17 June 06 – In a debate at Westminster Central Hall on the UN’s ‘responsibility to protect’, seeking to answer the question ‘How can we prevent another Rwanda?’, politicians, journalists and non-governmental organisations questioned the present lack of political, media and public outrage over genocidal violence around the world.

Organised by the Foreign Policy Centre, and taking place during the Compass National and Robin Cook Memorial Conference 2006, the panel was chaired by FPC Director Stephen Twigg (also Education Director for the Aegis Trust).

Mike Gapes MP, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, introduced the debate.  “You can turn a blind eye to human rights abuses, abuse of women’s rights, torture, on the basis that free trade carries on, and your country needs to buy – or you can take a different view,” he stated, “which says, we are internationalists, we have a global standard, and all individuals, regardless of their identity, have basic human rights and those human rights have to be protected.”

Contrasting past and present attitudes to protection, Aegis Chief Executive, Dr James Smith, stated: “There’s no outrage about what’s happening out there, and that needs to change. If in November 1938, after Kristallnacht, there had been a much greater response on British and American Streets to this, it might have influenced how the Nazis proceeded. We did respond in a way – 10,000 children were given refuge in the UK. Where are the 10,000 Darfuris in the UK today? On the contrary, we’re sending the few who have made it here back to a face a situation of genocide; and the biggest demonstration in central London against mass murder in Darfur to date has amounted to no more than a few hundred people.”

John Kampfner, Editor of the New Statesman, raised the spectre of recent mistakes: “There has never been a better time in this world to be a dictator, there is now such fear to intervene as a result of the botch that was Iraq.” He added, despite this, “I am a passionate believer in the cause of liberal interventionism, because I had the misfortune of spending six weeks in Rwanda during the events of 1994. What I saw brought out the limits of journalism.”

Oona King, former MP and founder of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Great Lakes, drew attention to the lack of coverage for the World’s worst war – in terms of loss of life – since World War II:

“Since 1998, it has killed more people than Iraq, the Middle East, the Tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake and Darfur combined. Four million people. Yet we rarely hear about the Congo,” she said.

“It comes back to the question – where is the outrage? Where is it?  It’s astonishing to me that we can get to figures which are literally on a par with the Holocaust, and it doesn’t make it into the newspapers.

“Let’s not just ask ourselves what responsibility Governments have,” she concluded. “Let’s ask ourselves what responsibility we have to protect people.”

Related sites:
Compass: Direction for the Democratic Left
http://www.compassonline.org.uk/

The Foreign Policy Centre

http://fpc.org.uk/
Please note: filmed highlights from the presentations will be accessible from this page in the near future.