Genocide & Civil War in Africa.
Genocide and civil war are another kind of atrocities that a major threat to populations. They also pose a serious health risk to all involved. According to Paul Knox, et.al., “Deaths of over 40 million people in the past 100 years have been attributed to genocide and other acts of state violence” (Knox, et.al. p343). And the continent of Africa has seen its portion of it especially, Rwanda. In this article, I am going to focus on genocide and civil war in Africa, and some of the social problems that come with it. Also, I will touch on some of the major health ramifications that are associated with such atrocities.
According to behavioral scientist, territoriality is not an innate trait of humans, like crickets or Beta fish; however, it is a learnt behavior. Behavioral Geography looked at this behavior in the study of proxemics—the way humans use space as functions, symbolisms, and territoriality to create sovereignty. However, most of these issues Africa and other countries can trace back to the European invasions. They have introduced decolonization to Africa in the twentieth-century. Thus, after redrawing several boundaries, the territoriality began to manifest itself in the way people within these special boundary identified themselves. As simple as this sound, it was a recipe for disasters, to this day. You see, once the boundaries were drawn, some of the needed resources were isolated from another group, thus, the aggressive group will violate the boundaries to get at the resources, harming and destroying anything in its path. Also, religious dominance may play a role in compelling another group to relinquish their religion and confirm to the dominant sect, or face dire consequence.
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...d the social problems associated with it are no laughing matter. It can have a major impact on health issues those marginalized persons are confronted with. These conflicts can impede humanitarian aids, thus, increasing the health impact on the population. This is a saddening situation; however, as long as poverty is not controlled, these crimes against humanity will continue to plague society—it’s only a matter of time, as to, when the next event will flare up.
Works Cited
Knox, P. L., & Marston, S. A. (2007). Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. (4th ed.)
New Jersey: Pearson
Moorsom, Toby. (2011, September 15). Is Africa Rising or Falling?
The World Health Organization. “Collective Violence.”
Since Burundi’s independence in 1962, there have been two instances of genocide: the 1972 mass killings of Hutus by the Tutsi-dominated government, and the 1993 mass killings of the Tutsis by the Hutu populace. Both of these events in Burundi received different levels of attention by the international community and the western media due to a lack of foreign governmental interest, political distraction, and an unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of these atrocities in Burundi. Interestingly, events of genocide occurring at times without these distractions received more foreign attention than those ignored due to these factors. Because of this, much of the western world is unaware of the Burundian genocide and events similar to it.
“Darfur Genocide.” World Without Genocide. William Mitchell School of Law, n.d. Web. 16 April 2014. .
During the 1900’s two deadly wars were raging on, the civil war in Sierra Leone and the genocide in Rwanda. The civil war in Sierra Leone began in March 1991, while the genocide began in 1994. Combined these two wars killed upward of 1,050,000 people, and affected the lives of all the people that lived there. The conflicts in Sierra Leone and Rwanda occurred for different major reasons, but many little aspects were similar. Politics and Ethnicity were the two main conflicts, but despite the different moments rebellions and the murder of innocent people occurred in both places.
The genocides of the 20th century which occurred in Rwanda and Germany had striking similarities, something that should have alerted the world to stop them. At the core of these two massacres, patterns existed that outlined how similar thinking and reasoning could lead to something as horrible as these two events. One can see how both groups used their command of knowledge as a way to control the people, how the rest of the world refused to step up to stop the killings, and how the people were thought of as less than humans to provide a just cause for such terrible acts.
Fellmann, Getis, and Getis. Human Geography, Sixth Edition, Updated Edition. McGraw Hill. New York, 2001.
Many innocent lives were taken during the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Philip Gourevitch’s “We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families,” explains why the genocide that occurred in Rwanda should not be written off in history as just another tribal disagreement. This book entails the stories of Gourevitch and the people he interviewed when he went to Rwanda. These stories express what people went through during the genocide, the loss they saw, the mass killings they tried to hide from, and the history of what led to the Rwandan genocide. Rwanda’s colonial past did influence the development of the genocide in Rwanda. The hatred between the Hutus and the Tutsis had been going on for many years before the genocide.
"The Genocide in Darfur and Its Consequences." By Kallie Szczepanski. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2014.
Africa has been an interesting location of conflicts. From the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea to the revolutionary conflict in Libya and Egypt, one of the greatest conflicts is the Rwandan Genocide. The Rwandan Genocide included two tribes in Rwanda: Tutsis and Hutus. Upon revenge, the Hutus massacred many Tutsis and other Hutus that supported the Tutsis. This gruesome war lasted for a 100 days. Up to this date, there have been many devastating effects on Rwanda and the global community. In addition, many people have not had many acknowledgements for the genocide but from this genocide many lessons have been learned around the world.
country stricken with violence. This violence continues on even today in the form of genocide. The
The acts of violence that were performed by rebels in Africa were horrific. Adults and children were murdered, mutilated, tortured, and raped. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone performed despicable acts of cutting off a people's body parts with machetes to instill fear in the community. If you were working in the diamond mines and not performing up to the standards of the rebels you would lose a body part as punishment. Rebels would continue to do this from one village to another in order “to take control of the mines in the area” (Hoyt). It is estimated that in Sierra Leone that over 20,000 people suffered mutilation. The acts that the rebels performed to these innocent victims was clearly a violation to their human rights. The RUF collected 125 million a year to fund their war on the government and the people of Sierra Leone.
In conclusion, the events that occurred in Sudan from 2003-2011 can be defined as genocide due the evidence of rape, murders of ethnic groups and destruction of their livelihood to deliberately inflict on a their condition of life calculated to bring apart their physical destruction. However, if the Sudanese government didn’t organize and arm the Janjaweed militia to destroy the non-Arabs of Sudan, then the mass killings would be defined as civil war. The international community Is also to be blamed for not getting involved in the events leading up to the genocide as well as not doing as much as they could to stop the mass killings before they got to the extent that they did. Hundreds of thousand killed, millions displaced and/or affected either directly or indirectly, in a world that said “ Never Again”.
Human activity has major effects on geography. When studying the earth you can come to several conclusions about the geography of any particular civilization. Distribution of life in the civilization allows you to analyze whether their geography is their own destiny. Do people control their own destiny? Is geography something that people can control? Technology is really the key to why geography can be overcome by any people.
Various schools of thought exist as to why genocide continues at this deplorable rate and what must be done in order to uphold our promise. There are those who believe it is inaction by the international community which allows for massacres and tragedies to occur - equating apathy or neutrality with complicity to evil. Although other nations may play a part in the solution to genocide, the absolute reliance on others is part of the problem. No one nation or group of nations can be given such a respo...
Knox, Paul, and Sllie Marston. "Chapter 8 Food and Agriculture." In Human Geography: Places and Regions in Global Context. Glenview, Il: Pearson, 2013. 266-298.
Knox, P. L., & Marston, S. A. (2012). Human geography: Places and regions in global context (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.