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-- Rwanda-1994, 800,000 killed. Why/how did this happend?
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Well, there are plenty of resources in Africa.
But I just don't think many rich nations even have a "plan" so to speak to build Africa up, again, it's a "where do we even start?" sort of situation.
Iraq is a country of what, 23 million people? With ok infrastructure and ample resources to (one day) sustain itself.
Africa is an entire continent and I'd say 80% of it has seen its fair share of atrocities.
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| Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov I got to spend an entire day with the man that movie is about. One of the most humbling experiences of my life. |
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| Originally posted by Alex I've always wondered why, I read different books and what not with different explanations, some to do with racism, some that make the point of "what's in it for us?" but for the life of me I can't figure out why for any one reason why we don't try to "police" Africa quite the same way as we do the middle east/eastern europe etc. |
I was in Cambodia a couple of months back, and what happened with Pol Pot and the khmer rouge was pretty horrific.. Killing millions of innoncent people who were educated!! Some of the conditions were horrific.
I was always remember walking out of S21 prison and the killing fields feeling pretty shitty only for our tuk tuk driver with a big grin across his face asking us if we wanted prostitutes or to fire guns.....
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| Originally posted by woscar99 Oil |
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| Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov |
Speaking of Africa, World Cup is 2 years away... sorry, thought I'd brighten up the thread a bit.
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| Originally posted by chrisday I was in Cambodia a couple of months back, and what happened with Pol Pot and the khmer rouge was pretty horrific.. Killing millions of innoncent people who were educated!! Some of the conditions were horrific. |
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| Originally posted by noikeee You're raising a good point there. A cynical would say maybe this is because of the lack of resources Africa has to offer, compared to Iraq, for example. |
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| Originally posted by guerra-monstru Africa may not have a lot of oil but they do have a lot of other resources. Human beings being one of them. The second is the fact that the democratic republic of Congo has 23trillion dollars worth of natural resources. One of the biggest in the world. |
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| Originally posted by Alex Uranium right? I mean, who needs that shit anyway |
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| Originally posted by RickyM It was all started due to the belgians dividing the people when they colonized the country, into Tutsi and Hutu, due to minor physical differences. The Tutsi were typically taller, with lighter skin and longer noses. With this sort of situation, it was only really a matter of time before something happenned...the indifference from the developed world was truly sad. If you want to know more you should read the book by Romeo Dallaire (the General in charge of the impotent UN force sent into Rwanda). It's called 'Shake Hands with the Devil'. The film 'Shooting Dogs' is quite good too, as is 'Hotel Rwanda'. |
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| Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov It's a difficult question to grapple with. Undoubtedly if the international community pooled it's resources to tackle African conflicts with any sort of determination, a lot of things would be resolved. Problems would obviously still remain, but a lot of good could be accomplished. However, this isn't going to happen anytime soon. There are a number of reasons I can think of, and self-interest certainly isn't the least important of those. The US experience in Somalia was a proverbial slap in the face. Citizens across the country demanded to know why US Marines were dying for African welfare, and why money continued to pour into humanitarian outreach in Mogadishu even as riots burned part of LA to the ground. It also plays a large role in why we don't get involved in places like Darfur. With economic linkages to the government of Sudan, and a crucial partnership in the War on Terror tenuously established, the United States actually stands to risk it's own interest by getting involved in a heavy-handed intervention in Darfur. But there are other reasons as well. Intervention in Africa is generally frowned upon by Africans themselves, for many of the reasons our experience in Iraq is frowned-upon. What exit strategy exists for an intervention in a place where there is no real history of transparent governance? Will we inevitably have to rebuild society from the bottom up? How is that different than colonial domination? Africans fought tooth and nail for their independence, and many of those that sacrificed are still alive today - they are not eager to be "rescued" by the West. Advocating for an African solution to African problems will certainly take a lot of time, but there are plenty of critics that would rather wait for that sort of infrastructure to develop than rely once again on Western benevolence that they don't actually trust. The institutional framework for intervening is also not fully developed. During the 1980's not a single humanitarian intervention was launched by the United States, United Nations, or any other external actor. After the fall of the Soviet Union the United Nations Security Council was left to seek out ways in which it remained relevant. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali came up with his now-famous An Agenda For Peace, which promoted the use of the Security Council and the United Nations for peace-support operations worldwide. The establishment of the United Nations Peacekeeping Organization quickly followed, and a whole array of missions were soon approved. However, the expectations for success far outpaced the institutional capacity of the missions. Donor states lauded the idea of missions, and then failed to donate enough equipment, manpower, and money in order to fulfill mandates. Rough starts in early missions (Somalia, etc.) often led to general chastising of the entire UN system. It was immediately apparent that to not act would garner criticism, but to act insufficiently could potentially be even more damaging to the legitimacy of the Security Council. So the number of approved missions declined through the 90's. Today more emphasis is placed on regional bodies (NATO, the AU, ASEAN, ECOWAS, etc.). However, the capacity for these organizations to undertake missions varies widely, and the pros and cons of regional missions as opposed to truly international ones are well documented. The AU has had some success in small peacekeeping missions, but to implement a peace where one does not exist and then monitor it's success in a place as large as Darfur or the DRC is highly unrealistic - especially when considering the poverty of many AU donor states (as it is right now something like 90% of the AU budget is paid by only 7 of the 53 member states). Resources also remain an issue. So as the international system develops to address the problems it seeks to address, there is a lot of confusion over who exactly is responsible for what. I think this is a product of the whole endeavor being relatively new - any new operation has some logistical kinks that need to be worked out. Hopefully this will happen sooner rather than later. Another thing that should be mentioned is that peacekeeping missions gain more notoriety for their successes than their failures. People know of Rwanda and Darfur of course, but they may not know of successful missions elsewhere. So yeah, that's a fairly rambling answer to your rhetorical question. |
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| Originally posted by woscar99 Oil |
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| Originally posted by pkcRAISTLIN fucking awesome post champ. but did you mean to say that peacekeeping missions gain more notoriety for their failures than their successes? |
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| Originally posted by biznology tribalism |
I was reading something recently, and a gentleman that was very knowledgeable of -and a native and former resident of- Africa had said that the foreign aid that is given is one of the largest factors of the perpetuating tribalism (the usage that we as westerners would use it) and the massive economic problems there. Reason being, is that none, or very little of the foreign aid reaches anyone other than government.
ps: I really wanted to see "Hotel Rwanda." Never got to see it.
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| Originally posted by gehzumteufel I was reading something recently, and a gentleman that was very knowledgeable of -and a native and former resident of- Africa had said that the foreign aid that is given is one of the largest factors of the perpetuating tribalism (the usage that we as westerners would use it) and the massive economic problems there. Reason being, is that none, or very little of the foreign aid reaches anyone other than government. ps: I really wanted to see "Hotel Rwanda." Never got to see it. |
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| June 7, 2007 Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala with the last word on aid Former Nigerian finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is the sort of visionary African leader everyone on stage and in the crowd would wish for Africa. She�s challenged with summing up four days of discussions on �Africa, the next chapter�. She tells us we�re seeing changes in Africa that we never thought would happen. We�ve seen annual growth of 5%, in some cases 6-7%, up from 2%. External debt has been massively reduced. Countries are building up foreign exchange reserves, shoring up their currencies. Private investment flows are increasing, remittances to Nigeria are skyrocketing, and there�s a net inflow of capital. But Africa needs jobs. 62% of Africa�s population is under 24. We have to figure out how to make these people productive. Nigeria is now building an opinion research organization, a way of listening to citizen voices, which she notes is a rare thing on the continent. The top issue in every survey? Jobs. Just a few years ago, she tells us, we couldn�t even talk about �the next chapter� for Africa. There was negative economic growth. There�s been an amazing transformation, and this is something that�s allowed us to have our debate about aid versus the private sector. �It has been a simplistic debate.� It needs to be about �a partnership that involves governments, donors, private sector, and ordinary Africans.� It�s not trade or aid - �what is the combination of all these factors is going to yield results?� African entrepeneur Mo Ibrahim dreams of the moment when Africa is giving aid. �But we�re already doing it - the UK and the US could not have been built without African aid. The resources - including human resources - have made those countries what they are today.� So when those countries are willing to give something back, we need to take it, but we need to use it effectively. Okonjo-Iweala tells a story about growing up during the Nigeria-Biafra war. Her father was a brigadeer on the Biafran side, and her family was doing very badly, eating a single meal a day. When she was 15, her mother was ill, and her three-year old sister was deathly ill from malaria. She put her sister on her back and walked 10 kilometers to a clinic, where she�d heard there was a good doctor. When she arrived, there were a thousand people outside, trying to break down the door. She went to the side and climbed in through the window. The doctor told her she�d barely saved her sister - she gave the girl a shot of chloroquine, put her onto rehydration and within hours, she was back to health. �The ten kilometers home with her on my back, that was the shortest walk of my life.� The point of the story: �When someone is saving a life, you don�t care that it�s aid - you want the person to be alive.� Okonjo-Iweala tells us she doesn�t believe aid, even aid to save lives, in the sole answer. We have to use it well. Why has southern Spain developed? On the back of aid which was provided to build road and infrastructure. Ireland is one of the fastest growing economies in the world - they used aid to build infrastructure to build an information society. �They didn�t say no to aid - but if they can build infrastructure in Spain, why do they refuse to build the same infrastructure in our countries?� She asks, �Are we calling the NGOs together and telling them what we want, asking them to coordinate? No. We haven�t taken charge and sat these people down to hear about our priorities.� [Having sat in endless donor coordination meetings, I'd ask whether this is really true.] �Aid can be a faciliator, a catalyst. If we fail to use it as a catalyst, we have failed our people.� The Chinese are so popular in Africa, she tells us, because they don�t shy away from infrastructure. She talked with the Chinese ambassador, who told her that to develop, �You need infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure and discipline.� Okonjo-Iweala wants this infrastructure and discipline to create jobs, especially for women, who will use this support to support their families and their societies. |
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| Stop Trying To 'Save' Africa By Uzodinma Iweala Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page B07 Last fall, shortly after I returned from Nigeria, I was accosted by a perky blond college student whose blue eyes seemed to match the "African" beads around her wrists. "Save Darfur!" she shouted from behind a table covered with pamphlets urging students to TAKE ACTION NOW! STOP GENOCIDE IN DARFUR! My aversion to college kids jumping onto fashionable social causes nearly caused me to walk on, but her next shout stopped me. "Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled. It seems that these days, wracked by guilt at the humanitarian crisis it has created in the Middle East, the West has turned to Africa for redemption. Idealistic college students, celebrities such as Bob Geldof and politicians such as Tony Blair have all made bringing light to the dark continent their mission. They fly in for internships and fact-finding missions or to pick out children to adopt in much the same way my friends and I in New York take the subway to the pound to adopt stray dogs. This is the West's new image of itself: a sexy, politically active generation whose preferred means of spreading the word are magazine spreads with celebrities pictured in the foreground, forlorn Africans in the back. Never mind that the stars sent to bring succor to the natives often are, willingly, as emaciated as those they want to help. Perhaps most interesting is the language used to describe the Africa being saved. For example, the Keep a Child Alive/" I am African" ad campaign features portraits of primarily white, Western celebrities with painted "tribal markings" on their faces above "I AM AFRICAN" in bold letters. Below, smaller print says, "help us stop the dying." Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization." There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority. My mood is dampened every time I attend a benefit whose host runs through a litany of African disasters before presenting a (usually) wealthy, white person, who often proceeds to list the things he or she has done for the poor, starving Africans. Every time a well-meaning college student speaks of villagers dancing because they were so grateful for her help, I cringe. Every time a Hollywood director shoots a film about Africa that features a Western protagonist, I shake my head -- because Africans, real people though we may be, are used as props in the West's fantasy of itself. And not only do such depictions tend to ignore the West's prominent role in creating many of the unfortunate situations on the continent, they also ignore the incredible work Africans have done and continue to do to fix those problems. Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis? Two years ago I worked in a camp for internally displaced people in Nigeria, survivors of an uprising that killed about 1,000 people and displaced 200,000. True to form, the Western media reported on the violence but not on the humanitarian work the state and local governments -- without much international help -- did for the survivors. Social workers spent their time and in many cases their own salaries to care for their compatriots. These are the people saving Africa, and others like them across the continent get no credit for their work. Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth. Uzodinma Iweala is the author of "Beasts of No Nation," a novel about child soldiers. |
Being a born and raised South African with English heritage I can testify that about 90 percent of the western world has little to no idea what really goes on in Africa. Some great points have been raised in this thread. How could Rwanda happen? Because the world let it and it's African neighbours could do little to intervene. I compare it to our current pain in the neck called Zimbabwe. South Africa's lame duck president has his hands tied and our economy will suffer as a result. Our border is like a sea of refugee's ebbing during the day and flowing by night. You won't hear much about that though as even our own media is owned somewhere by government.
As stated Africa has just gotten over colonialism and a result Africans see any possible overseas intervention as a threat (hell, it's even used as campaign propaganda for most African politicians!).
VIVA the world cup though 
I really hope they find a solution to many of Africa's problems soon.
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| Originally posted by RickyM as is 'Hotel Rwanda'. |
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| Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov It depends a lot on the particular government in question and the way in which that foreign aid is distributed, but yeah, that can be a problem. The development community has re-evaluated within the past couple of years how to distribute aid and development project money, and more success has been had. Two articles I found interesting to read in conjunction with one another: |
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