Genocide remains a global problem; what are we going to do about it?
Genocide may not be the topic on the tip of everyone’s tongue these days but it should be. Genocide Watch lists 18 countries as being vulnerable to or in the middle of an active genocide. After the Allies discovered the extermination camps set up by the Germans in World War II, they pronounced, “Never again,” but the world has yet to live up to that promise. It seems like as much as the world dislikes genocide, it dislikes dealing with it even more.
Many people think of genocide as something that happened a long time ago in a country far, far away but that is not accurate. Not only is this not a relic from a bygone era but as time passes, people are not learning the lessons of genocides past. My generation (Gen X) was taught what happened during World War II. Millennials and Gen Zers are not. According to the U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, a full 63% of participants did not know that six million Jews were killed, nearly half (48%) were not able to name a camp or ghetto (there were about 44,000) and a full 20 percent blamed the Jews themselves for the Holocaust.
Given all of that, it hardly surprising that most people are unaware of the genocides that have happened since. During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, the Clinton Administration refused to acknowledge what was happening…