Whatever happened to the spirit of learning Rwanda’s lessons?
Homs, Syria, 2012. Flickr/Freedom House. Some rights reserved.Two years ago, I was working in Rwanda to assist with
the twentieth commemoration of the 1994 genocide. The anniversary was marked
around the world at Rwandan embassies, by foreign parliaments, and at the
United Nations. In Rwanda’s capital Kigali, I watched as heads of state,
ambassadors and other leading representatives of the world paid tribute to the
victims and survivors, and committed to ‘learning lessons’.
Today, 7 April 2016, marks the twenty-second anniversary
of the genocide, and I can’t help but reflect upon those heartfelt
promises.
I work in a small sector dedicated to preventing mass
atrocity crimes and protecting people from that threat. Despite the scale of the
challenge, usually I’m hopeful and positive. When people ask why I do what I do,
I tell them to look back fifty or even twenty years, and consider the progress
that has been made in understanding our shared responsibility to defend the
rights of others. I tell them that I believe great things can be achieved by a
small group of committed individuals and organisations.
On days like today, I sometimes find it difficult to
be so optimistic.
I think of Syria and its destruction, of its refugees
fleeing five years of systematic state violence only to be turned away from
Europe’s shores. Whatever happened to that spirit of learning Rwanda’s lessons,
so often repeated in the glib phrase, ‘never again’?
Earlier this year a United Nations commission of inquiry
into human rights abuses in Syria released a report which accused the Syrian government
of committing “the crimes against humanity of extermination, murder, rape, or
other forms of sexual violence, torture, imprisonment, enforced disappearance
and other inhumane acts.” Over 250,000 people
have died in Syria and 12 million have been displaced. The Syria Campaign
estimates the Syrian government is responsible for over 95% of the civilian deaths.
When I read the UN Commission of Experts’ report on
Syria, I can’t help but remember April 2014 in Kigali, when so many of the
great and the powerful expressed sorrow for the past and hope for the future.
What lessons has the world really learnt from Rwanda, or from Bosnia, or Darfur?
The international community has failed to learn that
mass violence does not always look the same. In 1994, the genocide in Rwanda
was described as a struggle for tribal domination. The ethnic cleansing and mass
slaughter of Bosnia’s Muslims were explained away as the consequences of civil
war. These dominant portrayals of the systematic targeting of civilians
had the effect of reducing international moral outrage and diluting any notion
of a responsibility to protect. Because the violence committed against Rwanda’s
Tutsi minority and Bosnia’s Muslims did not look like the familiar images
associated with the genocide against Europe’s Jewry, the international
community was able to justify their inaction.
One of the reasons the world failed Syria is because
the crimes committed by the Assad government against his people have not always
been characterised as being intentional and systematic. Instead, the Syrian
crisis has consistently been presented as being too complicated for the
international community to respond to, long before we reached the devastating
point we are at now. There was a moment when it wasn’t too late to act and
when Assad’s culpability was just as evident.
It is not a question of what is and is not genocide,
but rather at what point civilians threatened by identity-based mass
violence deserve protection. It is about learning from the horrors of the past
and the shame of having not protected lives.
We have failed to learn that systematic mass violence
often succeeds when it is masked by our own prejudices and fears. Just as
Darfur was presented by the Sudanese government as being a spontaneous tribal
crisis, or as president Milosevic talked about Bosnia being an explosion of
ancient hatreds, president Assad has always sought to exploit the west’s fears
of Muslim sectarianism and Islamist terrorism. The world failed Syria – at
least in part – because decision-makers believed, or hid behind, Assad’s claims
of sectarian and extremist Islamist elements, long before such insidious
elements came to the fore. The presence of ISIS in Syria today is as much a
result of Assad’s actions as the global community’s inaction.
Perhaps most importantly, the political establishment
has failed to learn that addressing the humanitarian consequences of mass atrocity
crimes alone is an insufficient response to a state-led policy of mass
violence. While the $10 billion pledged
earlier in the year in London is an admirable and important achievement,
humanitarian aid alone will not save the lives of those who remain in Syria. In
fact, there is an argument to be made that the humanitarian agenda distracts
from the central crisis. Syria is portrayed as the greatest humanitarian
crisis of our generation and receives the single largest aid package; but Syria
should also be seen as the gravest human rights crisis, where the most
wide-spread and systematic attack on a civilian population is taking place. And
on that front, the world has done little.
These failures are not only evident in UK or
international policy towards Syria. Today, Rwanda’s neighbour Burundi is on the
brink. Burundi, like Rwanda, experienced acute mass violence in the 1990s and
has, for the past few years, been heading towards political crisis. The warning
signs were clear, but no action was taken – in fact the UK decided to end its
bilateral aid programme with Burundi in 2011. Political violence is now
becoming increasingly identity-based, but still the world dithers.
Addressing the gravest forms of mass violence is not
easy and there is no silver bullet. The decision to actively protect the lives
of civilians requires political will and bravery: it is much harder to count
the lives you save than those you did not.
But there are ways in which a country like the UK
could match strong rhetorical commitments to atrocity prevention with stronger
policy.
By recognising the prevention of mass atrocity crimes
as a national priority, integrating an early warning system, and introducing a
cross-cabinet response mechanism, the UK government would find itself in a more
informed, better coordinated position to tackle the threat of atrocity crimes.
By just acknowledging that the prevention of atrocity violence is distinct from
conflict prevention and requires greater emphasis on civilian protection,
greater attention would be given in Department for International Development
and Foreign Office decision-making to the root causes and risk factors.
Integrating indicators of social cohesion, funding inclusive media initiatives,
promoting programmes of dialogue and critical thinking would address grass-root
processes of prejudice, exclusion, and real or perceived divisions.
Two years ago, sitting in Kigali’s Amahoro stadium on
the day of the commemoration, I listened to UN secretary general Ban Ki Moon insist
on the need to learn the lessons of Rwanda’s suffering. Before we know it, we
will be at events commemorating Syria’s dead and the world’s failure to protect
them. Renewed and emotive rhetorical commitments will no doubt follow. I will
continue trying to persuade decision-makers in the UK to do more for Syria,
Iraq, Burundi, Central African Republic, Myanmar and elsewhere.
Today, I just wish it was a little easier, and that
promises meant a little more.