
L. R. Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000).
EXCERPT:Read together, [these books] make a fairly convincing case that the UN was indeed responsible for failing to stop the genocide in Rwanda. At the same time, however, the three books deliver a devastating indictment of the political leaders and citizens of the most powerful states in the world––especially the United States––for failing to create the conditions that would have enabled the United Nations to fulfill its mandate and prevent the slaughter.
