Linda Melvern

Linda Melvern book about the UN, The Ultimate Crime, appeared last year from Allison and Busby.

The UN and Rwanda

Linda Melvern, 12 December 1996

The architects of the United Nations set out to create the most ambitious system of collective security ever attempted. To this end, the Security Council was given unprecedented power. Its five permanent members would be the world’s policemen; they would fulfil the UN’s central purpose of maintaining peace and security. Troops would be at their disposal since, without the ability to enforce it, there was no point to international law. The alternative was anarchy. After the Cold War there was talk of a UN renaissance, and of a united Security Council ensuring the primacy of the UN’s role in a New World Order. It has not worked out like that. In the course of four years and three international disasters – Somalia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Rwanda – the Council has proved that with a patchwork command structure, as unstable as it is dangerous, it is not an effective instrument for collective security.’

Apocalypse Two: Rwanda’s genocide

R.W. Johnson, 21 June 2001

Jean de Dieu, 11, was curled up, a ball of flesh and blood, the look in his eyes was a glance from nowhere … without vision; Marie-Ange, aged nine, was propped up against a tree trunk...

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William Rodgers reads the papers

William Rodgers, 19 February 1987

Seven miles high above the Bay of Biscay and bound for Madrid, reading the daily papers is the alternative to a British Airways breakfast at noon. What is news? A kiss, it seems. England has won...

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