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    Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda
    Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda
    Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda
    Ebook372 pages6 hours

    Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda

    By Michael Barnett

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Why was the UN a bystander during the Rwandan genocide? Do its sins of omission leave it morally responsible for the hundreds of thousands of dead? Michael Barnett, who worked at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations from 1993 to 1994, covered Rwanda for much of the genocide. Based on his first-hand experiences, archival work, and interviews with many key participants, he reconstructs the history of the UN's involvement in Rwanda.

    In the weeks leading up to the genocide, the author documents, the UN was increasingly aware or had good reason to suspect that Rwanda was a site of crimes against humanity. Yet it failed to act. Barnett argues that its indifference was driven not by incompetence or cynicism but rather by reasoned choices cradled by moral considerations. Employing a novel approach to ethics in practice and in relationship to international organizations, Barnett offers an unsettling possibility: the UN culture recast the ethical commitments of well-intentioned individuals, arresting any duty to aid at the outset of the genocide.

    Barnett argues that the UN bears some moral responsibility for the genocide. Particularly disturbing is his observation that not only did the UN violate its moral responsibilities, but also that many in New York believed that they were "doing the right thing" as they did so. Barnett addresses the ways in which the Rwandan genocide raises a warning about this age of humanitarianism and concludes by asking whether it is possible to build moral institutions.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCornell University Press
    Release dateMay 3, 2012
    ISBN9780801465123
    Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda
    Author

    Michael Barnett

    I now make my home in Plano, Texas. My birth in southern California in 1958, was followed over the next five years by my three brothers. During that time, the country was undergoing a significant change from post war innocence into the turbulent late 60's. My incredible wife, Michelle, married me 31 years ago and still tolerates me. We have a single daughter living away from home, and my mom now lives with us since the death of my father two years ago. I have always loved reading, and have read across all genres, and will give up on a book after the first five or ten pages if it isn’t compelling enough. In high school, and college, my English and writing teachers prodded me to be a writer, but I would just laugh at how entertaining the idea was of spending all of that time doing anything. After all, I was cranking through most books in one week, and couldn’t even fathom the idea of spending a year or more on writing a book. Oh, sure, I would often fantasize about writing. With my writing abilities, imagination and expansive memory of things long past, it would be a breeze, right? Wrong. Like a high diver, I was standing on the edge and looking down at the water far below, but I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) take the leap. I had a comfortable life, and, it was remarkably easy to tell myself, “I don’t have the time”. Unfortunately, the older I got, the easier it was to convince myself that I didn’t have the time. Now fast forward to April of 1998. It is Good Friday, and my Dad has just passed away after a long illness. The next few weeks were a blur as my Dad's remains flew to Indiana, and we drove up for the funeral. At the viewing, we were tremendously pleased to see family we haven’t seen in 10, 20, and 30 years. Before long, my three brothers and I started to identify a common theme to all the conversations with us; how “we boys” were little monsters, and how all of our close calls with death—and that we survived, were miraculous. Later that day, my next-to-me-in-age brother, Gerald, told me that based on all of the enthusiasm and interest in our family at the viewing about our younger-selves stories, I should write a book about our family. I laughed it off. We drove back to Texas, and I forgot about my brother’s request. Over the next few months, Gerald would call me and say I should write the book. In the first week of August, Gerald called me, and his cheerful mood was missing. In its place was a truly serious mood. He was not going to let me get out of it any longer. He was making some compelling arguments about wanting (needing) to tell our story, so that others could believe that even when people despair, they always have hope; that even when life seems hopeless and depressing, the grace of God can change it around, where redemption can occur. I started on the outline of the book that night, and within a week had started interviewing my Mom and brothers to start building the stories. My only regret is that my Dad wasn’t around to contribute to the book, and see the result.

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    • 4/5
      Eyewitness to a Genocide The United Nations and Rwanda, by Michael Barnett (read 14 Nov 2016) Having come to know someone from Rwanda, I decided to read this 2002 book by a professor who was working at the United Nations in 1994, when the genocide in Rwanda happened. The author, while calling his book "Eyewitness to a Genocide" was never in Rwanda, but has studied carefully the events which resulted in he United Nations failing to stop the genocide. The book carefully dissects the events and concludes there are various persons who failed in regard to the horrendous genocide. The Canadian general who was the head of the U.N. peacekeeping force in Rwanda sought to prevent the atrocity but the will to prevent it was lacking on the part of the people at the United Nations. The Secretary-General, Boutrus Boutrous-Ghali, shares some of the blame, as does the U.S. The book is thought-provoking in its earlier part but the learned study as to blame does get less interesting--especially since there seems to be enough blame to ascribe to many--besides, of course, the evil perpetrators themselves.

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    Eyewitness to a Genocide - Michael Barnett

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