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By Emily MacTaggart
“The right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself” - Hannah Arendt
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) is meant to uphold and reaffirm a moral lingua franca of the protection of all humans around the world, in order to live freely, coexist peacefully and in solidarity. It was drawn up after prolonged periods of war and unprecedented amounts of violence and death in the 20th century. It was meant to reaffirm the value of each individual human life, no matter race, gender, religion, or class. However now, it seems such breaches of human rights are unavoidable, embedded in the very fabric of modernity. We see it unfold around us each day in the media, the passive observer now desensitised to such fatality, almost feeling helpless and engulfed in monotonous reelings of depersonalised plights across borders; the mainstream media fuelled by making crises seem important yet out of reach.
Libya, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Palestine. These are a few of the countries and states facing humanitarian crises that have been presented to us in perpetuity, yet has anything about their situations changed despite media attention? Humanitarian aid in such places, while essential, is not given the funding needed in order to be much more effective in protecting innocent civilians and aiming to appease tensions, of which more than 26 million people are in need. Let’s take the case of the Congo as a pertinent example, unfortunately one of many others that would shed light on the discrepancies in human rights policies globally. The remnants of Belgian colonisation of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda are rooted in colonial and neoliberal powers, with Western nations seeking financial gain and fuelling inequalities by pillaging the naturally occurring resources. Western corporations profit from the mining of coltan, cobalt, gold, diamond and other minerals in the DRC, only illuminating a sense of superiority and possession over former colonies by Eurocentric powers that still remains today.
Rebel groups, such as the most prominent M23 rebels from Rwanda (who has played a significant role in the Congolese genocide), survive thanks to activities around natural resources, in which they fight to control mines and benefit from Western-backed support. They want money for military equipment in order to prolong their presence, and have been found to forcibly draft civilians to help them, as well as killing those who do not cooperate. The United Nations has been urging that countries such as the UK, US and Germany to stop funding rebel activities given that their motivations are purely corporate and lucrative, but this is yet to come to fruition. Despite people’s lives being put at risk for such desires, this is merely a side effect.
However, it is also important to understand this from the point of view of the genocide that is disregarded by Western media outlets. For nearly 3 decades, The Congo (DRC) has been facing conflict, violence and unrest, involving over 250 armed groups involving their neighbouring countries, and most prominently Rwanda. With origins in the Rwandan genocide in 1994 in which 800,000 people were killed in just 100 days, refugees fled into eastern Congo. Later, once a new government was established, Rwanda amongst other countries invaded the eastern section to attack surviving Hutus, who were those who massacred the Tutsi in response to colonial influence of hierarchies (seeing the Tutsi as superior to the Hutu). Yet, in order to profit from and bolster Western support, this fight was ultimately brought back to reaching mineral-rich territory in the Eastern part of the Congo, thus profiting from it through occupation, and defending the area no matter the cost. The border conflict is still rife.
It is therefore important here that we actively remember those 15 million people who have died during both the Rwandan and Congolese genocides as well as the conflict between different militias and rebel groups that are still on-going. It is not merely an effort of talking and learning about the specific events of the pasts, conjuring up wounds and the lasting consequences of (neo)colonial violence. Rather, we must problematise such ignorance to such events, question our narrow education, and seek out the information our media sources are feigning to divulge. Coming back to the nature of Human Rights then today. It seems like an abstract category, one that is unable to be defined universally. There are millions of people, like those in the Congo, in Rwanda, and all across the Global South, across Europe, across swathes of Latin America who lose their lives due to human rights violations, unknown to the Western spectator. Are their lives worthy of attention? Are they considered as human as those living in the ‘West’? Do they have access to their human rights and would they protect them? And how can we help them access them? These are all questions which come under the fight for decolonising the discriminatory human rights framework that willfully ignores people who are in the most danger. But if it isn’t a profitable situation, can it really be considered a worthwhile event to explore?
These are all ideas that are worth critically drawing your attention to, and I will attach the links to the sources I have used along with extra resources below that are pertinent to this sort of discussion.
Sources:
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