More Darfur
The United Nations new Secretary-General, Ban ki-Moon, has had an op-ed published [you may require registration to view the article] in The Washington Post today that addresses the situation in Darfur. The article refers to many of the ideas that we raised in class, with as especially intriguing implicit invocation of Homer-Dixon:
Nor is the crisis confined to Darfur. It has spilled over borders, destabilizing the region. Darfur is also an environmental crisis — a conflict that grew at least in part from desertification, ecological degradation and a scarcity of resources, foremost among them water.
Read the whole thing to get the Secretary-General’s accounts of the impressions he gained having visited the area for one week recently.
Darfur and Genocide–Intent versus Motive
Professor Eric Reeves of Smith College has written a compelling op-ed piece in the Boston Globe wherein he addresses the current situation in Darfur:
DOES GENOCIDE continue in Darfur? Do we still see “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, [Darfur's African ethnic groups] as such,” the high standard set by the 1948 UN Genocide Convention? The question acquires urgency as skepticism grows in some quarters about the intentions of Khartoum’s Islamist regime. Genocide is a crime of intent, not motive; if the intention of Khartoum is no longer genocidal, their moral and negotiating equities change considerably in any peace talks with fractious rebel groups.
Thus, there can be a situation in which the motive to commit genocide no longer exists, or is no longer active, but the intent to commit genocide still operates. The rest of Reed’s article helps explain this crucial distinction.
