The Pros And Cons Of Preventing Genocide

In three separate instances, thousands of innocent people have lost their lives, due to the inaction of the United Nations. Three genocides which all could’ve been avoided, occurred. The slight attempt the UN made to each country was of no assistance, and each failure of the UN caused more loss of life. Though the United Nations is ashamed of their failures, they could’ve put more effort in to prevent the genocides. The heinous acts that occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Sudan were ignored and interminable by the UN, resulting in the mass destruction of the populations in all three locations. When the Khmer Rouge government came into power in Cambodia in 1975, the extremist communist government was ruled by Pol Pot, a ruthless leader (Fitzgerald).

Mass genocides took place during the Holocaust, in Rwanda, and in many other places throughout history. The cartoon by Michael Sutherland shows that the United Nations was created with the intention of preventing genocides and fatal global conflict. Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon is quoted as saying "We have learned important lessons. We know more keenly than ever that genocide is not a single event but a process that evolves over time, and requires planning and resources to carry out. As chilling as that sounds, it also means that with adequate information, mobilization, courage and political will, genocide can be prevented."(UN.org)

According to Daniel Goldhagen, genocides are constantly being underestimated, which causes the never ending realities of the past repeating itself. From high officials to ordinary citizens, people often overlook the pattern and causes of these systematic killings. One of these includes the UN, which was created to prevent another World War, and to protect the rights of sovereignty of member states. This organization serves to solve international issues, but has failed and continues to fail to prevent genocides. Even though this group signed in 1948 a UN document, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which punished and still punishes people guilty of genocide, not one life was ever saved from that declaration. The reason is because most at first want to deny that these extreme situations could happen ever again. Sadly,

The United nations refused to intervene during the genocide but instead provided humanitarian aid. As time went on they established six “safe area.” These efforts failed because the U.N. was not prepared or didn’t have the correct resources. The hostile situation went on for over four years. In the beginning of the Bosnian War, U.N. did nothing to stop mass executions, concentration camps, rape and sexual violence, and forced displacement. Again, their role was to show a presence, give assistance when needed and be

The analysis of the genocides that took place both in Rwanda and Sudan’s Darfur region exhibit some similarities as well as differences. The character of violence was similar in both cases, but in Rwanda the violence was more intense, participatory, and extraordinary. The violence in these two places took place in an environment that had experienced civil wars. It was a period of political transition which was further aggravated by ethnic nationalism and a conflict of ethnic populations that were living in close proximity. However, in the Rwandan genocide, the state is more centralized, compact, and effective. This is what explains the intensity and variation. The international response to these genocides through observers emphasized on

In A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Samantha Power creates a comprehensive understanding of American involvement in cases of genocide. Power utilizes various case studies in order to discuss America’s long-running policy of inaction—through these case studies, Power provides information that aids the reader in understanding the context surrounding the genocide. With the case studies, Power explains why America consistently fails to stop genocide. Throughout the book, Samantha Power effectively argues that “The United States had never in its history intervened to stop genocide and had in fact rarely made a point of condemning it as it occurred” (XV).

With over eight hundred thousand to one million deaths, the Rwandan genocide is undoubtedly one of the most sad and shocking examples of the lack of intervention by not only the US and the UN, but by other countries as well. The ongoing tensions between the Hutu, the largest population in Rwanda, and the Tutsi, the smaller and more elite population is what eventually lead to the Rwandan genocide. The killings began quickly after President Habyarimana 's plane was shot down. After hundreds of thousands of deaths, the US did not intervene in Rwanda because being a landlocked country with no natural resources to benefit the US, there was no economical benefit, and the risk of sending in troops simply outweighed the rewards. The aftermath of the genocide has not only impacted those who lived through it, but it has also impacted future generations as well. At the end of the genocide, the ICTR was formed by the UN to find justice. The Rwandan genocide has shocking similarities between the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide as well. Overall, the Rwandan genocide was a terrible event that escalated far beyond what it should have if there had been intervention from other countries and the UN.

Should the United Nations intervene in cultural atrocities, or is protecting a State’s autonomy more important? First of all, the United Nations must learn early detection methods, in hopes to stop genocides from even starting! Secondly, if early detection methods fail on occasions, the international community needs to forget about protecting a sovereign State’s autonomy and be ready and willing to step in and help! Intervening may be expensive, and it may require the use of resources, but the lives of innocent civilians are worth more than money or resources can supply. After all, what is worse: a group or individual who commits heinous crimes, or those who choose to ignore them and let the casualties

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

The final reason why the United Nations is to blame for Rwanda’s Genocide is because of the fact that they ignored evidence of planned genocide and abandoned Rwandans in need of protection. The United Nations failed trying. The independent report, commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ( who was in charge at the time of the Rwandan Genocide), says the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda was hopeless from the start by an poor consent and destroyed by the Security Council's unwillingness to strengthen it once the slaughters, murders and rape began. UN officials, together with Annan and then-Secretary-General

In midst of making meticulous plans, the anti-Tutsi Hutu’s had hopes to slaughter a list of Tutsis and their Hutu sympathizers. That being said, how the key international leaders should have acted during these times of structural violence remains abstruse, “the belief was that the price to the world of such a risk would not be as great as the price of inaction” (Gourevitch 1998: 169). The international community had deployed from their legal responsibilities to mitigate the colossal humanitarian tragedy. The peace-keepers at the time of genocide express that they did not have enough militants to save thousands of lives or act quickly enough. Although the peace-keepers had good intentions, an intelligence capability for early warnings and planning could have been useful during these times of tragedy in

Even with this very clear definition of genocide the United Nations Security Council still proved ineffective in preventing the genocide that occurred in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi people. There are a number of theories as to why the U.N. was so inefficient in preventing the genocide such as : there was little political will to intervene from Western countries, the tragedy which had recently occurred in Somalia, and the overlooking of early warning signs.

The global powers failed to step in quickly and took so long that a mister Eric Reeves had time to write an article called The World’s Abandonment of Darfur in which he writes “The United States, Britain and France need to muscle up politically in the Security Council now or the fate of Darfur will be dictated by the very men who began the genocide 12 years ago. This would be unprecedented in the grim history of genocide” (Reeves). Clearly, the global superpowers need to step up their game in the international community to help stop things like this from happening in the future. If these countries could not even prevent the same tragic events from happening back to back, that is terrible. Granted, the restructuring of a state can be a long and difficult project to undertake, just look at the Middle East and the United States’ involvement, but it is necessary to make sure that the same people, or any people at all, are incriminated and tortured like those living in the Darfur region were. The global heavyweights, at least, need to intervene in any restructuring post-genocide to ensure that the county does not fall back into a state in which mass killings are taking

The international community had a responsibility to stop the genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo by taking military action, not only because we should have learned from the holocaust but also over the years 40,000 women and children were

The war in Darfur materialized at the wrong time for the United States, Norway, and Britain, two of which are permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. At the time, they were focused on ensuring the success of the Naivasha negotiations in Sudan. The Naivasha agreement, also known as the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was an permanent ceasefire agreement between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/ Sudan People’s Liberation Army to end the Second Sudanese Civil War. This was long time coming because the conflict had started all the way back in 1983. The Security Council used the ‘Brahimi principal,’ which states “regional organizations take primary responsibility for the problems in their backyard” to push responsibility on to the A.U. The Brahimi principle The Security Council was glad to give someone else the responsibility of Darfur so they could focus on others tasks at hand.