ABSTRACT
In December 1997, Secretary of State Madeline Albright said that the West should have defined the events in Rwanda as genocide earlier, for example, in April–May 1994, when it was actually happening. This chapter argues that the delays in legal diagnosis and response had several causes in addition to the "chicken" issue identified publicly by Albright. Notably, these causes are rooted in the very nature of the bureaucratized Good Samaritan. Albright's statement ignores what is known about the slow and often muddled process by which events become rationalized and bureaucratized. The bureaucratized Good Samaritan, though, is probably not efficient in the manner implied by Albright. Examining how the violence and genocide were evaluated in Ngara illustrates why this is so. Through 1993, Rwanda's President Habyarimana attempted to convene a government in accord with the August 1993 Arusha Accords. International attention in region was not directed at the Rwandan situation, but on South Africa, which had elections scheduled for April 1994.
