Abstract:
Humanitarian crises and international politics goes hand in hand. One can cause the other, while the only way to fix the other is to rely on politics. This paper will highlight the cause of genocide, violent massacres and crisis, how to solve them, and key roles politicians and nations must take up wholeheartedly in order to make a difference. Personal and political reconciliation must occur in the parties involved ever want to have a mutual co existence.

Humanitarian Crisis and Reconciliation

To understand the impact of humanitarian crises and how international politics play a role, a common definition of such crises must be understood. In his book “Humanitarian Crises and the International Politics of Selectivity” Martin Binder defines a humanitarian crisis as a “large scale human suffering resulting from the violation or the destruction of the physical integrity of a large number of people” (pg. 332). There are quite a few causes of these events that include natural disasters-earthquakes floods, winds, landslides, avalanches, cyclones, tsunamis, locust infestations, drought, volcanic eruptions, changes in weather or tidal patterns. Human factors include political corruption, embargoes or blockades, lack of planning or foresight, and not to mention demographic and geographic characteristics like population density. Of the major causes, the majority of them come from natural disasters but the one cause that can arguably be the most devastating is that of political corruption. As Robert Rothberg pointed out in his book, From Massacres to Genocide “before corruption of any kind can be dealt with, both local and international parties must be aware of and notified about the condition of their neighboring countries” (pg. 18). Rothberg discussed how, in recent years the internet has played an undeniable role in spreading the information about disasters, alerting citizens to crisis. He believes that the presence of media attention has played a decisive role in determining political and popular concern about underlying situations. By this, he means that humans have violated their own human rights since the beginning of time. But only those instances that are specifically tragic enough and unfathomable at best get international attention. An example of such would be the region of Darfur, where genocide, or ethnic cleansing has been occurring for years, but the recent spotlight from mass media and internet has only recently sparked an outrage worldwide. The question that, to this day, has remained unanswered is simply how we deal with humanitarian crises, like those involving genocide in a away where both personal and political reconciliation can coexist. A great example of how both of these stances play into the reconciliation and justification of cases where genocide is present by examining the enormous outrage sparked by the tenth anniversary of genocidal massacres in the small African town of Rwanda. In 1994, a major political battle ensued. The genocide was started by the death of the Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana, a Hutu, when his plane was shot down.
In Kigali, the largest city of Rwanda, the presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of vengeance. Leaders of the political opposition were murdered, and almost immediately, the slaughter of Tutsis and moderate Hutus began. This massacre killed roughly 1 million Rwandans. In the end, these people were tortured, beheaded, raped, beat to death, had their throats slit, watched their family die and were then thrown into the streets of Rwanda. The aftermath meant that the predominately Tutsi-led Rwandan government was left with the staggering task of instituting justice, restoring some type of order and to begin reconciliation within Rwandan society. But justice is farm from being reached. In America, it is our constitutional right to a fair and speedy trial that, we hope, in the end delivers some sort of justice. But for two years following the Rwandan massacre, courts were shut down and when they reopened, 125,000 arrests regarding the massacre were made in a single year (Kohen, 65). Over the years, however, various human rights organizations for the prisons criticized the Rwandan government for their treatment of those inmates. They were also criticized for the amount of time the detainees, also called genocidaires, were imprisoned without trial. Their response to these accusations was to simply conduct mass releases of these inmates without proper trial, giving accused genocidaires a second shot at freedom that has outraged not only the citizens of Africa, but people worldwide as well. But how can such a deeply scorned nation recover from tragedies such as these? Reconciliation generally is defined as a process that leads to developing normal interaction between ethnic and political opponents based on mutual acceptance. Author Ari Kohen believes the Rwandan government has neither fostered reconciliation or allowed for justice to be served. He states “the Rwandan government, despite its claims that it seeks to achieve reconciliation, has not shown a serious commitment to healing the wounds that persist between either individual Rwandans or the groups that they comprise”(pg. 87). He also believes that the current Rwandan Executive Branch has actively worked against this type of political reconciliation. A concept that could lead to a more satisfactory progress to genuine reconciliation is to put a greater emphasis on restorative methods. But the Rwandan government certainly has a lot to deal with in terms of reconciling as not only does there need to be a coexistence of political aspects, but personal as well. In order to treat these areas we must differentiate between the two. The political philosophy of authors Kant and Arendt provide particularly helpful insight into how to delineate between the two. As Arendt argues, Kant holds that to b political is to act among humanity. Similarly, Arendt equates the political with public spheres, or the ‘polis’. So ‘the political’ is essentially concerned with a group or society of people and ideas that related to or affect them as a whole (pg. 213). The important distinction between the political and personal realm applies similarly to the concept of reconciliation. On the topic, Kohen states “Personal reconciliation, simply stated, involves a common understanding among individuals, a particular victim, or co victim and a particular offender. It is limited to the boundaries of the private sphere and is not inherently related to, nor does it affect, other on abroad public level” (pg. 88). Considering reconciliation at the political level is using it as a moral consensus. It involves a common understanding and recognition of an event that occurred between two sides. Part of such reconciliation is the process of restorative justice. In her book “Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence”, Martha Minow says restorative justice “emphasizes the humanity of both offenders and victims. It seeks repair of social connections and enhancing communication between perpetrators and those victimized, and forging ties across the community, and takes precedence over punishment or law enforcement” (pg. 112). It would seem as though this type of reconciliation is currently in use through the Rwandan court system known as Gacaca, which literally interpreted means ‘justice on the grass’. This system focuses on truth telling, restitution for victims and offender accountability which is similar to the Victim Offender Reconciliation Programs in North America. Rwandan humanitarian and author, Paul Rusesabagina tells of one account of how the Gacaca systems help two aggrieved men settle their differences. He says “the two men were required to share a gourd of banana beer as a sign of renewed friendship. Whether you were the victim or the aggressor you had to strip yourself of pride and recognize he basic humanity of the fellow with whom you were now sharing a banana beer” (pg. 227.) However, these cases typically involved smaller offenses like slander or theft and traditionally used a ‘jury’ of elders who would hear the case and give their opinions on how to solve it. Although this approach is great in using the concept of restorative justice, using its ideals on a genocidal case much, much larger in scale almost seems ludicrous. Even if it could be used in massacre cases, reconciliation would have to have long lasting effects and attitudes and perceptions would need to change. The relevance of forgiveness would need to be strongly upheld. In her book “Forgiveness and Revenge”, Trudy Govier says “ People cannot come together in a lasting way and co-operate as they will need to in a jointly run society if they remain angry, vengeful, suspicious, and insecure. The need for forgiveness lies in its relevance to two very practical aspects of reconciliation: co-operation and sustainability. Institution-building, economic development, and political processes require that people and people work effectively together. To do so, they need to co-operate and trust each other in significant respects” (pg. 144). A well known example of political reconciliation occurring, even if personal reconciliation is absent, is that of Nelson Mandela. His actions after his release were clearly undertaken to make a political statement. On the first day of his release, he greeted a random white couple walking down the road. He made a statement thanking a white women’s organization that worked against apartheid and he also thanked all of the white people who helped him during his time in jail. However, just making a political statement to progress reconciliation isn’t enough. Situations involving humanitarian crises have been addressed by establishing international criminal courts, deploying peacekeeping operations, imposing sanction, or even by conducting humanitarian military interventions. Even thought his type of aid would greatly benefit any crisis area, it can be argued that the international response to cases of large scale human suffering have remained highly selective. The international community needs to respond consistently to crisis situations. Overall, in the past two decades it has been observed that there has been a significance increase in humanitarian assistance. The number of UN and non-UN peacekeeping operations, the imposition of economic sanctions, the establishing of international and internalized criminal courts and the number of military humanitarian interventions (Binder, pg. 330). And as Randolph Kent points out “the humanitarian role of the United Nations has indeed been strengthened over the past two decades; and, more than this, in many ways it has become more efficient and effective. And yet, there lingers a profound concern that the net result of these efforts has to replace operational chaos with heavily institutionalized, self-absorbed and relatively insensitive systems that can rarely keep up with the perverse dynamics of humanitarian crisis, especially given globalizations key role in being a nations equation for success” (pg. 852). It is clearly evident that in order to handle an international humanitarian crisis that a few key things must happen. First and foremost is the idea that no selectivity takes place. A crisis is a crisis no matter how it affects the public. Secondly, personal and political reconciliation must occur in the parties involved ever want to have a mutual co existence. And lastly, all nations must be willing and ready in order to help out in these time of needs to that horrible massacres such as the one in Rwanda never occurs again. Our political parties must do as much as humanely possible to create some kind of peaceful existence, between foreign nations and their own if humanity wishes to survive intact.

Works Cited:
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