ABSTRACT
Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide a critical literature review of the accounts that discuss the UN’s failure to prevent and halt the Rwandan genocide. The first section of the chapter aims to give a descriptive overview of the key events in the Rwandan case, a task which will be realised using the existing literature on the subject. The second and third sections will examine the way in which the causes of the UN’s inaction are explained in the existing analyses. It will be claimed from the critical realist perspective that the previous investigations are characterised by positivist features similar to those outlined in Chapter 2, namely methodological individualism, empiricist fallacy, actor-centrism (anthropocentrism) and phenomenalism.1
