Rwanda And Genocide In The Twentieth Century

Plot

Why was the world so slow to react to the genocide in Rwanda? This book argues that the delay in providing humanitarian aid was a refusal on the part of the international community to recognise the singularity of the exceptional crime of genocide. The problem is in the definition of the term: genocide is now too easily applied to the tragedies of mass killings and has been reduced to little more than a media cliche. The author places the meaning of genocide under harsh scrutiny, examining its specificity, arguing that genocide must be reinstated as the most infamous of all crimes and the term severely limited to situations where it is clearly applicable under the terms of the UN Convention on Genocide.