Blog Post Humanitarian Aid- Dan Meeks

     This weeks' blog focuses on the idea of humanitarian aid. In this weeks' reading which was The Crisis Caravan, two humanitarians were discussed, Henry Dunant, and Florence Nightingale. They were two key people in the history of humanitarian aid and they kind of worked together yet had very different ideas on what should be done for the issue of humanitarian aid. Henry Dunant believed that it's a person's duty to help no matter what whereas Nightingale believed that if aid fails in its purpose, if the warring parties use that aid to their advantage"(Polman). Dunant coined the phrase "Tutti Fratelli" which means "we are all brothers" and it was a motto he stood by throughout his humanitarian aid campaign when lobbying to Switzerland's parliament. Dunant wanted to start helping injured soldiers after what he saw at the Battle of Solferino where 40,000 soldiers were killed and another 40,000 wounded. The issue was with these injured soldiers is they laid on the battlefield injured slowly dying from their injuries and infection. After appalled at what he saw he personally paid for supplies from a nearby village and started helping soldiers on both sides of the battle. He then came up with an idea of how great it would be to have a team of around one hundred nurses set up nearby waiting to help the injured soldiers. He believed that giving soldiers better care when they were injured, that it would decrease the amount of pensions the government gave out to soldiers hoping they would like the idea and agree with him. This idea will eventually lead to the formation of the Red Cross by Dunant and other Genevan notables. If I had to side with one of the two Philosophies mentioned by Polman, I would side with Dunant, because I agree that we should help everyone and saving a life even though it might be an enemy is worth more than winning a war a little quicker and saving a little money.

    The ethical disaster that Polman talks about in Goma is the Rwandan genocide that took place in 1995. During the Rwandan genocide there was two ethnic groups in Rwanda. The Hutus and the Tutsis. A group of Hutu extremist thought that the Tutsi were plotting to always keep them down below them because the Tutsi were the cattle farmers who had an easier life whereas the Hutu were farmers who were always just getting by and having a more difficult life. These extremists then took out the government who consisted of mostly Hutus who disagreed with the extremist ideas and started and hunting and slaughtering the Tutsis. 

        My country, which is the Democratic Republic of Congo has experienced some sort of genocide and was also specifically mentioned in Polman's writing. The unrest in the DRC was actually a result of the Rwandan genocide. When Hutu extremists reign of killing Tutsis was coming to an end the extremists   joined forces with Uganda and invaded the DRC in what was known as the first Congo war. They were successful and overthrew the government putting their own leader, Laurent-Desire Kabila in charge. Kabila was then accused of exploiting the DRC's natural resources and the DRC's military aided by Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia were able to uprise against Kabila and push the extremist out of the country in what was known as the Second Congo war (The Crisis). A ceasefire was then worked out with and the UN formed a council to oversee the enforcement of the agreement. A proxy war was then fought until 2008 where it was thought to have stopped. Since then it's estimated that over 6 million people have been killed due to war related costs. The DRC currently now has a severe humanitarian crisis as the warring is still occurring and the nation is ravaged by some of the highest poverty rates in the world. Aid is needed in the fragmented nation. Maybe Dunant's Red Cross can assist?

                                                                           Work Cited

“The Crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo.” IRCtoP, www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/crises/crisis-in-drc.

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