Government and Non-governmental Organizations - Essay Example

Many a times the international community does not even protest against such atrocities and it is only after the levels of atrocities exceed all levels of human degradation that corrective measures are to some extent enforced. Non-governmental organizations meanwhile are allowed to act only when the governments where such atrocities happen allow them to operate effectively in a non-biased manner. However, non-governmental organizations fortunately are the first ones to report, condemn and to request world community to intervene to stop the wrong doings.

In their limited ways they do try to help as much as they can, but most of the times their efforts cover only a small percentage of the assistance that is overall required. In these essay, while we shall be comparing and contrasting the roles of governments and non-governmental organizations we shall without intention also be critical of these two important functionary bodies. In this context, we shall be referring to the major genocidal events in our last century in each of which people in their tens of thousands were the victims of mass killings.

These are the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia, the genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the freely allowed blood baths in Rwanda. When we compare some of these atrocities, the main similarities we observe is they happened because of the state government policies of these countries which encouraged ethnic cleansing as a method of subduing the minorities or completely wipe them out from as a people. While we shall not touch upon the subject of political killings that occurred in Argentine, Chile, Guatemala and continues to happen in Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Palestine and other countries, the roles of governments and non-governmental organizations here too are significantly important if they are freely and fairly implemented.

The Holocaust happened because Germany as a state with a parliamentary type of democracy under Hitler was allowed to degenerate into a totalitarian Nazi state that controlled every segment of the German society. Its public policies developed because the German population remained silent towards the racial and genocidal policies towards the Jews and other minority groups because of Hitler's philosophical views that were elaborated in his Mein Kampf that led to the Nazi government's policy of murder and extermination.

Policies that were on similar extreme lines in Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Rwanda were allowed and the international governments intervened only when their national interests involved. While the Holocaust was enforced by a economically and militarily very strong and dominating Germany during World War II, the other genocides could have been prevented had international gov