Linda Melvern is an investigative journalist and an active campaigner for UN reforms. She worked previously for Sunday times before becoming a full time writer.

The book ‘A people Betrayed’ is a u narrative of how in 1994 one million people were killed in a planned, public and political campaign. It was a genocide in scale, speed and intensity not known before. The book provides a terrible indictment, not just of the UN Council, but even more so of governments, individuals and international communities who could have prevented what was happening but chose not to do so. Documents held in Kigali, the Rwandan capital, as well as hitherto unpublished evidence of secret UN Security Council deliberations in New York, reveal a shocking sequence of events. UN failed to stop the genocide despite the indisputable evidence. At a time when increasing attention is being given to the need for UN reform. This Book provides evidence to urgently accelerate and focus that progress only by understanding how and why the genocide happened. Only then there is hope that this new century will break with the dismal record of the past.

What Melvern demonstrates so powerfully is that where Western geo-political interests are absent, Western morality and civilised concerns are nowhere to be found. A brave and compelling book by a distinguished writer.

(Vijay Mehta is vice-chair of Action for UN Renewal and member of the Editorial Board of NVA Monthly)