Global Essay Hotel Rwanda
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Global Essay
Hotel Rwanda
The United Nations was created to solve world problems. It has made actions like making peace with other countries, creating programs that help them, and helping countries in war. But sometimes, the UN will simply avoid a problem. One of these instances was in Rwanda. Around 1994, the Hutu tribe of Rwanda was committing the genocide of the Tutsi, another tribe of Rwanda. The Tutsi tribe was in alliance with Belgium when it controlled Rwanda, so when the Rwandans gained their independence, there the Hutus had prejudice against Tutsis. Eventually, there was a war between them. The Tutsi rebels were vastly outnumbered (about 10% of the Rwandan people were Tutsi and about 90% were Hutu), but managed to overthrow the Hutu. Despite the genocide that was occurring in Rwanda, the UN made little action to stop it. Even though the UN has made treaties which try to prevent genocide, it does little to help some countries like Rwanda when it is occurring due to prejudice.
In 1948, the UN formed its first genocide treaty. This treaty states that genocide, which can be defined as the intentional killing a national, ethnical, racial or religious group (as a part or whole), is prohibited. According to the treaty, if genocide is committed, the people responsible or associated with it will be tried by an international tribunal whose jurisdiction is recognized by the state(s) involved or by a national tribunal in the territory where it occurred. It is considered a crime under international law and will be punished and prevented, as it declares. An example of genocide was the Holocaust. Many Jews were killed by Hitler and the Nazis, but surviving Nazis involved in it were severely punished as many were tried in the Nuremberg
War Crimes Trials with most being punished with life in prison or the death penalty. As those trials show, the UN has enforced its laws against genocide through severe punishment. Despite that fact though, it has still sometimes done little to help when genocide has occurred (as it did in Rwanda).
In 1945, the Charter of the United Nations was formed as a constitution that showed the purposes and goals of the UN. One of these purposes involved maintaining international peace throughout the world in all countries. According to the charter, the UN is supposed to prevent non-peaceful things like war, genocide and rebellions. It did not do so in Rwanda though. While the genocide of the Tutsis was occurring in Rwanda, the UN did not do anything to help. All it did was rescue citizens of their own countries while they left the Tutsis to face their fate of death. According to the UN charter, it was supposed to prevent the genocide and war.
During the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the UN ignored it and did little without a care. It simply didn’t care about the natives of Rwanda. The fact that there was prejudice against them was a big reason. Most of the people that needed to be saved in Rwanda were nothing but poor, black Africans. In the UN’s eyes, those types of people don’t even matter. Even though they were still living human beings, they didn’t make a big impact on the UN’s own world