The Ignorant Bystander

The Rwandan genocide was one of the bloodiest events in the late twentieth century and the international community's response has stimulated a great deal of interest and debate ever since. In this study, Dean White provides the most thorough review of Britain's response to the crisis written to date. The research draws on previously unseen documents and interviews with ministers and senior diplomats, and examines issues such as how the decision to intervene was made by the British Government, how media coverage led to a significant misunderstanding of the crisis, and how Britain shaped debate at the UN Security Council. The book concludes by comparing the response to Rwanda, to Britain's response to the recent crises in Syria and Libya.--Provided by publisher.

The Rwandan genocide was one of the bloodiest events in the late twentieth century and the international community's response has stimulated a great deal of interest and debate ever since. In this study, Dean White provides the most thorough review of Britain's response to the crisis written to date.

Once treated as the absence of knowledge, ignorance today has become a highly influential topic in its own right, commanding growing attention across the natural and social sciences where a wide range of scholars have begun to explore the social life and political issues involved in the distribution and strategic use of not knowing. The field is growing fast and this handbook reflects this interdisciplinary field of study by drawing contributions from economics, sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, anthropology, feminist studies, and related fields in order to serve as a seminal guide to the political, legal and social uses of ignorance in social and political life. Chapter 33 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available here: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780415718967_oachapter33.pdf

This volume is about the failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda in 1994. In particular, the research focuses on why the early warnings of an emerging genocide were not translated into early preventative action. The warnings were well documented by the most authoritative source, the Canadian U.N. peace-keeping commander General Romeo Dallaire and sent to the leading political civil servants in New York. The communications and the decisionmaking are scrutinized, i.e., who received what messages at what time, to whom the messages were forwarded and which (non-) decisions were taken in response to the alarming reports of weapon deliveries and atrocities. This book makes clear that this genocide could have been prevented. Published under the Transnational Publishers imprint.

An interdisciplinary approach to international crimes as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and other gross human rights violations for students, scholars, professionals and practitioners to get an insight in the roles of perpetrators and bystanders.

Of the three categories that Raul Hilberg developed in his analysis of the Holocaust—perpetrators, victims, and bystanders—it is the last that is the broadest and most difficult to pinpoint. Described by Hilberg as those who were “once a part of this history,” bystanders present unique challenges for those seeking to understand the decisions, attitudes, and self-understanding of historical actors who were neither obviously the instigators nor the targets of Nazi crimes. Combining historiographical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives on the bystander, the case studies in this book provide powerful insights into the complex social processes that accompany state-sponsored genocidal violence.

Economic Morality and Jewish Law compares the way in which welfare economics and Jewish law determine the propriety of an economic action, whether by a private citizen or the government. Issues explored include negative externalities, price controls, the lemons problem, the living wage, and short selling.