Blog #5: Humanitarian Aid and the Rwandan Genocide

 By: Sam Whitty

            Humanitarian aid is an important subject when it comes to globalization. This is because humanitarian aid is given out to all who need it rather than only to members on one side. Only relatively recently in human history have there been international organizations dedicated to helping those in poverty and wounded soldiers. Their emergence is one of the biggest steps that humanity has taken towards a globally moral society. 

[Henry Dunant]

            In The Crisis Caravan, Linda Polman discusses two major names in the history of humanitarian aid: Henry Dunant and Florence Nightingale. Henry Dunant is the founder of the Red Cross, an international organization dedicated to helping people during national disasters and other emergencies. Dunant founded this organization because of what he saw in the Battle of Solferino in 1859. During this battle, forty-thousand soldiers were killed, and another forty-thousand were wounded. This massive amount of death shocked Dunant, and it was apparent that there would be much more if he did not help the wounded and save them from bleeding out or becoming infected on the battlefield. Coining the phrase "Tutti Fratelli", meaning "we are all brothers", he tended to the soldiers wounds regardless of what side they were on. However, he imagined that he would be much more successful in saving lives if he formed a large medical staff to to assist these wounded soldiers. In order to form this team, he successfully lobbied private funders to help him, arguing that less wounded soldiers translates to less money given out by the government in the form of a pension as compensation for their wounds. As a result, the Red Cross was formed.

            While this may seem like an extraordinarily great cause, Florence Nightingale argued that the Red Cross was not how private citizens should respond to wars waged by the government. Private organizations reducing the cost of war for the government only serves to increase the amount and duration of the fighting. Nightingale proposed that the Red Cross was enabling governments to wage war and that if people really cared about reducing the amount of casualties in war, they should not let governments use humanitarian aid to their advantage.

            Polman also states that the Rwandan genocide was an ethical disaster in her book. The Rwandan genocide was a conflict between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda. Although the two groups spoke the same language, were of the same ethnicity, and practiced the same religion, they were distinguishable based on if they own cattle. Tutsis were higher class and owned cattle. Hutus were lower class and could not afford cattle. Based on this system, Hutus were discriminated against by Tutsis even though Hutus were much more prevalent in the country. When Rwanda gained independence from Belgium in 1962, Hutus elected a president that reflected a Hutu majority in the country. Hutus began to pay the Tutsis back for how they treated them before. Tensions rose, and in 1994, the President's plane was shot down and Tutsis were blamed for the attack. As a result, mass rioting led to the deaths of 800,000 Tutsis in only 100 days. 

            The Rwandan genocide was very close to the country of Malawi, and the country has recently been in the news because of how they handled Hutu fugitives (1). In the years following the Rwandan genocide, some fugitives escaped Rwanda, changed their name, and became naturalized citizens on Malawi. As a result, their past was forgotten and they were not punished for their crimes. For example, Vincent Murekezi, a fugitive that was tried for his crimes in the Rwandan genocide, was issued a new passport by an earlier Malawian regime that allowed him to travel freely between most south African nations. This practiced is currently being ended by Malawi's new president: Lazarus Chakwera. Chakwera has stated that he would like to cooperate with Rwanda to capture and punish those responsible for the Rwandan genocide that have not yet been put to justice in Malawi. This new era of cooperation between the two countries represents Malawian opposition to the genocide.

References

Osman, Alaudin, and John Namalenga. “Does Malawi's New Leadership Spell Doom for Rwandan Genocide Fugitives?” The New Times | Rwanda, 10 July 2020, www.newtimes.co.rw/news/does-malawis-new-leadership-spell-doom-rwandan-genocide-fugitives.

Polman, Linda, et al. The Crisis Caravan: What's Wrong with Humanitarian Aid? Picador, 2011.