Ghosts of Rwanda
How and why did it happen?
With so much talk of “Never Again” as well as human rights law criminalizing genocide, how and why did so many good, responsible people, states, and institutions agree to do nothing in the face of mass murder? Does the criminalization of genocide actually matter, or does it create more complication than it resolves?
Were some international actors or people more culpable than others?
Did the media play a role here as an early warning system, or worse, as an aid to the killing?
Does the current international norm known as R2P (the Right to Protect) seem a robust deterrent likely to change the desirability of states for military-based humanitarian intervention?
More recently, Yale Holocaust historian Tim Snyder has attempted to explain how so many civilians became complicit in helping Nazis commit mass murder in Eastern Europe. Massive numbers of civilians have been killed in Darfur (beginning in 2003, also referred to as genocide) and the Syrian civil war, with little robust willingness on the part of developed nations to militarily intervene—is there a pattern of conditions or behaviors here that triggers a ‘bystander’ policy for states and international institutions?
Finally, why do you think Christian Churches, statesmen, and NGOs were not particularly different than others in their response to the Rawanda crisis? The Jewish and Christian faith traditions have traditionally asked, “Am my brother’s keeper?”, a rhetorical question signaling our moral responsibility to safeguard the lives of humans as humans. But in cases like these it needs to be asked—why has the organized Church been slow to mobilize? Apart from humanitarian aid assistance, did they mobilize for Darfur and Syria?
