December 9th is the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide. It commemorates the adoption by the United Nations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. On this 68^th Anniversary of the Genocide Convention, it is a stark reminder that the world still lags behind the ambitious goals envisaged by not only Raphael Lemkin but also the signatories to the convention. Over the past few months, the United Nation’s Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide has issued warnings on the current state of affairs in South Sudan, Aleppo, Syria and Northern Rakhine State, Myanmar. In a rather ironic twist, we have grown accustomed to debating whether a conflict is a genocide or not, rather than working together to stop genocides from unfolding. Despite clear and early warnings about the possibility of a genocide unfolding, there is still a yawning gap between how events unfold, and our response to ending/curbing human suffering due to conflict.

This column has been talking about South Sudan and the renewed hostilities  between former political allies that have had deleterious effects on the civilian population. It has also pointed out the extent to which the state is abdicating its responsibility to ensure that there is some level of stability in the young nation. Actions by the United Nations such as the push for an arms embargo against the South Sudanese state, have come extremely late in the process. Some view it as yet another action to signal ‘concern’ that often accompany conflict in Africa, even more so when we consider that calls for an arms embargo have long been made by observers of South Sudan. Yet it is only when the term genocide was used that the United States stirred itself from its deep slumber and sought to push for an arms embargo. It is almost as if the deaths of South Sudanese does not count unless the term genocide is used and even then, the world engages in perfunctory shows of concern without really engaging in meaningful actions to end suffering.

As we celebrate the anniversary of the genocide convention, it is incumbent on us to think about what the convention actually achieves. Does it help us identify what conflicts may be genocidal? Does it help us define the circumstances that should push us to intervene? Who is allowed to intervene and how should they intervene? This weekend, as we think of this important declaration we must question whether this is how Raphael Lemkin envisioned responses to preventing and ending genocides. In other words, how would we respond to Lemkin today if he asked us why we let South Sudan, Aleppo, Rakhine State or Burundi unfold the way they have?

Wahutu Siguru is a PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa.

Below is an open letter sent to President-elect Donald Trump by Generations of the Shoah International.

November 30, 2016

Donald J. Trump
President-elect of the United States
Trump Tower
725 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10022

Dear President-elect Trump:

In your election night speech, you said, “Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division. It is time for us to come together as one united people.” Instead, those divisions are escalating. When members of the alt-right meet in Washington, DC and question if Jews are really people, it is time for moral leadership to put a stop to hate speech, to anti-Semitism, to racism.

We ask you, Mr. Trump, to stand up and speak out forcefully, using all the channels available to you, against the bigotry that divides us. We and millions of other Americans look to you to help heal the divisions in our country.

Sadly, your appointment of Stephen Bannon as White House Chief Strategist sends a mixed message. As executive chairman, he proclaimed that Breitbart was “the platform for the alt-right,” a movement that strongly rejects diversity in any form and promotes white nationalism, racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism. Bannon’s appointment telegraphs the message that hate groups’ activities will not only be tolerated but will be endorsed and promoted by your Administration.

Millions of Americans have expressed fear and concern about how they will be treated under your leadership. Advisors you appoint will either validate those fears or help unite the country.

As Holocaust survivors, children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, and as members of the Coordinating Council of Generations of the Shoah International (GSI), the world’s largest Holocaust family organization, we know what our parents and grandparents lived through. It was a time when virulent anti-Semitism was accepted. That bigotry was allowed to spread, unchecked, and systematic genocide ensued.

We are vigilantly watching and ready to support actions that promote justice and respect for all Americans.

We strongly urge you to build a White House staff committed to core American values of inclusiveness and respect for diversity.

May your family, including your Jewish grandchildren who are descendants of Holocaust survivors, be able to look back at your Presidential legacy with pride.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned Members of the Coordinating Council of Generations of the Shoah International (GSI)

Esther Toporek Finder, President, Generations of the Shoah – Nevada
President, Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada
Past President, The Generation After, Washington, DC, and
Member of the US Delegation of the Holocaust Era Assets Conference, Prague, June 2009

Ken Engel, Chair, CHAIM (Children of Holocaust Survivors Association in Minnesota), Minneapolis, MN

Janice Friebaum, Immediate Past Chair, Generations After – Descendants of Holocaust Survivors in Greater Phoenix, Phoenix, AZ

Charles Silow, President, C.H.A.I.M. – Children of Holocaust-Survivors Association in Michigan, Detroit, MI

Dina Cohen, Coordinator, Generations of the Shoah – New Jersey
Member, New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education
Board Member, Holocaust Council of Greater MetroWest, New Jersey

Anat Bar-Cohen, Coordinator, The Generation After, Washington, DC, Mayland and Virginia

Daniel Brooks, Coordinator, 3GNY (Grandchildren of Holocaust Survivors in New York)

Doris Schwarz-Lisenbee, Chair, Second and Third Generation Programs of Silicon Valley Holocaust Survivor Associations, San Jose, CA

Raymonde (Ray) Fiol, Past President and Board Member, Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada, Las Vegas, NV

CC:
Algemeiner
American Civil Liberties Union
Anti-Defamation League
Association of Holocaust Organizations
The Atlantic
Chicago Tribune
Denver Post
The Forward
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
Jewish Telegraph Agency
The Jewish Week
Los Angeles Times
The New York Review of Books
New York Times
Southern Poverty Law Center
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants

After the arrival of thousands of U.S. veterans, the long-standing Dakota Access Pipeline protests culminated in a small victory on Sunday when President Obama ordered the Army Corps of Engineers halt work on the pipeline. Victories like the one on Sunday and the President’s previous order in September have been overlooked, though. The BBC has called the protests the largest gathering of Native Americans in a century; why then do they feel so invisible? What accounts for the lack of media coverage at Standing Rock?

In October, the Daily Intelligencer interviewed Amy Goodman, host of the independent news site Democracy Now!, speculating how it is possible that “in this oversaturated age for a mass-protest movement to fly under the radar” on “the battle over the building of the $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline,” and Goodman suggested a larger, systemic problem:

“I dare say the lack of coverage may be because this is a largely Native American resistance and protest. This is an under-covered population generally.”

The invisibility of Native Americans as a people, their sovereign lands, and sacred burial sites (a significant element to the Dakota Access pipeline story) is illustrated by Energy Transfer Partners’ proposed construction map for the Dakota Access pipeline. The map both minimizes sovereign territory, but also denies the existences of sacred land—it does, however, clearly depict a potential threatening environmental hazard along the Missouri River, the sole water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

Such maps of exploitation by non-Native interests stand against an extensive backdrop of colonial settler expansion of the ‘American frontier’ and the historical erasure of the indigenous population. It is here where Euro-American ideology of land, its use, and claims to ownership —predicated on the Doctrine of Discovery, a 19^th century Euro-Christian concept used to validate the taking of indigenous lands by colonial powers —present a sharp contrast with that of Native American cultures.

Creating Maps and Erasing Place

Maps themselves, of course, can represent places of physicality but they are also cultural, conceptual, and invested in meaning and value. The following series of maps illustrate this point. British maps created during the colonial period (1600-1700s) provide a stark contrast to the infamous Catawba “Deerskin map” from 1721—one of the only maps made by the indigenous people of the Americas.

As can be seen in the 1624 map of Virginia—created by John Smith who would later lead the British colony of Jamestown—native figures are represented along the upper left corner and right side of the map. Euro-colonial cartography of this time stands out by the sharply defined separations of land claims, detailed boundaries with place names, and the treatment of “unclaimed” space as “unknown” despite contrary accounts indicating the known presence of indigenous tribes west of “known” territory (Map 2). Contrast these with the map created on deerskin by a Catawba leader.

First, it’s important to note that such a map was an official document—a lens with which an understanding could be built and not imposed—presented by a Catawba community leader to the Governor of South Carolina to communicate with European authorities the particular relationships and perspectives of the tribes near the new settlements. We see a network of villages connected by trails and delineated by circles, which symbolize southeastern Native unity in political, genealogical, and ceremonial bonds. The trails connect the Native groups to the European settlers in both Charleston (rectangular grid) and Virginia (plain rectangle) whose representation is angular and sharp, similar to their own mapmaking.

Significantly, this map does not necessarily tell the traveler how to get from “Point A to Point B”, but rather, conveys social and political relationships that embody a shifting and dynamic landscape; one that is shaped by both past and present experience. Spatial presentation here is not limited to universalizing or creating precise landscape illustrations for the purpose of defining set boundaries and ownership.

Standing Rock, the Pipeline and Maps

Through the recent developments at Standing Rock, the ‘unfinished’ project of the American frontier and its colonial expansion through the Doctrine of Discovery is once again made clear. The boundary-defined and legitimated landscape that we have come to know as the United States was established through an imperial ideology of ownership and domination, defining what constituted real and unreal, empty and occupied. As we have seen with the projected Dakota Access Pipeline, Native Americans continue to be separated from and invisible to the land they inhabit in Euro-American maps, enabling genocide. From this perspective, cartography has been used as a tool of violence for Euro-colonialists, and continues to be part of the capitalistic culture in pushing the American frontier in more vertical endeavors.

Brieanna Watters is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests are in mass violence, collective memory and post-colonialism in the United States. 

Minnesota State Representative Frank Hornstein is inviting students and community members to a guest lecture with Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld, Professor of History at Fairfield University. Dr. Rosenfeld’s presentation, titled The Use of the Holocaust and Nazi Comparisons in Contemporary American Politics, will discuss the implications of comparisons between the Holocaust and the current political climate. Rep. Hornstein writes:

“For the past year, I have been researching the use of Holocaust and Nazi comparisons in the contemporary American political scene as a fellow with the Sabo Center for Democracy & Citizenship at Augsburg College. The use of these comparisons is quite common; for example, Donald Trump is compared to Adolf Hitler on an almost daily basis. The Iranian regime was routinely compared to Nazi Germany during last summer’s debate on the Iran nuclear agreement, while some in the gun lobby blame the Holocaust on gun control measures. Nazi comparisons are often made in a variety of issue debates ranging from abortion to climate change. The phenomenon has significant implications for how the Holocaust is remembered, and how history is interpreted. It also has profound and complex impacts on American civil discourse.”

The lecture will be Tuesday, November 29^th at 2:00pm. Those interested in attending the lecture are invited to attend in person at Augsburg College in the Riverside Room in Christensen Center, or participate online. For more information or to register, log onto the lecture’s Eventbrite page.

In addition to Rep. Hornstein, the event is sponsored by the Sabo Center.

Early this week Frank Navarro, a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum trained teacher who has taught at Mountain View High School in California for 40 years, was put on leave after a parent complained about the parallels he was drawing in his world studies class. He was accused of comparing Trump to Hitler, but in actuality he had only pointed out the connections between Trump’s presidential campaign and Hitler’s rise to power.

On September 1 of this year, Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote in the article With gratitude toward Donald Trump, how as an educator, he was grateful to Trump for making it easier for him to explain to his students, how it was possible for the Nazis and Hitler to come to power. In my own classroom, it is my students who have made the connections, as I certainly did not have to spell it out for them.  We all agree that Trump is not Hitler, but certainly the rhetoric and unabashed racism, antisemitism and xenophobia unleashed by his campaign reminds us of the tactics used by Hitler, the Nazis and his followers.

We all spent an enormously long election season shaking our heads in response to the rhetoric used by the Trump campaign and worried about the reappearance of hate groups such as the Klan and White Supremacists who felt emboldened enough to endorse a major presidential candidate and to insert themselves into the mainstream. Many of us ultimately believed we would get to November 9, breathe a sigh a relief and celebrate a return to normal, but instead the very thing we shook off and feared came true.

I am not condemning those who voted for our President elect nor am I assigning all of the world’s evils upon him. What I and so many others are concerned with is the releasing of the hatred, the appointment of Steve Bannon, a known White Supremacist and Antisemite as his chief White House strategist and senior counselor, as well as others who subscribe to the same ideology.  These actions have further empowered the once fringe hate groups and their followers to feel comfortable to spread their hatred and prejudice with a freedom we have not seen in a very long time.

I teach a Holocaust class at a Community College in Phoenix, Arizona that has a diverse population of students of various ethnic groups. The majority of my students are non-white, indigenous or immigrants, Hispanic, Mexican and Muslim and understandably they are concerned about their and their family’s future. Seeing the parallels does not ease their fear, nor mine for that matter, but as an educator it is my job to help them to also see that they can play an active role in preventing and fighting prejudice.

On the day after the election, we discussed how the US government is structured. We then looked at a film clip from the Nuremberg Trials showing the organizational chart of the government of the Third Reich. The size of the chart is quite large and it is remarked it could be larger still, but it would be too hard to read. What was largely noticeable was who sat at the top of the chart: Hitler, and only Hitler, as everyone answered to him. That is a dictatorship, which of course the United States is not. People may not like the results of the election, and those who did like the results are angered by those who did not, for taking their displeasure to the streets. But it is this ability to disagree, and to be able to protest, that makes us America and not Nazi Germany.

Today we started discussing Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, and my students spent a lot of time discussing Levi’s warning:

“Many people-many nations-can find themselves holding, more or less wittingly, that every stranger is an enemy. For the most part this conviction lies deep down like some latent infection; it betrays itself only in random, disconnected acts, and does not lie at the base of a system of reason. But when it does come about, when unspoken dogma becomes the major premise in a syllogism, then, at the end of the chain, there is the Lager. … The story of the death camps should be understood by everyone as a sinister alarm signal.”

Every generation has created the enemy of the stranger-the “other.” For years, hatred and prejudice has laid dormant, in the US and around the world, and now it is out in the open for all to see.  We, as educators, need to help our students understand the similarities and the differences of historic events to our current lives. Historical parallelisms should help us to be more civic minded, to get involved, as we all must band together to fight this epidemic so that it does not end in the result that Levi and so many million others were forced to endure.

Jodi Elowitz is an adjunct professor of the Humanities at Gateway Community College in Phoenix, Arizona, and former Program Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

Paper presented by Francisco Ferrandiz (CSIC, Madrid), Alejandro Baer (U.Minnesota) and Natan Sznaider (Academic College of Tel Aviv Jaffo) at the 115th meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Minneapolis.

The advent of forensic discourses and practices for the search for truth in human rights violations and its increasing prestige in popularity has created a new corpocentric epistemology in which the human body has become a crucial agent in the (re)interpretation of violent pasts. In this process, alternative and previously dominant ways of knowing are losing preeminence and give way to forensic protocols and reports, DNA technologies, and other technocratic processes. This has already been characterized as part of a broader forensic or even genetic turn. In this paper, coauthored with Natan Sznaider (Tel Aviv Academic College), we attempt to expand the notion of forensics and challenge commonsensical notions of evidence by comparing different evidentiary regimes of ashes, texts and bones in relation to the Holocaust. Ashes signify the stubborn resistance of corpses to the attempt to throw them into oblivion. The burial and exhumation of texts buried in ghettos testify to the reality of a vanished presence. The recent advent of the Archaeology of the Holocaust and its associated mass graves adds a new twist to the epistemological debates on the physical evidences of the Holocaust. Constituted by the current forensic turn and human remains as major evidence of atrocity, this technique has been confronted by Jewish sacred law, which resists the manipulation of already buried bodies challenging the primacy of historical truth over other regimes of justification. Analyzing these three different forms of materiality, our paper explores crucial transformations in the epistemological status of evidence of the Holocaust.

Panel on: FOSTERING CROSS SUB-DISCIPLINARY CONVERSATION ON THE POLITICS OF FORENSIC PRACTICES. Thursday, November 17, 2016 1:45 PM – 3:30 PM Room 200. Minneapolis Convention Center.

Last month marked the 5^th anniversary of the 2011 Maspero Massacre. During the first Egyptian revolution, almost 10,000 Copts and allies gathered in Cairo to peacefully protest the demolition of a Coptic Church in Upper Egypt. The army responded to these protests and initial clashes resulted in the death of three soldiers. TV show host, Rasha Magdy, reported that Copts were attacking the army, and that “patriotic people” should take to the streets to protect the military from the “violent crowd of Copts”. Eyewitness accounts claim that alongside mobs, the Egyptian army and security forces used riot gear, batons, live ammunition and armored vehicles to attack the protesters. However, the extent of the involvement of the Egyptian army is still contested. These clashes resulted in nearly 30 deaths, mostly Copts, and almost 300 injuries, marking this incident as the Maspero Massacre. Five years later, only three soldiers were punished with a maximum sentence of three years, and the massacre is not even recognized as one, let alone commemorated.

However, Coptic Solidarity, an organization that runs out of the US, is pushing for the anniversary of the Maspero Massacre to be officially and nationally commemorated by the Egyptian government on October 9^th. One of their tactics is asking supporters to encourage their local and national media outlets to publish articles and draw international attention to the conditions of Copts in Egypt. During my conversations with Copts, many dismissed the notion that Egypt would ever commemorate violence against Copts, and declared it unimaginable and impossible.

The Coptic Orthodox Church, however, actively remembers martyrs and saints by mentioning them during liturgy or documenting them in the Coptic Synaxarium, further promoting the narrative of the Church as one of Martyrs. The 21 Copts who were beheaded by ISIS in Libya have been canonized and included in the Synaxarium as martyrs and saints, although the victims of the Maspero Massacre have not. The distinction, is rooted in the idea of will and sacrifice, where those beheaded by ISIS made an intentional decision of dying in the name of religion, whereas the victims of the Massacre were merely political protesters.

Five years later, the burden of remembering the Maspero Massacre is on the people of Egypt. Commemorations serve many functions: they honor the victims, they acknowledge past violence, and they pave the way for reconciliation between perpetrators and victims. Amidst ongoing sectarian violence in Egypt and lack of justice for past violence, the memory of the victims of the Maspero Massacre is yet to be settled. What would it mean for Egypt to acknowledge and commemorate this incident, while also promoting a spirit of unity between Christians and Muslims? Whom does the State and/or the Church label a martyr and why? What are the possibilities and limitations of healing through commemoration?

Miray Philips is a Ph.D. graduate student in Sociology with a focus on violence, collective memory, and the Middle East and North Africa. Miray’s current research is focused on how Copts in Kuwait, Egypt and the US make sense of their present-day experiences and historical memory. She is also the 2016-17 Badzin Fellow. 

CHGS Director Alejandro Baer has written about the analogies drawn between refugees fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938 and the current global refugee crisis. The ease in which comparisons are made between those who fled World War II and those fleeing the atrocities committed by ISIS and other groups is made stronger by the widely circulated images of refugees we see on a near-daily basis.

The ways displaced people are presented through visual media can bring awareness to the situations of victims of atrocities. As discussed on this blog recently, picturing a victim in a photograph carries with it a host of important considerations, including whether and how the voice of the subject is taken into account in distributing their image. The voice, as it were, of the photographer may not be apparent when one glimpses a photograph. Photography can mask the intent of the photographer by creating what is a seemingly objective snapshot of real events (unlike the hand of a painter whose brush strokes reveal their subjectivity).

CHGS has in its collections a series of photographs taken in 1945-1946 by Maxine Rude, photographer for the US Army and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). These photos were part of an extensive collection organized by Stephen Feinstein, the Center’s founder, entitled, “Displaced: Europe 1945-1946,” which is available as a catalogue from a previous exhibition.

CHGS is pleased to present a newly curated exhibition, entitled “Displaced: Photos and Remembrances of Maxine Rude, 1945-1946,” selected from this larger series. On display in the Eiger-Zaidenweber Holocaust Resource Center at the Sabes JCC, this exhibition is open and available for visitors.

The more than forty photographs currently on display have been grouped by apparent theme and photographic subject, including photos of politicians visiting DP camps, the camps’ structure and function, and evidence of daily life lived by displaced persons, all as captured by Maxine Rude.

As curators of another person’s body of work, we are intentionally aware that our decisions affect the viewer’s experience. By choosing to arrange works according to the subjects within the images, we are like any visitor to the exhibition, acutely aware that we don’t have the curatorial input of Maxine Rude herself. We are fortunate to have some commentary written by her, and this important contextualizing information is presented online (in the description field of associated photos), as well as being included in exhibition materials onsite in the Eiger-Zaidenweber Holocaust Resource Center.

In related upcoming posts, we’ll delve deeper into some of the subjects in the photos, as well as learn more about the experience of displaced persons following World War II and the Holocaust.

Demetrios Vital is Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  In this role he is responsible for the care and promotion of CHGS art and object collections, as well as working with the community in the development of programs, activities, and events.

When I checked my departmental mailbox this week there was a postcard from the UMN administration that couldn’t be more timely: it showed two students wearing maroon and gold, hugging — one blonde and Caucasian and the other black and Somali — and a very simple phrase: “You are here. We like that.”

One might wonder why such an obvious message would be at all necessary at a major American public University. The political reality that has unfolded in this country over the last months — reaching its culmination on Tuesday — has sadly shown that this reminder is more necessary than ever. Basic democratic norms, pluralism and willingness to coexist peacefully with people of different religions, languages and origins, has proven not to be a given for millions of Americans.

This chilling eye-opener comes on a fateful date. The night of November 9th marks the 78th anniversary of Nazi Germany’s state-sponsored riots known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), a turning point in Hitler’s anti-Jewish policy. Before I read about Kristallnacht in books I had heard about that infamous night from my father, who remembers to this day how the police came to his home in Pirmasens, a small town in the Palatinate region, and arrested his father. By fortune, and unlike so many other Jewish families, they were able to leave Germany in time.

The Kristallnacht commemoration teaches that democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained and that a modern society can become numbed to the fate of its minorities. This day reminds us what occurs when a community based on mutual acceptance has been destroyed. This day urges us to be mindful that the path that leads from verbal incitement to discriminatory policy and murderous action can be very short.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies November/December newsletter is devoted to this historical event and features a number of educational resources (bibliographies, testimonies, artwork, newspaper articles). In this newsletter we ask our readers to teach the lessons of the past to wind back the divisive rhetoric that has been unleashed.

 Alejandro Baer is the Stephen C. Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

“Be as humble as you are curious.”

Few statements could speak so directly to the dynamic of the room as these, when President Paul Kagame addressed the crowd in a talk last month at Yale University. The leader was invited to speak at the university to present the Coca-Cola World Fund Lecture, and the reaction to his arrival was incredibly mixed across the campus. He encouraged the audience to have an open and empathetic perspective on global affairs, one which leaves room for cultural divergence in opinion and policy. During this speech, a group of faculty and students lead a “teach-in” outside of the event, echoing critiques from Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International about human rights concerns within the country. The commentary continued through extensive coverage in various media outlets, both positive and negative. The nation of Rwanda and Kagame’s RPF party are no stranger to controversy, with the academic and policy conversation often taking on quite the polarized tone.

In these conversations, the voice of the population is often overshadowed by powerful leaders, both from within and outside of the nation’s borders. This couldn’t be clearer than in an example provided in one of the aforementioned pieces, when writer Adam Kyamatare tells of a conversation he had with a rural Rwandan farmer. This man conveyed a sense of pride for how far Rwanda had come in peace and safety throughout his 89-years. Of course, this is only one perspective. But these voices – those of individuals living on the ground, in nations that become muddled down to mere headlines across the globe – these are the perspectives that are absolutely essential to capture. It is key to be aware that Rwanda is still in the infancy of its post-genocide reconstruction, and there are still many more questions than answers about the best way to ensure long-lasting stability in a post-violence region. But the voice of the people living there should be absolutely central in finding those difficult answers.

This dynamic comes to the forefront at an incredibly relevant moment; this difficult balance between internal and external political power is also present in a building controversy around the International Criminal Court. In recent weeks, South Africa, Burundi, and Gambia have begun processes to leave the ICC, citing a disparity in prosecutions. The balance between international legal assistance and the transmission of Western ideology has been a challenging one to establish. While almost every African being prosecuted at the ICC was brought to trial by their own governments, no charges targeting a nation outside of Africa have yet been brought forward.

Whether the case be Kagame and Rwanda, or the nations choosing to leave the ICC, the role of the international and Western communities in the affairs of many African nations is often controversial. It is tempting for outsiders to assess nations, particularly in the Global South, and declare that they know the best path for these nations to take politically, legally, and culturally. Although global dialogue can be incredibly beneficial in developing viable solutions in an increasingly globalized world, that global dialogue must also be genuinely inclusive. The farmer quoted above knows his country more intimately than a foreign scholar or policy maker ever could. In creating a safe and representative future, it’s voices like his that should play a central role in the conversation.

Brooke Chambers is a PhD candidate in the University of Minnesota’s Sociology Department. She is broadly interested in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, bystander dynamics, and understandings of policy and transitional justice in response to genocide and mass atrocity.