Human Rights and Intervention in the Rwandan Genocide

Human Rights and Intervention in the Rwandan racial extermination Human rights atomic number 18 kn raise as inalien equal fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled to simply because he or she is a gay being. These rights are kn k nowadaysledge to be universal and are the same to e realone living on earth. These rights are said to exist in two national and international law. The Universal Declaration of Human rights, which is swaned by fifty countries across the globe, attests to this interpretation and fannys up the idea that either great deal are equal and make water the right to pursue triumph no matter who they are, where they are from, their skin color, age, or sex, etc.If these countries accept these things to be true, why was there non a mass intervention when the Hutu militia in Rwanda took it upon themselves to kill hundreds of thousands of people based solely on their hea soishity? It seems that if these countries are non going to benefit in many representation, because they soak up no trust to back up or intervene when there is a crisis in a nonher res publica. The join Nations, which is said to be an international institution that values human rights, should make sure that tragedies, such as the Rwandan racial extermination, do non occur. Countries can non act selfish when it comes to war, race murder, and the lives of innocent people.Aiding e trulyone, treating people with fairness and equality, and fighting for what is right should be far more(prenominal) than important than a spheres personal gain.. The one and only when deciding factor that manifests what get out happen with human rights violations and a countries choice to intervene is the f each(prenominal) in Nations and the international confederacy. This paper will essay why it took so long for otherwise countries to intervene in the Rwandan genocide and how the linked Nations and the international community directly correlate with human r ights violations and interventions in international tragedies.During the Rwandan genocide, thousands of people were killed in the name of ethnic strength. Men, women and children were interpreted out of their own homes and killed for vigour other than their ethnicity. At this cadence, the Hutu ethnicity made up over eighty portion of the population, and blamed the people of Tutsi, who made up the lower fifteen percent for all of the economic and semipolitical problems of the body politic. This, in turn, led to Hutu rebels who felt that the only way to solve the issues in Rwanda was to eliminate the Tutsi people all together. Hutu extremists and militia aunched plans and were able to al nigh effectively rid Rwanda of the Tutsi ethnicity. Tutsi people tried to escape but most were killed or attacked before fleeing was even a possible outcome. Thousands and thousands of people get intod in the ethnic cleansing of the Tutsi people in Rwanda. This situation was very chaotic and g ot completely out of control because no countries chose to intervene and help the Rwandan people until it was too late. Is it in a countrys best interest to intervene in another countrys warfare or should the country sit back until it gets worse?why did it take so long and the loss of so many lives before other countries chose to intervene in the Rwandan genocide? The Rwandan genocide was a mass murder of an estimated million people in Eastern Africa in the state of Rwanda. Over about one hundred days, it is estimated that twenty percent of the countrys sum of money population were killed. This resulted from a longstanding ethnic battle and accents between the minority party, the Tutsi, who had controlled actor for centuries, and the majority, the Hutu, who had come into power through a rebellion in the early 1960s.In 1990, a rebel group of Tutsi refugees invaded Rwanda in an fire to defeat the Hutu presidency. This began the Rwandan Civil War, resulting in far worse tension bet ween the two groups. In reply to this, many Hutu people gravitated toward the Hutu Power ideology which consisted of state-controlled and independent Rwandan media. It also consisted that the Tutsi intended to make slaves of the Hutu people and that this must be resisted at all costs. Ethnic strife resulted in the rebels displacing large shapes of Hutu in the north and Hutu killing of Tutsi in the south.The assassination of Habyarimana in April of 1994 chastise shoot even more violence during which Hutu groups conducted mass killings of Tutsis. The genocide was supported and coordinated by the national government as well as local military. Along with the local military, primary responsibility for all of the Tutsi killings lies with two Hutu militias that were organized for this purpose by political parties, the Interahamwe and the Impuzamugambi. Although once the genocide began, a great number of Hutu complaisantians took parts in the murders as well.There was no peace agreemen t in place at this point, the Tutsi rebels started their offensive, defeating the army and seizing control of the country. The Hutu militia groups set out to murder any and all Tutsis that they could find regardless of their age or sex. They forced Hutu civilians to participate in the genocide, or be killed in return. The Hutu militia groups used tuner airwaves as a way to contact other Tutsis and to provide them with information on what to in order to keep themselves alive. Most nations evacuated their diplomats and nationals from the country and abandoned their embassies in the initial stages of violence.Militia began to set up hundreds of roadblocks around the country and used them to block off areas and make it easier for them to attack certain areas. This militia also sent cables to foreign countries letting them know that ethnicity was the private road factor of all the killings and that their politicians and peacekeepers were not safe in Rwanda. American citizens were evac uated from Rwanda at this point. Most of the victims were killed in their own villages and homes by machetes and rifles. The Hutu gangs searched through homes, schools, and churches and massacred all the people that they found hiding or trying to flee.The Hutus commence to eliminate all Tutsi, men, women, and children was so chaotic that there is no consensus of the amount of people killed on nigh days, but what is most important to remember is that this was genocide, and that the Hutus were trying to eliminate and erase the memory of Tutsi existence. away of the Rwandan population of 7. 3 million people, 84% were Hutu, and 16% were Tutsi. The official figures posted by the Rwandan government estimated that the number of victims of the genocide to be 1,174,000 in one hundred days. To narrow that down even more, that is 10,000 a day, or 400 very hour, or 7 every minute.It was also estimated that about 300,000 Tutsi were somehow able to stick out the genocide. Thousands of these s urvivors were women, who were raped daily by Hutu men and ultimately became HIV positive. Of the survivors, there were thousands of orphans and close to all of them were forced to become the head of their household. The world did not act, at least not in a energetic manner, to save the Tutsi people of Rwanda. join Nations representatives and commanders were there and there were also peacekeepers in the nation but their efforts were very inimal. Countries did not act at all, even though most countries ratified the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, nothing was done to stop the on-going mass killings of hundreds of thousands of people. There are several(prenominal) reasons why they international community took so long to intervene and why their efforts even at that time were so small. The first is that this might move over been a civil war, and foreign states learn been advised not to intervene in national self-determinations.Anoth er explanation is that no one knew about the vast amount of massacres occurring in Rwanda until much of the damage had already been done. And unfortunately, the last reason that other countries did not intervene is because they genuinely were not concerned about getting involved in something that would not offer them any personal gain. Rwanda had nothing to off these countries in exchange for their help, and unfortunately no country saw that it would be beneficial for the to get involved solely for good merit. Unfortunately, Rwanda is not the only nation that has been ignored when genocides occurred.Countries such as Iraq, Bosnia, Koscovo, Cambodia, and Sudan have all had some type of ethnic cleansing take place which occurred after United Nations verification at the convention and yet nothing was done to stop it or even intervene. Intervening, whether humane or not, has al slipway been a dilemma for countries. A state feels that it should not involve itself in a free state in ord er to come to autonomy and freedom. Critics argue that an intervention would indeed help preserve the autonomy and freedom of a state where basic rights are being violated but it is improbable that a country would do this.Although the United Nations was created to continue communication and cooperation among nations, it feels that it was not created to solve world problems, in particular not inside countries. The United Nations feels that some countries are going to have to solve the problems within their own state on their own terms, time, and money. Since the creation of the United Nations, there have been fewer wars but civil wars have exponentially grown. This is result of Western colonizing powers creating artificial boundaries between their colonies and not taking into consideration the ethnic group that they may be dividing and elittling. As a consequence, ethnic clashes are more prevalent in the world now, and the world along with the United Nations is unsure on how to de al with the problem, which is why we see a constant lack of intervention with these types of issues. The United Nations does however always offer basic services to these countries that are in need. Services range from food and water relief, to imposing sanctions on countries, to peacekeeping, which was seen in Rwanda during the genocide.These are ways of helping civilian populations whom may not even be involved in the conflict, along with the victims of the dreadful tragedy. The United States of America was one country that was the most reluctant to intervene in the Rwandan genocide. During the time of the Rwandan genocide, the United States had just pulled American troops out of a disastrous peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The United States vowed to never again return to a conflict that it was not able to understand, between people, clans, and tribes, that it did not know, and particularly in a country where the United States had no national interests.President Clinton tried to keep that promise to the American people by suggesting that the rebels needed to stop the violence themselves, even though he had full support from Congress to intervene at this time. With Congress looking toward Clinton, and Clinton looking toward the United Nations, nothing was done and the genocide was forced to run its course. Choosing not to intervene was at the top of Clintons failure list for his time as President of the United States of America. The genocide in Rwanda could have been easily prevented.The international community could have taken many steps to prevent the genocide that would not have involved military action. Solidarity within the United Nations was almost nonexistent win regard to Rwanda. Most countries had no investments and nothing to gain in helping Rwanda, so little was done. Had the United Nations paid more attention to what was going on was genocide much earlier, action could have been taken much sooner and the lives of so many people would not have be en lost. Early actions could have prevented China and France from providing weapons which only fueled the genocide and increased the expiry toll.The United States under President Bill Clinton refused to take any kind of action in Rwanda because there was no economic interest apparently moral interest is of no importance at this point in time. The United States also helped in making sure other countries did not interfere as well. Had the countries accepted the conditions in Rwanda early on, there could have been a serious obstacle in the genocides execution. Instead, however, the United States argued over what the word genocide actually meant and feared to even use it because they would be compelled to act if it was draw as an actual genocide.If the condition in the country were recognized sooner, the international community would have responded more quickly. Rwanda was also not equipped with the technology that is available to most developed countries. Telephone lines were scarce , but the country was heavily saturated with radios and radio frequencies, which was the only way to pass around propaganda. The United States had the technology to jam the radio waves and when presented with this information, the United States refused to lend the technology to help the Rwandan people.This action completely prevented the international community from being able to jam the radio frequencies, further preventing any hope for the Tutsi people. Had the Rwandan people had this technology, they would have been able to stop the spread of hate messages, and later in the genocide, it would have nearly stopped the militia from finding people, as Tutsi locations were disperse over the radio. Arguably, this could have stopped the genocide in its tracks or at least made it very difficult for the genocide to continue without another country even setting foot on Rwanda soil.The United States and other countries interact with other states on a state level. The problem with that dur ing the Rwandan genocide was that when the United Nations hears a report that genocide may be taking place within a country then its response is to notify that countrys government about it. This helped none whatsoever in Rwanda because the government were part of the reason the genocide was happening and taking place. If reports are being leaked to the international community, it is obvious that the community, for some reason, is not taking any sort of action to alleviate the situation.The insistence on only dealing with other countries as states prevents any action being done for the interpreterless individuals who have no voice and cannot fight for themselves. Had the United States not blatantly refused in taking action in Rwanda, other countries would have more than likely been more willing to help the innocent victims in Rwanda. The United States refusal made others believe that they were also not expected to help. In the aftermath of the genocide, Rwanda is a very different co untry.While Hutus ad and Tutsis now live side by side, many feel that the only way for them to survive is to destroy the other ethnic group. The post-genocide government has tried to establish a greater level of stability within the country in hopes of another genocide never occurring again. The Rwandan government has abolished the ethnic identity cards that were for so long, the only means of distinguishing one group from another. Many citizens still remember what their neighbors are, while others live next gate to someone who murdered their families.Most Rwandans now refuse to place themselves in an ethnic category at all in hopes of the new generation of Rwandan people growing up without and identity card and without ethnic tension with the people they are constantly surrounded by. The impact of the United Nations on the intervention in human rights violation most definitely correlates. This was seen in the Rwandan genocide. Since the United Nations decided as a whole that they would not intervene in a beneficial way, then that is what all the other countries decided independently.So if there was not a large governing international institution, things may have played out differently. Countries may have seen the horrible things happening in Rwanda and chose to lend a helping hand rather than sitting back and watching Rwanda crumble. If there is a lesson to be learned from everything that happened in Rwanda, it is that the international community needs to bend giving the impression that it is willing to or is even capable of rescuing civilians in a conflict.If this is not the case, then it is important to build the capacity of people to do the job of protecting themselves, their family, and their country. Beck, Roger B. World History Patterns of Interaction. Evanston, IL McDougal Littell, 2007. Scherrer, Christian. Genocide and crisis in Central Africa conflict roots, mass violence, and regional war foreword by Robert Melson. Praeger, 2002. Weissman, Stephe n R. Preventing Genocide in Burundi Lessons from International Diplomacy,United States Institute of Peace http//www. genocidewatch. org/images/Rwanda-13-Mar-07-First_the_Deed,_Then_the Denial. pdf Release of Rwandas mastermind of death promotes genocide denial,Harvard Law Record, December 4, 2009 UN Security Council Resolution 912 (1994), implementing an adjustment of UNAMIRs mandate and force level as outlined in theUNDOC Special Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, April 20, 1994 (document no. S/1994/470) Rwanda-UNAMIR Background. United Nations. Retrieved May 30, 2011. Shake Hands With the Devil The Failure of Humanity in RwandaISBN 0-679-31171-8, pg. 213