preview

After the Holocaust, Vows of Never Again are Broken Again and Again

Good Essays

"Never Again", the world vowed as it reeled from the horrors which came to light after the Holocaust - never again would we let human actions sink to such a vile depth as that of attempted extermination of an entire people. It was a promise brimming with resolve and unanimity, but a promise which would go on to be broken again and again.
In December 1948, the then members of the United Nations General Assembly, without contention, passed the Convention on Genocide. It defined what the crime of genocide entailed and that it was an act to be prevented and its perpetrators punished. It has been 66 years since then and we have not been able to fulfill this promise - shattering its very principles time and time again - in places such as …show more content…

For example, as the events of the Darfur genocide unfolded, member nations pressured the UN to call it a genocide, obligating it to act, yet refused to provide it with the essential military and financial support. As Gérard Prunier, author of Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide explains, "this situation came to demonstrate the UN's practical limitations in crises where the heavyweight member states do not want to act. Blaming the UN was easy for those who were responsible for its inaction." The United Nations has and continues to accomplish volumes for humanity, but in the face of genocide, the UN is a defunct organization, dependent entirely upon the will of its member nations.
Other nations, as humanitarianly inclined as they may be, will always put their interests - whether it be geo-political, economic, military or social - ahead of all other considerations. It is an inescapable fact that many countries are often reluctant to act in a situation which does not directly impact their own welfare and sometimes actively obstruct action by the UN or other forces to satisfy their self-serving purposes. As Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, the Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), stated when explaining the reasoning behind the UN's inability to act during the Darfur genocide, "..., it's because Sudan is obstructionist, China is complacent, and Canada and the rest of the international

Get Access