Published in International Peacekeeping
The Autumn issue, 1999
Posted at willum.com
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Legitimizing Inaction towards Genocide in Rwanda: A Matter of Misperception? |
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Back in 1996 Gunnar Willum and I spent half a year investigating the role of the UN Secretariat in the Rwanda Genocide. First and foremost our research resulted in a series of articles in the Danish daily Information. Eventually, however, the research was used by Bjørn Willum for his Bachelor dissertation, which in turn formed the basis for an article published in International Peacekeeping in September 1999. The publisher, Frank Cass, has kindly permitted me to make this article available for download - see below |
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THESE ARTICLES WERE THE VERY FIRST PUBLISHED IN INFORMATION ON THE ANNAN-RWANDA SCANDALThe History of a Verified GenocideBoutros-Ghali Misinforms on Rwanda |
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ABSTRACT By Bjørn Willum An estimated 5-800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in 1994. The lack of international response was compelling and the Secretary-General of the United Nations blamed the international community for its inaction. However, the UN Secretariat had received advance information about plans for mass murder in Rwanda. Critics blamed the Secretariat for ineffectiveness and for having misread the situation while others emphasized the need for the strengthening of early warning capacity. This article presents a different conclusion, namely that the handling of the Rwanda crisis was a political decision taken by top Secretariat officials, rather than an intelligence failure or the result of bureaucratic inertia. The argument is, that the problem was the unwillingness of senior officials to use the information at hand to provide the necessary political leadership for an indecisive international community. (Download as PDF-file - 57 kb) (Download as RTF-file - 74 kb)
A list of Frank Cass journals can be found at www.frankcass.com/jnls/index.htm
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TIMELINE OF THE ANNAN-RWANDA SCANDALAnnan, Boutros-Ghali and the Rwanda Genocide |