Global Citizenship

12 Pages 3068 Words

r the cries of everyone in danger if one only learns to listen for them. We are global citizens and have an ethical obligation to our neighbors, both next door and across the globe. If they are suffering human rights injuries, we must recognize their sufferings and aid them in some way. This aid may be through military intervention, helping them fulfill basic human needs like food and shelter, assisting in the prosecution of those responsible for the human rights violations, and or seeking retribution for the victims. We are also responsible in protecting people’s way of life from those who wish to destroy it.
It is bewildering that the world failed to recognize the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 for what it really was. Genocide can be described as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group” (Gourevitch, 1998: 149). On December 11, 1946, the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed that genocide is a crime under international law. “What distinguishes genocide from murder … is the intent. The crime is wanting to make a people extinct” (201-202).
There is also evidence that the world knew of the approaching genocide before it took place. In January of 1994, three months before the killing began, Major General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian in charge of the United Nations force, requested the protection of an informant. The informant had “explicitly described the plans to exterminate Tutsis and assassinate Belgians” and that these plans came from President Habyarimana’s court (105). Dallaire was instructed to report this information to President Habyarimana, by Igbal Riza, chief of United Nations peacekeeping Kofi Annan’s deputy, because no one believed that the President actually had knowledge of this impending extermination. Dallaire was also told to inform the Rwandan ambassadors from Belgium, France, and the United States of thi...