The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur - Essay Example

 The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur “..clearly not all of the killings that have taken place in Rwanda are killings to which you might apply that label.. But as to the distinctions between the words, we’re trying to call what we have seen so far as best we can; and based, again, on the evidence, we have every reason to believe that ‘acts of genocide’ have occurred.” -State spokesperson Christine Shelly, differentiating ‘genocide’ from ‘acts of genocide’ 1 The global human rights movement, led by international non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations such as the Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, seems to be fighting a lost battle against genocide. Rwanda, Cambodia, Kosovo, and Darfur: These far-flung places have all held witness to the unspeakable violence of genocide. And while the global community has often voiced out its “agony” and “sympathy” for these victims of systematic yet senseless violence, rarely has the global community actively intervened to put a stop to the killings. This low incidence of intervention seems at odds with the agreement entered into by most countries in the Genocide Convention of 1948 wherein they committed, under Art 1, “to prevent and to punish”2 the crime of genocide. Could this failure to intervene in the genocidal activities of sovereign states be rooted on the inability of the human rights movement to propel international action? The case of Darfur provides a timely opportunity to examine the truth of that theory. It is imperative that a definition of genocide be explored and established first since much of the controversy surrounding international inaction today are in many ways related to the very definition and application of the term “genocide”. As is best exemplified by Shelly’s wordplay above, the definition and use of the term genocide has been muddled by political stratagems which seem to follow an unspoken rule to never use the term at all costs. Instead of the term “genocide”, terms such as “ethnic violence”, “ethnic cleansing”, “acts of genocide”, and “civil war” have become the trademark of the politically-savvy. It would be as though by avoiding the term genocide, a humanitarian crisis such as Rwanda or Darfur would cease to be genocide and transform into something more palatable to the taste. We must thus resort back to the definition of genocide agreed upon by the same international community before they actually found themselves bound to make good on such definition. In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the following definition is clearly detailed: “Article 2 In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” 3 Based on Lemkin’s definition of genocide as “the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious, or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group,”4 the definition above has been ratified by more than 100 member countries of the United Nations and continues to be in force today. For some, the Genocide Convention which enforces this definition was seen to usher in a new era for the global human rights movement especially in regards to combating genocide. Not only did it provide a clear definition of the crime of genocide, it also provided a clear commitment on the part of member states to act in cooperation with each other in preventing or stopping genocide and in punishing perpetrators of genocide. Prior to the Genocide Convention, the international community had no basis to intervene in domestic crises which clearly fell under the definition of genocide. Genocide was left unabated firstly because it was not yet officially declared as a crime against humanity, and secondly because there was no actual system by which sympathetic countries could actively intervene and hold the perpetrators accountable for their crimes. In the Armenian genocide of 1915, for example, sympathetic governments did not pursue any measures to intervene despite their general recognition and condemnation of the massacres as crimes against humanity5. Although many of these governments expressed their intent to hold the Turkish government responsible for the massacres, the victorious Allied Powers still did nothing to counter continuing Turkish offensives, even as these offensives resulted in the demise of the young Russian Armenian republic6. With the Genocide Convention of 1948 and the establishment of a clear definition for genocide, however, human rights groups sympathetic to the victims of such crimes now had sufficient and legal basis to hold the international community accountable in the intervention of genocide. The negligence by which the international community allowed Russian Armenia to resort to self-mutilation and compromise if only to preserve itself was meant to happen “never again”, not with the human rights movement at the helm of the fight against genocide. It is happening again. For the past three years, non-Arab villagers in Darfur have been and still are being systematically hunted, harassed, and murdered by Arab militia forces working with the Government of Sudan.7 So widespread is the violence that around 2.2 million of Darfur’s 6 million residents were said to have been affected as of September 2004.8 Although the crises is confounded by the presence of an existing conflict between the government and the rebel group Darfur Liberation Front, investigations and observations made by Human Rights Watch indicate that the Sudanese government, in cooperation with the Janjaweed militia, is actively pursuing genocide against the non-Arab ethnic groups: “..the government of Sudan has pursued a military strategy that has deliberately targeted civilians from the same ethnic groups as the rebels.. through a combination of indiscriminate and deliberate aerial bombardment, denial of access to humanitarian assistance, and scorched-earth tactics that displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians..” 9 The global human rights movement has been hard at work in condemning the atrocities perpetuated in Darfur and demanding both intervention and prosecution from the international community. Human Rights Watch has been actively investigating the atrocities, providing detailed studies and information both to the press and to the web. Amnesty International has also been actively demanding justice for the victims of the Darfur crisis, demanding greater cooperation on the part of the Sudanese government in the investigations being carried out by the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court.10 More telling is the demand made by Amnesty International to the UN Security Council and the African Union, calling for “additional steps” in the Darfur situation11, thereby implying that the international community as represented by these two groups are not doing everything that needs to be done. The demand for “additional steps” on the part of the international community finds its cause in the mixed signals being sent out by the international community in response to the Darfur situation. Although the direct participation of the Sudanese government in the killings has been documented in separate investigations conducted by Human Rights Watch and UN’s International Commission of Inquiry, several member countries still refuse to hold the Sudanese government as a party to the crime12, thereby discounting chances of persecuting the Sudanese government for genocide. Western countries such as those in the European Union shied away from directly intervening in the crises, opting instead to let the African Union take the lead in whatever intervention mechanism they may concoct.13 The Darfur conflict thus resembles the Armenian genocide in that no effective intervention or persecution has been sincerely pursued by the international community. The responses and actions being pursued by the international community are tantamount to a stalemate in the situation, falling short of what the global human rights movement deems to be necessary for Darfur. The current stalemate in Darfur highlights the failure of the international community to fulfill its commitment in stopping genocide. Firstly, there was a failure to intervene in the rampage that cost the lives of non-Arab villagers in Darfur, contrary to the international community’s commitment “to prevent” genocide. Secondly, there is also an emerging failure to persecute those responsible for the genocide especially in regards to the accountability of the Sudanese government. How did this failure come about in the face of an extensive information network built by the global human rights movement and the international community’s supposed commitment to stop genocide? The answers to these troubling questions lie in the limitations of the global human rights movement itself. Firstly, the global human rights movement as represented by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have largely pursued information gathering and dissemination as their primary tools of engagement. Human Rights Watch, for example, albeit effective in information dissemination and analysis, does not fare well when it comes to mobilizing society for the purpose of pressuring governments towards a particular action.14 Their achievements are characterized by how they are able to investigate and bring human rights violations into the public arena. While such efforts are not to be undermined, they are insufficient in making the international community do what needs to be done. Presenting countries with information is important, but it does not prevent them from ignoring the information or deliberately misreading it. In the case of Darfur, for example, factual investigations that showed a clear link between the Sudanese government and the genocidal killings did not prevent Algeria from declaring the absence of such a link15. Nor did knowledge of prepared death lists containing names of Tutsi nationals compel UN’s Security Council to approve proposals for UNAMIR to seize arms as a precaution.16 Information, though vital, may still be misinterpreted, downplayed, or, in the worst of cases, completely ignored. Adequate information’s inadequacy in prodding governments towards the proper course of action is best exemplified by the Rwandan tragedy wherein more than 800,000 Rwandan nationals, mostly Tutsi, were gunned down, chopped, and burned to death while the international community did virtually nothing. Although there is now widespread consensus that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was genocide, there is still an ongoing debate in the United States in regards to whether the US government and the international community for that matter knowingly chose to ignore the Rwandan genocide.17 In the historical account of Des Forges of the Human Rights Watch, France, Belgium, and the U.S., as well as UN itself, had adequate information within the first 24 hours of the outbreak of violence in Rwanda to know that genocide was occurring and thus had to be intervened with.18 Defendants of the Clinton administration, led primarily by Kuperman, have been quick to point out that the speed by which the killings progressed made it difficult for the international community to clearly see that genocide was happening underneath the gunfire between the Hutu government and the Tutsi rebel group.19 Despite disagreements between the two camps regarding when the US government knew enough to know that it had to intervene, they agree on one important thing; that there was indeed a lack of will on the part of the US government to intervene and save lives.20 The US government’s decision not to intervene, regardless of when such a decision was knowingly made, underscores the U.S. government’s aversion for military involvement after the Somalia disaster of 1993.21 Beyond concern for the safety of American soldiers, however, Power points out that the deliberate acts of the U.S. government to thwart any proposals for intervention in the UN Security Council including proposals which did not involve any military risk on the part of the U.S., are telling of how American foreign policy is not shaped by any real interest of human consequences but by competing American interests which revolve around political and economic gains.22 The Clinton administration is thus said to have decided not to intervene because there were other domestic concerns which it had to attend to especially with U.S. elections just around the corner. Worse, it prevented the international community from intervening so as to avoid the financial cost of such intervention as well as to avoid being singled out as unwilling to intervene. The same self-centered view of U.S. foreign policy is also supported by previous U.S responses to genocide, including the U.S. government’s previous support of the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. 23 The prevalence of self-interest as the primary factor in the formation of foreign policy not only in the United States, but also in the international community where the U.S. and other powerful countries hold sway thus limits the effectivity of the global human rights movement from instigating international action, especially where such action directly counters the interest of a powerful country. If the global human rights movement is to succeed in instigating international action when and where it is actually needed, necessary reforms must be made to strengthen the influence of the movement in the face of national self-interest. WORDS: 2120 inclusive of direct quotes BIBLIOGRAPHY Amnesty International SUDAN: key actors must now act decisively to ensure justice is done in Darfur. Public Statement released on 14 December 2006. From http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engior410322006, accessed at 27 December 2006 Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Documenting Atrocities in Darfur. Washington: U.S. Department of State, 2004. Chalk, F. “Redefining Genocide”. Chapter 3, Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Des Forges, A.L. Leave None to Tell the Story: Genocide in Rwanda. New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999. Des Forges, A.L., & Kuperman, A.J. “Shame: Rationalizing Western Apathy on Rwanda”. Foreign Affairs: May/June 2000. Hovannisian, R.G. “Etiology and Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide. Chapter 5, Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Human Rights Watch. Cambodia: Khmer Rouge Tribunal must meet international standards. Press Release issued on 19 December 2002. From http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/12/cambodia1219.htm, accessed at 28 December 2006 Human Rights Watch. Sudan: Darfur Destroyed. Human Rights Watch 2004 Reports. New York: Human Rights Watch, 2004. Human Rights Watch. UN: Rights Body Must Act Now on Darfur. News Release issued on December 11, 2006. From http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/12/11/global14808.htm, accessed at 28 December 2006 January, B. Genocide: Modern Crimes Against Humanity. New York: Twenty-first Century Books, 2007. Kiernan, B. “Coming to Terms with the Past Cambodia..“History Today, Sept. 2004. Kuperman, A.J. The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda. Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2001. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Geneva, Switzerland: UN OHCHR, 1948. Powers, Samantha “Bystanders to Genocide” The Atlantic Monthly: September 2001. Read More