Things Can Always Get Worse - DRC Edition
October 10th, 2008 by SocProf and tagged DRC, Human Rights, LRA, Mass Violence, New Wars, Rwanda
It seems there will be no end to the atrocitied visited upon the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is probably the country in the worst political shape in Sub-Saharan Africa. It seems the conditions are escalating towards another disaster:
Step 1
There is a tight connection, of course, between the DRC and Rwanda and both countries still feel the "loose ends" of the 1994 Hutu genocide against the Tutsis.
Step 2 - how does the DRC government respond against the dual threat (as it sees it) from the rebels and Rwandan forces?
Step 3 - And if that is not enough, there is another player in the game, the horrendous Lord’s Revolutionary Army of Uganda. Why? Well, as always, the LRA needs fresh troops, meaning, children, and never passes an opportunity to pillage and slaughter in the process of "recruiting":
Posted in Human Rights, Mass Violence, New Wars |
November 16th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Great to see your efforts to focus attention on this conflict, which, despite being hands down the deadliest conflict since WWII, consistently fails to attract the attention of the policymakers, media and other actors in a position to respond. I have written a book that attempts to unravel the mystery of why some massive conflicts are ignored, while other relatively small conflicts are the object of selective indignation. It is called Stealth Conflicts: How the World’s Worst Violence Is Ignored. The introduction can be read directly from this website: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754675068
I hope you will have a chance to take a look at it.
Virgil Hawkins
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November 17th, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Virgil Hawkins,
Your book sounds interesting. I agree that the majority of the world tends to overlook global crisis. I think this has to do with the political and academic culture in North America that is mostly stuck in the domestic and national container of events.Moreover,part of the problem is that most peace and conflict education is still in its infancy in the United States. To my knowledge, there are very few universities in the United States that offers such programs. For instance, I live in Texas and we only have one university here that offers a minor certificate in Peace studies.Looking at countries like Sweden, Canada, and Germany have programs , but these are often deeply underfunded and are placed into the faculties of law and political science where poor PHD students like myself can’t go. I guess I am not trying to find all good excuses why the world rejects global issues. Dont get me started with the U.N. — which has a United Nations university that offers peace programs in Puerto Rico and also a hefty tuition and fee price tag of $25,000 for one year. I wonder how they expect students from the developing to be able to afford this? So as you can see there are a number of larger structural problems that need to be addressed.
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November 17th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I agree that your book looks interesting, Virgil.
I think part of the explanation also has to do with African conflicts usually not being “interesting” for Western media which often labels these conflicts as “untractable” based on “ancestral” hatred.
Another piece of the puzzle might lie with the resource curse as well.
And I would add the rules of economic globalization… we know that structural adjustment programs played a part in the economic decline of Rwanda and later the genocide.
It would be nice if there were simple explanations but I think there are multiple factors that create a perfect storm of indifference to these.
I am definitely checking out your book, Virgil.
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November 17th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Thanks for the comments!
There are certainly larger structural problems and multiple problems. In trying to unravel them, I ended up with 6 factors that determine whether or not a conflict gets attention: national/political interest, geographic proximity/access, ability to identify, ability to sympathize, simplicity, and sensationalism. Kosovo, for example, threatened to inundate Europe with refugees, was on the doorstep of Western Europe, and was painted as a simple good (Albanians) versus evil (Serbs) storyline, and white wealthy audiences could identify with the victims. It had most of the factors on its side. The DRC, on the other hand, is the same in reverse: the Western world is insualted from the conflict, and it can still access the necessary minerals through warlords, allies and multinational corporations. It is highly complex, making it exceptionally difficult to create a morality play type good versus evil storyline. The victims are poor, black and African, removing much of the ability to identify. Darfur makes for an interesting example, though, because attention changed along the way. I think this was largely because what had until then been written off as another African ‘tribal’ conflict managed to be reframed as an evil Arab versus innocent black story, and this reframing happened right at the time of the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide (with ‘never again’ ringing in the background)… Food for thought…
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