GENOCIDE, FLU & R2P

Genocide in Darfur: Correlation with Swine Flu

A swine flu (H1N1 Influenza A) is now a pandemic according to WHO’s Director General, Dr. Margaret Chan, who has raised the alert levels to six. The H1N1 Influenza A outbreak is threatening the whole world. In Mexico, the epicenter of the disease, many people have died so far. Several cases and  fatalities have been reported in the U.S,,  in Canada, and a growing number of cases in Europe, including in South Africa and Asia.

The media is all over this, and world bodies ranging from the United Nations (UN), to the World Health Organization (WHO) to the European Union (EU), are on their toes to issuing both warning statements and providing the populous with more preventive information about a potential pandemic. President Barack Obama on Monday, April 29, 2009 issued a cautious warning saying, “Although the situation is a source of concern, there is no need to panic.”

Meanwhile as all this myriad of information, warnings, preparedness and preventive and curative activities and measures are taking place, Mia Farrow, a renowned actor, appeared on CNN Larry King Live. She was being interviewed about a sixteen day hunger strike she has commenced. She is fasting in order to raise awareness about the atrocities and genocide going on in Darfur, Sudan.
Media reports estimate that since the conflict began in February 2003, about 450,000 people have been killed, and 3 million people have been displaced. All this is taking place in one country on earth. If there are still critics there who still deny that what is taking place in Darfur is not a genocide, let them only see what a swine flu that has not even claimed 0.1 percent of victims is causing alarm and panic in the Western World!

Tear of God

The world has made tremendous progress in advancing the cause of the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized and the diseased. In the past century, the world has opened up its heart to direct and unequivocal discussion of human rights abuses, ending of civil wars and the need for humanitarian intervention. But a lot need to be done.

If there is one thing that has yet to be thoroughly addressed, it is the difference between being human and only people. Centuries ago, some human races were not even people. Through the UN and other organizations, the word human is slowly coming into the global vocabulary. But now it remains to be seen if other humans are more human than others, especially when such other humans live on a continent called Africa.

The UN has admitted its error in Rwanda when it did not intervene militarily as the Tutsis and Hutus massacred each other in the Rwandese genocide. “Western powers bear criminal responsibility for Rwanda's 1994 genocide because they did not attempt to stop it,” said General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda at the time of the genocide. When you watch the movie, Hotel Rwanda, starring Don Cheadle, you cannot but shed a tear of God because of how the UN failed a people.

Responsibility to Protect

Nations have fashioned means and ways to protect their territories from external threats and dangers. Through collective defence, such organizations as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have ramped up resources to defend their member states from threats. Collective defence may give way to collective security where one member within the ambit of collective defence poses a threat to other member states.

As far as collective security is concerned, other members may commit themselves to and even join forces in an alliance against a member state that threatens the peace. The quintessential and modern epitome of such collective security has been demonstrated by the UN. In order to effectively provide collective security, the UN and now such organizations as the African Union (AU) carry out peacekeeping missions in defaulting and warring regions.

Peacekeeping usually involve provision of a force or forces that monitor ceasefires and may serve as buffers between the combatants. Because a peacekeeping force is only there with the consent of the combatants, its role is limited to that of “keeping the peace’ and may resort to force only in self-defence. This is what differentiates peacekeeping from peacemaking.

Initially collective security only involved intervention in inter-state conflicts. Recently, the UN has expanded its mission to intervene in intra-state conflicts such as in civil wars, separatist conflicts, genocide campaigns, and humanitarian emergencies. With this expanded mandate the UN has been able to intervene and end civil wars and conflicts in trouble-torn regions.

This shift has mainly been necessitated by a doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The R2P principles were first developed by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The ICISS was established by the Canadian government in 2001.

The central theme of the doctrine of R2P is enshrined in the truth that all people have a right to be protected from serious harm or threat of destruction. The traditional idea has been that sovereign states should be free from outside interference by other states. But the international community faces no more critical issue currently than how to protect people caught in new and large-scale humanitarian crises. R2P doctrine proposes a legal and ethical basis for humanitarian intervention preferably through the UN in a state that is unwilling to prevent genocides, massive killings, and other massive human rights violation.

Humanitarian intervention has been controversial both when it has happened, as in Kosovo, and when it has failed to happen, as in Rwanda. While there is general agreement internationally that we should not stand by in the face of massive violations of human rights, respect for the sovereign rights of states maintains a central place among the principles governing relations between states.

With this controversy also comes even more controversy that the UN will only exercise R2P when the interests of its most powerful members are concerned. These members are usually from the Northern Hemisphere. Whether it a question of swine flu or terrorist attack, when it directly affects the powerful nations the UN pulls all its resources and intervenes. Somehow this is understood as most of these powerful nations are the very nations that contribute more in monetary terms.

However, if the world is going to be a safer place and if the threat of war and disease is going to be brought to a minimum, there should be concerted effort by both the Western nations and the UN to intervene with the same sense of urgency regardless of where the conflicts happen or where disease breaks out.

When it comes to maintaining world peace or keeping the world free from sickness and disease, self-interest will not win the day. Disease, terrorism and wars affect all of us equally, whether we are victims or victors. Listening to Wolf Blitzer’s the Situation Room on April 27, 2009; I noticed how excited some commentators were when questioned why the swine flu seems to be fatal in Mexico and mild in the U.S at that time.

One commentator alluded to the fact that the U.S has a superior health-care system to that of Mexico. While that fact is unarguably correct, it is such attitudes that potentially harm world peace. This type of thinking leads to abysmal reactions when atrocities are being perpetrated in one corner of the world rather than in the other.

In 1999 the NATO intervened militarily in Kosovo. The UN Security Council approved this intervention after the fact. This also is simple to understand. The Security Council comprises the same members that form the core of NATO, with the exception of China and Russia.

In 2003, the U.S declared war on Iraq. The Iraq War would not qualify as either a collective operation or as a peacekeeping operation. The U.S used its military, economic and political leverage to override the Security Council and declare war on Iraq.

In the name of “civilizing” and “democratizing” Iraq, both Bush presidents had invaded a sovereign nation. If this had happened with a less developed nation or with a poor nation, such a nation would be treated differently, and perhaps even be labeled a terrorist regime or failed state. Self-interest, idiosyncratically, try to paint the activities of other nations as evil or more tenuous while the same activities, if they were done by a strong and powerful nation, may be justified as acceptable, and even necessary.

This approach may explain why when General Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the international force, was asked to intervene militarily in one of recent history’s worst genocides in Rwanda, and his reply coerced on him by the UN was, “We are peacekeepers, not peacemakers.” The sad result of this double standard was the massacre of some two or more million Hutus in Rwanda.

Hotel Rwanda is an epigrammatic illustration of the hypocrisy of the international community in the way it reacts to conflict resolution or disease outbreaks in different parts of the world. This failure of the international community to protect the Rwandese people from themselves leading to the 1994 genocide should be a lesson to what is happening in Darfur.

R2P is inevitable if the world is going to overcome corrupt and selfish regimes. The case in question is that of Myanmar. In 2008, Myanmar, a country officially known as Burma was ravaged by a strong cyclone that destroyed property and killed thousands of people. The military junta which rules the island opposed international humanitarian intervention. Thousands more people died due to the political naivety of the junta.

Omar al-Bashir

Al-Bashir, who came to power in 1989 through a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi, negotiated an end to the Second Sudanese Civil War in October 2004. This civil war was one of the longest-running and deadliest wars of the 20th century.

Since then, however, there has been a violent conflict in Darfur. During his presidency, there have been several violent struggles between the Janjaweed militia and rebel groups such as the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Guerilla warfare among these groups has been waged in the Darfur region. Due to this civil war, three million people are being displaced, and diplomatic relations between Sudan and Chad have been in a crisis.

In July 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. The court issued an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on March 4, 2009 on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. The warrant is expected to be delivered to the Sudanese government, which is unlikely to execute it.

There is controversy surrounding the issuance of an arrest of warrant on al-Bashir. Some nations and bodies that oppose this look at it as immoral to indict a sitting head of state and a presidential candidate in the first democratic election with multiple political parties participating in nine years. Among such nations and bodies that oppose this indictment are Russia and China, the AU, League of Arab States (LAS), and the Non-Aligned Movement NAM).

The Right Response

When it comes to genocides, any response that is in the interest of justice is the right response. The indictment of al-Bashir, from the international community point of view, is a sign of a paradigm shift. In the seventeenth century, Western Europe would perhaps indicate that Africans deserved to kill each other. In 1994, the West would have cited peacekeeping and not peacemaking as its mission in conflict regions. But in 2008 and 2009, the ICC takes a step that is not only welcome but an indication of good things to come.

Those who oppose this should learn from history. For the first time in the history of international justice, the UN and the West have taken a stand that is both moral and just on behalf of an African state. By indicting al-Bashir, albeit, on war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not on genocide, a powerful signal has been sent that self-interest is slowly giving way to equitability.

What is happening in Darfur constitutes genocide. If nothing is done the almost half a million human beings who have died may reach a million and more. The UN, EU and the AU should not only issue a warrant of arrest for Omar al-Bashir, but should do what was done in 1999 and 2003 in Kosovo and Iraq, respectively.

In the past, the international community did not consider African states because these states were of less strategic importance. But events in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri-Lanka, Pakistan, Gaza and the Mediterranean Sea, are changing how the so-called less strategic nations are viewed today. Whether it is the acts of pirates in the Somalian waters or the Taliban in the Pakistani mountains, the effects ripple through to threaten even peaceful nations.

Still, more needs to be done by both the UN and the West. The H1N1 outbreak should give us a clue to how close the UN and the West has come to breaking the self-interest barrier. But it should do even more; it should show a consistence in the way the UN and the West may react if, and only if, the H1N1 should reach the African continent. We are blessed in North America and Europe with competent medical personnel and facilities, and strong health-care systems. The same cannot be said of Africa.

Currently, H1N1 is only wreaking havoc on North America and Europe, and the response has been swift and coordinated. If the H1N1 should reach Africa, God forbid, we should expect to see the same response. This, together with the manner in which the West will respond next to the genocide in Darfur, should either give us hope or cause for concern as to the plight of the developing nations. Meanwhile, we pray that this outbreak should eventually diminish or die altogether.