Rwandan Genocide Essays (Examples)

White, K. (2009). Scourge of racism: Genocide in Rwanda. Journal of Black Studies, 39 (3)

71-81. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/0282573

The violent genocide which occurred in Rwanda was an 'ethnic cleansing' which only affected Africans. However, according to White (2009), racism was a primary motivator of the violence, even though the reasons for this might not be immediately discernable to outsiders looking in on the conflict. Racism is defined as the notion that one group of persons is innately superior to another group of persons, whether that is blacks vs. whites in the American south or Hutus over Tutsis (White 2009: 71). Initially, in the pre-colonial era, the Hutus and the Tutsis coexisted. The Hutus were mainly agrarian; the Tutsis were cattle breeders. There was a fluid economic and cultural exchange between them.

However, in the wake of German colonialism, a hierarchy was established between the two groups. The more European-featured…

wandan Genocide is the greatest massacre of human beings since Holocaust since most of the victims were murdered using machetes and would have known their murderers. While the war was mainly fueled by the ethnic tensions between Hutus and Tutsis, it escalated into genocide because the world turned their back on wanda. There are several arguments demonstrating this claim including the failure by the United Nations to offer protection and decision to withdraw its troops. Secondly, the decision by the United Nations to restrict its engagement with wanda to the Arusha Accord contributed to the genocide by promoting inaction. Thirdly, the UN and the international community failed to initiate peace enforcement efforts and interventions at a time when wanda needed help. The escalation of the ethnic war between Hutus and Tutsis into a genocide that lasted for 100 days was partly fueled by the fact that the world turned their…

wandan Genocide: Causes and Consequences

A simple mention of the term 'wandan genocide' spurs chills in anyone who properly understands world history. The feeling is even more intense among members of the international community and the high-ups of the UN Security Council who, despite getting a heads-up on the possible mass execution of Tutsis by disgruntled Hutu extremists, chose to do nothing to prevent or mitigate the same, leading to the cold-blooded massacre of over 800, 000 civilians within a three-month span - in what is so far one of the most horrifying events of the post cold-war period. The U.S., for instance, chose to steer clear of any involvement, with the then president, Bill Clinton, advising the UN Security Council against deploying additional troops to wanda -- a decision he terms as "one of the greatest regrets of his presidency"[footnoteef:1]. There is no doubt that hundreds of lives would…

1994 Rwandan Genocide

Critique of e ish to Inform You That Tomorrow e ill Be Killed ith Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (1998) by Phillip Gourevitch

The chilling title of Phillip Gourevitch's book, e ish to Inform You That Tomorrow e ill Be Killed ith Our Families (1998), is a reference to a group letter from members of the Tutsi clergy to an Adventist church leader, Elizaphan Ntakirutimana, pleading for his protection from the Hutu majority in Rwanda. Gourevitch's book concerns the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994 wherein Hutu majority systematically massacred the minority Tutsi population. As a result of this effort at ethnic cleansing, an estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed over the course of a 100-day period from April to July 1994. In fact, during the height of the massacre, Gourevitch reports that members of the Tutsi tribe were being massacred three times as fast as…

Genocide in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Prompt: Sadly, genocide did not end with the Holocaust. In fact, a lot more people have died from genocide since orld ar II than were victims of it in the war itself. How and why has this happened? hat have been the steps taken to prevent, stop, and punish in regards to genocide since 1945? Have these efforts been successful or not? Explain why. In these more recent genocides, compare and contrast them. hat big similarities and big differences have there been? Do we see anything similar in most of them? If so, what and why? Based on what we learned about genocide in your lifetime (since the 1990s), are we on track to finally eradicate these horrors or are we a long way off from that? Explain.

Response:

The Second orld ar claimed the lives of tens of millions of civilians including…

atrocities happening in recent modern history of civilization. The two orld ars in the first part of the 20th century have demonstrated the human capacity to inflict harm and destruction on its peers. Perhaps one of the most significant event in the history of the Second orld ar is that of the genocide that took place on the Jewish community. During the war and immediately afterwards more than six million Jews are reported to have been massacred by the Nazi forces

However, despite the fact that the holocaust that took place during this time is mostly attributed to the Nazi forces and Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jewish population, there are numerous accounts of historians that point out the fact that the SS German troops would have been unable to achieve this great atrocity without the assistance of the local populations such as the Polish or the French. One…

Politics

International Relations

Analysis of Theories

The field of international relations is based on many competing and complementary theories. These include realism, liberalism, constructivism, dependency theory, Marxism, etc. The theories are many; the field is expansive. What international relations seek to do is both formulate and analyze international politics, and work concomitantly with world governments, non-governmental organizations, and multi-national corporations. Due to the nature of work in these global affairs, several of the theories mentioned above are utilized to explain various phenomena. This paper will thus focus on a few questions as they relate to international relations and, specifically, to the theories which it employs.

To begin, one must understand that the field of international politics can be segmented into various categories, or levels of analysis. The most famous of these categories are Kenneth Waltz' groups, which include explanations of politics as being driven by individuals, by psychology, by states,…

HUTU lame?

The Search for the Truth in Rwanda, an argumentative essay

There are those who claim that elgium is the perpetrator in the extermination methods used in Rwanda however, there are those who claim that the Rwandan government itself may be to blame with ties to a loan from the IMF World ank. Among all the arguments leveled the most likely perpetrator of these crimes can be traced back to the Roman Catholic Church, who was the entity to first set a seal upon the Hutus and Tutsi people. This paper will explore the many arguments set forth in the Rwandan genocide event as to who is to blame for the atrocities that occurred.

A rief History of the HUTU & TUTSI of Rwanda:

The genocide, which occurred in Rwanda, has been and still is a hotly debated issue. Over 100 years ago Catholic missionaries created a bogus "pedigree"…

In addition to these external factors, Thomson (202) notes two colonial and post-colonial economic policies and developmental strategies that proved to be erroneous in the long-term, having an ultimately damaging effect upon the ability of African countries to make sound, profitable investments. The first of these is that African governments focused excessively upon import substitution, while the second is that too much revenue was invested in the expansion of state institutions. This paradigm emerges from the success of European and other Western economic developments. However, such strategies were far from suitable for the African continent, as it resulted in a lack of investment in Africa's richest resources: agricultural and mineral development.

Maponga and Maxwell (97) mention the concentration of national economies as a further factor that may lead a lack of concomitant growth for countries (and in particular African countries) that are rich in natural resources. In addition to the…

Primordialism

Ethnicity is one of the more fluid concepts in sociology because one's ethnicity is largely defined by membership in a social group. The social group shares a common background, whether through experience or ancestry and they share characteristics that set them apart from other groups. Many times these characteristics are stereotyped, but the stereotypes are derived from a reality where the majority of members of the group do, indeed, share those characteristics. Moreover, one's ethnicity is not limited to a single background. A person can have multiple ethnicities by having a family that derives from multiple different ethnic traditions. However, a person can also have multiple ethnicities because larger ethnic groups can be further subdivided into smaller ethnic groups, sometimes referred to as tribes.

Ethnicity is also intertwined with race, which is an interesting concept. Genetic analysis has revealed that there is greater similarity than difference among humans from…

" (Gellately; Kieman, 2003, p. 325) This was the real thing: more than a half-million Tutsi murdered- three-quarters of the population -- and the attempt by the wandan state and the Hutu majority to exterminate every last Tutsi." (Gellately; Kieman, 2003, p. 325)

The question is if this can be compared to the general holocaust and the Armenian genocide, which the world watched helplessly, could the massacre have been prevented? The question is more academic. Having seen that the clashes between ethnic groups, and those who are opposed to share the natural bounties with a community they regard as unnecessary probably the total prevention of the genocide design is not possible. Can an action by the authority like the UN then have mitigated it? The answer to that question lies in the way the nations view the sovereignty and the need for intervention form the UN. It is impossible to…

United Nations: Failures

The United Nations is the result of an international policy experiment that aimed at bringing together the countries of the world in an attempt to avoid conflagrations such as the First and Second World wars from taking place again in the modern history of human kind. The loss of lives in the wars that marked the 20th century determined world leaders and in particular the five great powers that emerged victorious after the Second World War to consider a new political structure that would determine a path of communication, of public diplomacy and ensure a system of constant contact based on international law. lmost seven decades later, no world conflagrations have taken place; yet, the UN is considered to have failed in its attempt to manage regional and local conflicts and avoiding the loss of human life. The late 20th century saw a series of significant failures…

The potentially socialist tone of these articles can explain a delay up through the Cold War, but it does not excuse delaying ratification into the twenty-first century. Upon further review, the socialist motive for delaying ratification does not stand.

Part 2, Topic 4: The wandan Genocide

On April 6, 1994, the plane of wandan President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down over Kigali airport, the main airport for wanda, a small country in Central Africa.. Habyarimana was killed in the crash, as was the Burundian president, Cyprien Ntaryamira. The President was a Hutu, the majority in wanda. Many believe the Tutsis, the minority in wanda, perpetrated the shooting. Some say Hutu extremists, to give them an excuse for what happened next, committed the murder. Within hours of the president's death, angry Hutus took to the streets and sought out those who supported peace between the Hutus and the Tutsis. They did…

They're discussing them, talking to people from around the glove where the events unfolded, and then creating chat forums to engage in intellectual debate and sharing of ideas. They are talking about what the news media is reporting, whether or not it is slanted toward a political ideology, and assessing the information. Everyone, it seems, has faster access to broader sources of news and ideas, and they are using that information to form ideas and conclusions about political leaders and how those leaders respond to local, national, and world situations, people, and events.

How the Public Interprets Political Semantics and Use the Internet to Impact Policy and Government

One of the most significant examples of how the internet has facilitated the public's access to information, and how people world-wide have analyzed political semantics and used the information to shape policy and government is the second term of America's former President…

While under the conditions of crushing poverty and without a strong movement based on the working class and peasantry and are able to explain and fight for a socialist alternative to the devastation that capitalism and imperialism brought along, conflicts that arise from religious and ethnic differences are bound to develop (Simpson, 2004). Simpson (2004) further writes that the reactionary elements within many ethnic groupings have intervened into the vacuum and as a result increased the already present divisions, thereby creating an ideological basis for increasing these divisions as a means of underpinning the hold they have established on the power amongst the masses.

In conclusion, the ethnic cleansing that is taking place in Sudan and especially Darfur has surpassed the wandan genocide of 1994. Simpson (2004) wrote that the ongoing cycle of wars, poverty and starvation, which is the lot of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, is the product…

hereas adult obesity rates have always been present, they have never been so high. hat is more worrisome is that youth is becoming increasingly obese. The American Heart & Stroke Association conducted a study, for instance, in which it found the following data to be true:

"Among children ages 2 -- 19, about 1 in 3 are overweight and obese (BMI-for-age at or above the 85th percentile of the 2000 CDC growth charts.):

- 32.1% of all boys, and - 31.3% of all girls, and Among children ages 2 -- 19, about 1 in 6 are obese (BMI-for-age at or above e 95th percentile of the CDC growth charts.):

- 17.8% of all boys, and - 15.9% of all girls."

ith the aid of the internet, staying home has become much easier and just as mind stimulating as actual human interaction. The most prevalent example of such instances is the…

Diversity -- with the exception of homophobia -- was beginning to be commonly accepted and praised. Technology -- such as the use of DNA in criminology and the introduction of the PC -- was becoming more prominent in the lives of everyday Americans. In the Cold War, President Gorbachev asked for openness and economic freedom, while President eagan asked him to tear down the Berlin Wall, which he did. However, the discovery of AIDS had a far more profound impact on the American people than any of these events. In 1981, the first case of AIDS was reported in the United Kingdom, and this eventually caused quite a crisis in the U.S., as it was first noticed among gay men, and then in women and children as well. People became scared because they were not sure what was causing the disease. esearch continued throughout the 1980s, but the fear caused…

U.S. Military Power & Its Uses

Do you think our military needs to be so large and powerful? Do you think it is ever possible for the U.S. To use force against another nation? Do you agree with President Obama's decision to end the war in Iraq? Do you believe President Obama deserved to receive the Nobel Peace Prize? Explain why or why not in answering all the questions.

The world is a dangerous place where sometimes sovereign nations go to war against each other, or oppress their own people, or are unable to solve their domestic problems. In those cases, it becomes imperative for the United Nations to act. The United Nations, however, is constrained by a set of rules and regulations, not to mention its large bureaucracy and occasional corruption. That was certainly the case when the Rwandan genocide took place in 1994. Given this incompetence and inability…

wanda Genocide (1994)

The ole of Globalization

We know that the factors which resulted in the wanda genocide taking place were the ethnic hatred, ecological pressures and the civil war. However, what we don't know is why the genocide took place at all. Therefore, here we will be talking about the genocide that took place in 1994 only. Here the obvious features of the globalization as well as the international pressures that were faced by wanda will be discussed, along with this we will also be looking at the globalized forces that were brought together by the Arusha Accords which ultimately resulted in the happening of genocide. Later on, the Kaldor's 'New War' thesis will be examined in order to understand how wanda is a part of a broader 'new war' environment where conflicts are arising among the neo-ethnicities in their efforts to gain power.

International Pressure

Before the 1980's,…

Memory refers to a mental process where information is encoded, stored, and retrieved for use (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). The process of memory is not, contrary to what many believe, like a tape recorder that accurately records events. Instead, our recollection of events is pliable and subject to a number of influences (Loftus, 1979). For instance Buckley-Zistel (2006) discussed how the recollection of the past of horrific events such as the 1990's genocide in wanda is influenced by variables such as the roles of the people during the event or their current living situation. Connerton (2008) attempted to disentangle the notions that remembering is usually considered a virtue and forgetting is necessarily a failing of a person or people. He noted that forgetting is not necessarily a unitary phenomena and that forgetting might have a purpose. Even though wandans claim that remembering the genocide is important to avoiding reoccurrences in…

Time and again mankind has proven himself to be resourceful, skilled, and deliberate in taking on the forces of nature. hen mankind acts in a way that is contrary to the forces of nature, such as building fixtures or structures in the path of well-known paths of natural destruction, then mankind is challenging the forces of nature that bind mankind to the earth - the domain that God created for and gave to mankind.

However, when mankind succumbs to his own inner capacity for evil, then he is exercising free will. That that capacity for evil is capable of reaching extraordinary levels of destruction is the manifestation not of the devil, but of man's own reaction to the incremental levels of evil, the fueling of power that comes from exercising free will over others who are not capable, or who won't, act to prevent that exercise of free will over…

The lack of action over Rwanda should be the defining scandal of the presidency ill Clinton. Yet in the slew of articles on the Clinton years that followed Clinton's departure from power, there was barely a mention of the genocide."

The UN, pressured by the ritish and the U.S., and others, refused to use the word "genocide" during the event, or afterward when it issued its official statement of condemnation of the genocide in Rwanda.

Since that time, ill Clinton has said that Rwanda is one of his regrets of his presidency, but that he lacked the information to "fully grasp what was going on in Rwanda."

Reports to the UN and its member states, as reported by William Ferroggiaro (1995), online at http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAE/NSAE119/index.htm, were based on reports via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), said that there was a "probability" of certain individuals and groups being responsible for certain…

The UN also seems to have a failure to understand or function in an effective way when lives are in the balance and immediate action is needed during a war. At one point Dallaire needed a decision made by the Security Council, but the body was divided between China, France, and the non-aligned nations vs. The U.S., UK, ussia, and their supporters. The weekend was coming up, so it was decided that the nations should reconvene on Monday. "How many wandans would die that weekend," wondered Dallaire in exasperation as well as horror (Dallarie 301).

Given the constant stream of murders he witnessed, which he was virtually powerless to stop, due to his meager forces, it is easy to see why Dallaire experienced post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) upon returning home. However, his reaction seems inevitable and unpreventable. Granted, he could have received better debriefing and counseling upon his integration back…

Private armies and warlords support themselves with these crops -- an instance of exploiting (in fact, abusing) the environment to pay for war (Global esources, 2004).

Use of esources to Finance Conflict

Forest products are also often used to pay for conflicts. Timber requires little investment and can be converted to cash more cheaply than oil, which requires technology. Control over timber resources can shift the balance of power during a conflict and affect how long the conflict lasts. Underfunded armies, military, police, and rebel forces often finance themselves by cutting trees. Conflicts in Cambodia, Burma and Liberia have been funded with timber, and in each of those countries the wood produced more than 100 million dollars per year (Global esources, 2004).

Incompatible Uses Leading to Conflict

Use or misuse of resources can be very profitable on one hand but ruinous to another. For example, jurisdictional conflicts have heated up…

Yet, according to the article, former Yugoslav republics continue in their failure to arrest and hand over inductees, or to investigate and prosecute the war crimes in question. Clearly the counseling provided by the ICTY has been far from adequate, or the countries involved are simply not yet ready to take over the responsibility of prosecution.

The article also cites Amnesty International in a statement that war crime legislation on the domestic level in these countries are frequently not in line with international legislation, and that victim and witness protection programs are far from adequate. Apparently these issues have not been thoroughly investigated before implementing the phases of the completion strategy.

A further flaw in the completion strategy is consensus, or the lack thereof. According to the ecurity Council Report (2007), the various countries are in disagreement on how to proceed after December 2010. There are also differences regarding the…

The genocide and a high HIV / AIDS epidemic rate (recent estimates by the Ministry of Health suggest that 8.7% of the rural population is infected) has severely disrupted the population demographics, weakened human resources development, and resulted in reduced availability of agricultural labor ("ural Poverty in wanda," 2007).

Due to the reasons stated above, the World Bank estimates that 65.7% of the rural population of wanda lives below the poverty line and even a greater percentage (83.7% of the total population) of the country lives on less than $2 a day (Ibid.).

eferences

ural poverty in wanda." (2007). ural Poverty Portal: International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). etrieved on January 10, 2008 at http://www.ruralpovertyportal.org/english/regions/africa/rwa/index.htm

wanda." (2007). Encyclopedia Encarta Online. etrieved on January 10, 2008 at http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761560996/wanda.html

The total area of the country is 26,338 sq km (10,169 sq miles). Source: Encyclopedia Encarta

wanda has a population density of 397…

International elations

The ole of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and their Involvement in the elief Efforts Following the 2002 Nyirangongo Eruption

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) operates under the remit of the United Nations Secretariat, with 35 global offices and approximately 1,900 staff (OCHA, 2012). The organization has four principle roles which are stated as being a part of its' mission (OCHA, 2012). The first role is as an inter-agency body; involved in the mobilization and coordinating of actors that respond to humanitarian emergencies, which it aims to perform in a principled manner to help alleviate the suffering caused by disasters and emergencies (OCHA, 2012). The actors that are mobilized and coordinated by the OCHA include United Nations (UN) actors and non-governmental organizations (NGO's) at both national and international levels (OCHA, 2012). The second role of the OCHA…

learn how the law works by memorizing a set of rules or theorems. A misconception lies in the commonly asked question, "What is the law?" -- since it presupposes that it's all laid out somewhere on great stone tablets. The truth is that the answer often is, "It depends." As you'll soon discover the legal system basically is a method of applying abstract rules or social policy to concrete situations. To comprehend its workings, you have to get involved in the process -- it's a little like learning to swim in that you've got to jump in and splash around a bit. It's not an unpleasant sensation, but it may seem little strange until you get used to it and learn to keep your head above water. You'll discover it's a bit like peeling an onion in that as you strip away one layer of complexity you find another one…