The Power Of Civil Society In A Time Of Genocide

"A half-century ago, the international community made a solemn promise to "never again" allow genocide to go unchallenged. In the early days of the post-Cold War era, international leaders failed to stop horrific genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, chiefly because Western leaders lacked the "political will" to use decisive force. Despite increased attention to war crimes issues, American foreign policy still gives lowest priority to responding to gross abuses of human rights. In Genocide and the Global Village, Kenneth J. Campbell explains why the international community fails to prevent, suppress, and punish contemporary genocide. Campbell provides a multilevel analysis of genocide's impact upon world order. He also looks at the interplay of politics and morality in the international community's determination of the appropriate role for military force in halting genocide and securing an emerging global civil society. He recommends practical steps that the international community can take to greatly improve its response the next time genocide occurs - a next time that will occur."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Paper prepared for Conference on African Renewal, MIT, Mar 6-9, 1997.

"The aim of this thesis is to look at and understand the way the international community responds to complex humanitarian emergencies, with Rwanda as a case study. It explores the ways in which the international community can play a role in contributing to, or exacerbating the conflict at the centre of the complex humanitarian emergency. In particular the author looks at the importance of civil society and institutions and how they respond to complex humanitarian emergencies. The responses are discussed in terms of various approaches and models, each with a different area of focus, such as power sharing, constitution building, security and poverty. The thesis then examines apporaches that deal with a complex humanitarian emerency overall, such as the 'disaster situation' framework. By placing the case study of Rwanda within the context of the framework, it identifies crucial areas where the international community can potentially exacerbate the conflict. The two major problems in terms of international community responses (while far from the extent of the problems) lie in the way that the international community responds far too late. By not intervening in good time and appropriately before the conflict escalates to a point where genocide can occur, the conflict becomes more complex and requires a more complex and intrusive response. The second is the failure to sufficiently acknowledge the importance of local civil society in the conflict and the important role it plays, particularly where the conflict stems from ethnic, racial, religious, and other such tensions. However, while the international community attitude has changed on paper since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the situation in Sudan illustrates that there is still a long way to go before it changes sufficiently in practice to deal with conflicts appropriately to avoid further tradgedies such as the Rwandan genocide"--Abstract.

Broadly speaking, The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society views the topic of civil society through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere).

Uses unique field data to offer a rigorous explanation of how Rwanda's genocide occurred and why Rwandans participated in it.

How and why did Europe spawn dictatorships and violence in the first half of the twentieth century, and then, after 1945 in the west and after 1989 in the east, create successful civilian societies? In this book, Volker Berghahn explains the rise and fall of the men of violence whose wars and civil wars twice devastated large areas of the European continent and Russia--until, after World War II, Europe adopted a liberal capitalist model of society that had first emerged in the United States, and the beginnings of which the Europeans had experienced in the mid-1920s. Berghahn begins by looking at how the violence perpetrated in Europe's colonial empires boomeranged into Europe, contributing to the millions of casualties on the battlefields of World War I. Next he considers the civil wars of the 1920s and the renewed rise of militarism and violence in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929. The second wave of even more massive violence crested in total war from 1939 to 1945 that killed more civilians than soldiers, and this time included the industrialized murder of millions of innocent men, women, and children in the Holocaust. However, as Berghahn concludes, the alternative vision of organizing a modern industrial society on a civilian basis--in which people peacefully consume mass-produced goods rather than being 'consumed' by mass-produced weapons--had never disappeared. With the United States emerging as the hegemonic power of the West, it was this model that finally prevailed in Western Europe after 1945 and after the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe as well.

Humanitarianism: Keywords is a comprehensive dictionary designed as a compass for navigating the conceptual universe of humanitarianism.