He is the author of We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, an in-depth account of the Rwanda genocide. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a contributing editor to the Forward. In the aftermath of the genocide he spent over nine months in Rwanda trying to understand how this extraordinary crime came to pass, how it was organized, how the Western powers stood by and watched it happen, and how Rwandans are living with its legacy.

He is Chief of Staff to the U.N. Secretary General, Kofi Annan. During the events in Rwanda, he was deputy to Annan, who was then head of U.N. peacekeeping. In this interview Riza responds to charges that high-level U.N. officials knew in advance of the possibility that mass killings would occur. He also discusses the constraints facing U.N. forces in Rwanda and how the failed U.N./U.S. peacekeeping mission in Somalia a few months earlier profoundly influenced the West's response to the Rwandan genocide.

He was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs at the Department of Defense from 1986-1994. In the spring of 1993, Woods identified Rwanda as a potential crisis, but was told to remove it from the list because it wasn't an important area. During the genocide, he was involved in congressional hearings on Rwanda. In this interview he discusses how and why the West avoided getting involved in trying to halt the genocide.

He was a Political Military Advisor for the U.S. State Department from 1992-95. He participated in several U.S. inter-agency conferences on the Rwanda crisis. In this interview he discusses what went on in those meetings.

He was second-in-command for U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) under General Dallaire. In this interview he talks about meeting an informant who outlined Hutu plans for mass killings. Marchal also explains why U.N. forces were unable to save the life of a Rwanda political leader and what are the lessons of Rwanda.