Hello, welcome back to Conversations with
Stephen Kamugasa. This is the second of six
podcast episodes on genocide. Today's guest
is Dr. Omar McDoom, a comparative political
scientist and associate professor at the
London School of Economics Department of
Government. Dr. McDoom holds law degrees
from King's College London and the Université
de Paris, a master's degree in international
development studies from George Washington
University and a PhD in development studies
from the London School of Economics. He is
also a non-practicing attorney at the New
York Bar. Before joining the LSE, Omar completed
research fellowships at Harvard University
at the Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs, and then at Oxford University in
the Department of Politics and International
Relations. His professional experience outside
of the academia includes work as a policy
officer for the World Bank, as a legal officer
for the government of Guyana, and on electoral
missions for the Organization for Security
Cooperation in Europe and the United Nations.
He also co-founded a non-profit organization
in 2004, which develops leadership potential
in children who were affected by the civil
war in Northern Uganda. Oma is the author
of The Path to Genocide in Rwanda. In this
episode, we discuss the topic of why genocide
is the responsibility of the entire world.
Dr. Omar Makdoon, welcome.
Thank you, Stephen, and thank you for the
opportunity to talk about my work and also
for the comprehensive and flattering introduction.
I appreciate it.
In the acknowledgement section of your book,
the path to genocide in Rwanda. You write,
and I quote, I dedicate the book to my father,
who passed away before he could see it completed.
Please share with us your favorite childhood
memory of your father. And specifically,
in light of your work, how did the relationship
with your father affect how you see reality
as an adult?
That's a nice question. It's an opportunity,
I suppose, for someone to sit back and reflect
on the legacy or the lasting influences that
your parents have on you and how it's marked
and shaped you today. So maybe you'll be
of use to some of your listeners to hear
how I think my father, though it's not, of
course, only my father, my mother also had
a profound impression on who I am as a person
today. Well, my father, I mean, he obviously
would have had both positive and less positive
influences on me. But since you asked me
about my favorite memory, I suppose the influences
that stayed with me were maybe a very strong
sense of the importance of getting ahead
in life on merit, so through hard work and
independence, and also a very strong commitment
to social justice, which probably reflected
in why I spent so much time studying law.
He also gave me some confidence as well.
So, you know, my father's background is interesting
because he was a first-generation immigrant.
He'd never been to university. He came to
the UK from Guyana, a small British colony,
in the 1960s, late 1970s. And he had some
aptitude, academic aptitude, and in those
days it was possible to study law without
having gone to university, become a lawyer
without having gone to university. So he
sat the professional examinations in the
UK and became a solicitor, one of the two
types of lawyers in the UK. So he was quite
good at law, but he was also the time, remember,
it is a time in the UK when there was still
overt discrimination against people of colour.
And, you know, I suppose my most powerful
memory, I say it's more powerful than it
is a favourite memory, but my most powerful
memory of my father is a time when we One
weekend, I think I was about 10 or 11, and
we went to, we were building a rabbit hutch
together. And my father took me to a local
DIY store. And it was there that he was wrongfully
accused and also arrested for shoplifting
very publicly and very, very overtly. And
what had happened is that we had been followed
in the store by a security guard. I won't
mention the company that this person was
employed by. And as my father was exiting
the store, he was apprehended by a group
of security officers and taken in front and
full view of everybody up to the manager's
office. I went with him as I was quite young
and couldn't be by myself. And there he was
accused of stealing a tape measure of all
things. And my father at that time was dressed
in somewhat shabby clothing because it was
his work clothes. We were building a rabbit
hutch together. And they were surprised when
he said, well, I should tell you that I'm
a lawyer and I'm now going to start to make
notes about everything that happens to me.
And he took out a pen and paper and started
writing down. at the time and everything
that was happening. This seemed to infuriate
the security officer, I suppose because my
father was standing up for himself. And she
then decided it was a woman. She said, I'm
actually going to make a citizen's arrest.
And for me, it was eye-opening because the
woman said to my father and to the manager
and the other security officers there that
she had witnessed my father take the tape
measure out of its packaging. which was patently
untrue. The manager called the police. The
police came. The police had a look at the
inspector of the tape measure, realized that
this could not be a new tape measure. It
was old and had marks on it. and said, well,
my father is free to go. The manager was
apologetic, duly so, and offered my father
some money as compensation. And my father
said, no, I think the right thing to do here
is that I think the security officer has
made a mistake. And she has profiled me.
And I think the right thing to do is for
this person to apologize in public in front
of the very same people in front of whom
he was arrested. And he insisted on this
public apology. She refused. The manager
had to make the apology instead on her behalf.
But I mentioned that story because it stayed
with me and it gave me, as I said, a very
strong sense of social justice and standing
up for oneself when you have been taken advantage
of or when you've been discriminated against.
And it's given me a strong sense of wanting
to help the other underdog. And my father,
more generally, I suppose, always felt a
very strong sense of solidarity with people
who come from similar backgrounds to himself,
from former colonies in the global south,
come to the UK to build a better life for
himself. But he's a little bit different,
though, from, I think, many other first-generation
immigrants. He didn't really feel this sense
of debt or gratitude that he needed to demonstrate
to the United Kingdom for allowing him to
build a life there. He saw it quite differently.
He saw and argued that, well, much of the
UK's wealth and position in the international
system is because it had successfully colonized
and conquered countries such as his own and
extracted wealth from it, whether resources
or, and built itself on slave and in his
case indentured labour. So he didn't feel
that that he needed to sort of be grateful
and to integrate and assimilate in society.
He was very proud of his identity as a Guyanese
and also as a Muslim. And so he thought he
had a right to build his life on the same
terms as the indigenous British, as it were.
All that to say is that, you know, it had
an impact on me. made me very interested
in issues around inequality and social justice.
I started studying law. I went on then to
study development, moved to Washington, where
I worked for the World Bank for many years.
And it was there, actually, at the World
Bank that I first got interested in the Rwandan
genocide. I read a book by Peter Uvin, a
professor at the time at Tufts University,
in which he had accused the aid industry
of being complicit in the genocide, or at
least creating the conditions that facilitated
the genocide. And I actually decided to engage
in a PhD and have him as one of my supervisors
to look at this question of the genocide
in Rwanda.
On page 13 of your book, you write, and I
quote, the words of the foreign visitor reproduced
above appear in the guest book of a former
church belonging to the rural community of
Nyamata, located in the small Central African
state of Rwanda. In April 1994, some 5,000
people sought refuge here for the same reason.
They were members of Rwanda's Tutsi ethnic
minority. Over three days, April 14th, 15th
and 16th 1994, the men, women and children
crammed inside the brick, the building's
brick walls were killed without distinction.
Their killers comprised many of their neighbours
as well as a smaller number of militiamen
and soldiers alongside whom they worked.
Overwhelmingly, the assailants were drawn
from Rwanda's Hutu ethnic majority. Their
objective was clear, to kill them all. Omar,
please talk to us about the visitor whose
words you mentioned, and why were the foreign
visitor's words so poignant?
Yeah, so I mean, I chose to use the words
of that foreign visitor because the person
was doing something different, I suppose,
to what many people when they hear about
the genocide or if they visit Rwanda do.
So the tendency, the instinct, I suppose,
is to sort of distance oneself from the people
who committed such atrocious violence, who
did such terrible things. I think that's
easy. I think it's easy to revile, to feel
this revulsion against for what had happened
and to sort of say, well, I would never have
done that. I could never do that. And to
fail to understand how anybody could do that.
But that visitor will do something different.
He was, and it was a man, he was empathizing
with the perpetrators, in this case, mostly
the Hutu population in Rwanda, and was making
an effort to understand the circumstances
in which they found themselves and that led
them to do what they did. And it ties in,
in the field of, you know, the study of perpetrators
of genocide and atrocity crimes, with this
idea that, well, they're very often ordinary
people caught up in very extraordinary circumstances.
And also with this idea that, well, killers,
you're not born, very rarely are people born
killers, they're made into killers. So I
felt that that statement tied into these
two ideas about the ordinariness of being
a killer and the idea that you are made into
a killer through the circumstances that you
live in your life. I think that those were
important and I wanted, and as you see if
you read the book, that those ideas underpin
the arguments that I make in the book. But
it set me on this path to try to understand
how and why so many Rwandans came to do what
they did in that time in 1994. There's this
very complex interaction, I think, between
innate characteristics, who you are as a
person that might predispose you towards
such violence, But it isn't only that, there
is this interaction with the environmental,
the things outside of you, right? The social
community, the political circumstances that
put people on a path, that put them into
situations where they feel that this is what
they have to do. To be clear, though, I mean,
I don't think that this in any way excuses
or justifies or exculpates individuals from
their moral responsibility for killing. To
understand is not the same thing as to excuse.
But I think it is still important to understand.
And I think this is what that individual,
that visitor was trying to do, was trying
to understand how and why individuals came
to do what they did. And that's important.
Well, that's important for two reasons. It's
important first because you know, from the
perspective of preventing future atrocity
for the recurrence, it's important to understand
the journey or the pathway that led people
to that point. So I think it's important
from that perspective. But it's also important
to understand how people do what they do
from the perspective of life after the atrocity
as well, from the perspective of reconciliation
or coexistence at least, this idea of restoring
communities to some or some sort of restorative
justice. So how people come to learn to live
together once more, you need to understand
how it is and why it is that they did what
they did. So I think that that phrase sort
of evokes all of those thoughts that underlie
the motivation for writing the book.
On page 23 of your book, you write, and I
quote, one of the main reasons for why the
range of theories is so broad is the lack
of consensus on the concept of genocide.
The 1948 United Nations Convention on Genocide
defines genocide as acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial, or religious group. Almost
every element in the juridical definition
has been the subject of intense scholarly
debate. The victim groups protected, the
perpetrating agents recognized, the modes
of extermination permitted, and the intention
required. Why is there such debate over what
constitutes genocide? And please give us
your best effort at defining genocide in
terms that the average man on the street
can understand?
Yeah, well I think the debate exists because
genocide is widely seen as the crime of crimes.
It is the most morally egregious, heinous
action that can be committed by a state or
people against another people. So It's a
very strong stigma to escape from once a
state or once a people have been accused
of committing genocide. It's very hard to
come back from it. Just look at Germany's
sense of shame in the public psychology since
the Holocaust. So there's going to be very
strong contention around what is a genocide
because people will want to resist the use
of that term in relation to themselves or
to their country. But the other reason why
it's debated is because it's used in different
contexts for very different reasons. So lawyers
use it obviously for the purpose of holding
individuals or states accountable for what
they have done. So there's the rationale
of accountability. But scholars also use
the term genocide and they have departed
from the legal definition because they want
to understand and explain the causes of genocide
or to compare genocides in some way. And
then there were, I suppose, the popular usage
of the term genocide, and that's often made
by communities, sometimes communities who
are the victim communities, because they
want to draw political attention to what's
happening to them. They want to mobilize
resources, perhaps to intervene, to help
them. And they also wish to delegitimize
their opponents, their enemies as well. So
you have all those different reasons and
different communities that use the term genocide.
You know, the meaning varies across them.
So for lawyers, I would say the legal definition
is the most restrictive of all of the ways
in which genocide is conceptualized. And
I would say that sort of the popular usage
is probably the most loose definition of
genocide. But I would say though, maybe to
just highlight how I use the term in the
book as a scholar, and I think maybe to talk
a little bit about how genocide scholars
have moved on from the very limited, very
restrictive definition of genocide in the
Genocide Convention. So there are three ways
I think in which the conceptualization or
the definition of genocide has expanded in
the 70 years or so since the phrase was encapsulated
in the genocide convention. The first is
that the focus on intent. So the convention
sets a very high bar for establishing genocide
because it requires an intent and a very
specific intent. It has to be an intent to
destroy a group. So it's not enough to murder
tens of thousands of people who are from
the same group. you have to show that those
murders were committed with the intent to
destroy in whole or in part that group. So
it's entirely possible to murder many people
but still be not guilty of genocide. So the
scholarly definition has moved away from
this focus on this emphasis on intent and
focuses now on just the idea of, well, is
it deliberate? Is it organized? Is it rather
than, you know, is the intent to destroy?
The second way in which I think scholars
now use the term more expansively is that
they don't limit themselves to the groups
that are recognized in the genocide convention,
ethnic, racial, religious or national. They
say that it's a group that could be defined
along different boundaries, for example,
members of a political group. So if you think
about Indonesia's actions in the 1960s, where
it was the communists who were targeted,
they were targeted because of their political
beliefs. So that might be a genocide for
scholars, but not for lawyers, for example.
And then the third and final way in which
scholars have moved on and expanded the definition
is that they don't limit genocide solely
to the physical destruction of a people,
which is what the legal definition in the
convention does. They, for example, now also
consider the social destruction of a group
to be genocide as well. So if, for example,
the state or the people are targeting the
infrastructure of a community. So if you're
targeting the schools and the universities
and the hospitals and the religious establishments,
then this is an attempt to destroy the society,
the social infrastructure of the group, and
that also can be considered genocide. So
you asked what's the best way for, in simple
terms, for a person who's not a specialist
to understand what genocide is, I would say
this. I say, I would say that, well, violence
generally is a behaviour that tries to communicate
something. And we have many different types
of violence that try to communicate many
different types of things. Some violence
is communicating a wish to control a group,
or to punish a group or to discourage a group.
But with genocide, the type of violence envisaged
is not to communicate. In fact, that violence
in genocide is violence that seeks to end
communication with another group. And I think
that's the best way to think of the difference
between genocidal violence and other types
of political violence, is that there is a
wish to end communication, to end the relationship.
There's no desire to regulate or to control
or to deter. It is to end communication.
On page 41 of your book, under the heading
Research Design, the evidence and methods
You're right, and I quote, genocide is an
empirically complex phenomenon. No single
study can account for all aspects of its
violence. It is also a highly politicized
and deeply emotional subject. On certain
issues, the findings may always be disputed,
and some people may never be persuaded. Researchers
may find they themselves rather than their
research. are the object of scrutiny and
criticism. Accusations of revisionism, minimalism,
and denialism are among the risks genocide
scholars, including those working on Rwanda,
face. Omar, since the victims were once actual
living people, I must wonder, given the current
tragic situation in the Holy Land, Why are
you interested in researching genocides?
Why the Rwandan genocide in particular?
Well, since you've brought up the situation
ongoing in Gaza, anyone who wages into the
debate, into the rights and wrongs of what
Netanyahu's government is doing in Gaza at
the moment, you know, it's his choices in
how to conduct the war since October 7th.
Well, anybody who's done that will know what
I mean when I say that it is an occupational
hazard to work on genocide. That situation
is extremely politically sensitive and very
emotionally charged. And people who offer
views on this run the risk of being accused
of being anti-semitic and we have such a
definition of anti-semitism in how it's being
used at the moment that it is very difficult
or there's very little space to be able to
be critical of Israeli government policy
or critical of the ideology of Zionism without
being accused of being anti-semitic. So when
I say that as a genocide scholar you run
these occupational risks, I think that's
true not just in the case of Israel but also
in the case of other genocides including
the Rwandan genocide. But since you've asked
about the situation or brought it up at least,
I often get from individuals who are supportive
or defensive of Israel and specifically of
Netanyahu's government, I always get the
question, well, why are genocide, why are
scholars being critical of Israel? Why are
they singling Israel out? Because why are
they not speaking about what's happening
against the Rohingya in Myanmar or what's
going on in the Sudan at the moment or what
that atrocities committed in Syria? Why has
Israel been singled out? And maybe you're
biased because you're picking on Israel and
that makes you, maybe that bias is also anti-Semitic.
Well, I don't think so. I think there are
two good reasons why it is justifiable to
speak up if, as a genocide scholar, when
one sees atrocities being committed by both
sides in that situation in Israel and Gaza.
The first is simply because in my case I'm
a UK citizen and I pay UK taxes and it is
my government that is providing both material
and diplomatic support to Netanyahu's government
and that government is committing some very
serious atrocities in Gaza that would require
investigation and legal qualification at
some point. So as a citizen I feel I have
an obligation, not just as a genocide scholar,
but also I think a second reason is that,
well, In the case of like Sudan and Myanmar
and Syria, these are not countries that we
call democracies and do not call themselves
democracies. And they do not say they are
committed to liberal values such as justice
and equality and freedom. They also do not
say that they have the most moral army in
the world. Israel does. So I think if Netanyahu's
government says that and if my country and
other western countries provide support to
Netanyahu on the basis that Israel is seen
to have similar liberal values in common,
moral values in common, then I think then
it does raise the question of whether it
is okay then to then call out if they are
acting inconsistently with those moral values.
But OK, and the case for genocide, by the
way, in Israel, I won't offer a determination,
but I would say that there are the two strongest
arguments. The first is in relation to the
bombing and drone attacks, which when coupled
with the statements from the senior leadership,
from the president, the prime minister and
the minister of defense, Well, it begs the
question of why choose to use such destructive
weaponry? Why so many two ton bombs? At the
very least, I think in the case of the bombing
argument, it shows an extreme disregard for
the value of Palestinian life. whether that's
strong enough to infer an intent to destroy.
Well, I think that's a legal determination.
But I think the stronger case is the humanitarian
siege in that's ongoing in Gaza. So why we
are seeing the Israeli defense forces making
it so difficult for humanitarian aid, food,
fuel, water, medicine to get into Gaza, and
that we now have a UN reports of famine being
imminent, it does beg the question of what
the motivation is for making it so difficult
for humanitarian aid to come in. And of course,
what's happened most recently with the targeting
of the convoy, the aid convoy in which seven
aid workers were killed because the IDF believed
that there was a single Hamas combatant in
that convoy turned out to be untrue. But
even if that were true, that there were a
single Hamas combatant there, it does beg
the question again about the extreme disregard
for the civilian lives, for civilian life,
and in this case, foreign civilians. You
asked the question, well, why Rwanda? Why
did I choose to work on Rwanda? Well, Rwanda's
genocide, genocide, I mean, is fortunately
a very rare occurrence. Rwanda's genocide,
though, stands out even among rare occurrences,
not just because it's tragic and shocking,
but there are some features of the Rwandan
genocide that I think that are quite distinctive.
and puzzling at the same time. And it is
these distinctive features, I think, that
drew me to wish to understand what happened
in Rwanda. So it is the fact that so many
ordinary Rwandans participated in the violence.
It's the fact that this violence happened
in almost every part of Rwanda where Tutsi
lived. It's the fact that it happened so
quickly, in less than a hundred days, this
genocide was executed, and that it resulted
in the deaths of so many. We estimate nearly
two-thirds of the Tutsi population were killed
in that time period. So, for me, the motivation
for the Rwanda genocide is not unusual, it's
quite similar to the motivations for other
genocides, largely around threat and opportunity,
and the Hutu population and the Hutu government
invoking security fears saying that they
were defending themselves. These are logics
that we see in other instances of genocides
which often occur in the context of wars.
But in Rwanda's case, it was the answer to
the question of why was it so distinctive?
Well, it's because I discovered that Rwanda
has a very unusual set of features as a country.
It's a very unusual baseline against which
the war operates. So the high population
density, very small territory, an unusual
topography where it's very difficult for
people to hide, very high road density which
made it very easy for resources including
soldiers and militia to be able to move around,
and the ethnic settlement pattern that you
have not separate Hutu lands and Tutsi lands
but actually Hutu and Tutsi living separate
at side by side next to each other. So I
think all of those very unusual socio-demographic
and socio-political characteristics actually
explain why it is that Rwanda has those unusual
features. But it was those unusual features
that made me want to study it in the first
place.
On page 121 of your book, you write, and
I quote, political liberalization was the
second macro-political factor in conjunction
with the civil war that pushed Rwanda closer
to genocide between 1990 and 1994. As in
many parts of Africa, Rwanda took preliminary
steps away from autocracy and towards democracy.
This move did not, ineluctably or by itself,
lead to mass ethnic violence. 39 other African
nations underwent democratic transitions
at the same time as Rwanda, yet none of these
ended in genocide. In Rwanda, however, the
push for political freedom and usually coincided
with a civil war. Rwanda's ruling elite faced
twin challenges to its power, an external
threat from a rebel army and a domestic challenge
from new opposition parties. The interaction
of the war with liberalization escalated
elite contestation and brought ethnicity
to the foreground of Rwanda's politics. It
enabled the rise of ethnic extremism. Do
I understand you correctly when you say that
democratization and other forms of political
liberalization are not the silver bullet
that would solve all of Africa's, all of
the complex problems brought on by ethnic
conflict in Africa? And if yes, why?
Well, yes, yes, you are correct. And that
is what I am saying. But I should begin by
saying that, well, this is not a new critique,
or even a radical critique among political
scientists that competitive politics that
liberal democracy can be destabilizing. If
one goes back to the end of the Cold War
in 1989, the established accepted wisdom
for how one deals with civil wars reflected
this belief that, you know, it is the triumph
of liberal democracy over communism that
leads to the belief that, well, if you want
to end a civil war, what you do is that you
have some sort of temporary power sharing
agreement a transition period and then some
elections to legitimize a government, competitive
elections to legitimize a government. But
this end of history model, liberal internationalist
model has proved to be problematic as we
have seen and I think Rwanda is just one
of these countries that has illustrated the
risks of competitive politics So the critique
has been, well, liberal democracy or competitive
politics, well, that should only really be
promoted once you have strong institutions
in place in the country. But if you bring
in a liberal model which has at its core
the idea that competition is good, competition
in markets in the economic realm and competition
in politics in the political realm, so elections,
that if you do that before you've got strongly
embedded institutions, so independent institutions
that can resist being captured by private
actors. So it means that in the context of
competitive politics, it means that you need
to have an independent electoral commission,
you need to have an independent judiciary
to be able to adjudicate on disputes around
the elections and campaigning in elections.
You also need to have an independent police
force and army that act neutrally in election
periods, if you don't have those institutions
that are independent and you bring in elections,
then it destabilizes the country because
those institutions are captured by either
the incumbent or perhaps sometimes even challengers
and the country destabilizes under the competition.
But I would go one step further and say that
it's not just that you need to institutionalize
before you liberalize, which is a common
critique. I would say you also need to have
a mature and responsible civil society. in
addition to strong institutions. So this
means that you would have an independent
media and it means that you would also have
a mature NGO sector as well. So and these
are actors then that have strong sense of
professional ethics and professional responsibility
and that they know what is appropriate to
publish, what it is appropriate to say, so
that you do not fan the flames of ethnic
divisionism. These two conditions were clearly
not met in Rwanda in the 1990s. They were
not strong institutions and there was not
a mature and responsible civil society. Much
of the civil society had been co-opted by
the state and the media certainly did not
act, many elements of the media did not act
with that sense of responsibility and restraint
that you would expect in a more mature democracy.
And this view, by the way, is also shared
by the current Rwandan government. They have
explicitly eschewed competitive politics
and opted for consensus democracy instead,
because they also say that the two time periods
in Rwanda's history in which they have experienced
competitive elections, in the period immediately
around independence, and then in the period
after the end of the Cold War. Both of those
resulted in violence, a revolution in 1959,
and then a genocide in 1994. So there is
no love lost for the absence of competitive
elections in Rwanda.
On page 182, You write thus, it again warned
that the killings may be crimes punishable
under international law. However, it was
not until June 8th that the Security Council
finally adopted a Resolution 925 that mentioned
acts of genocide and strengthened the mandate
of Unema II to include the protection of
displaced persons, refugees, civilians at
risk. It was too little, too late, however.
Most of the killing had occurred in the first
two weeks. It would take another month for
the peacekeepers and the resources needed
to operationalize UNIMOD II, even to reach
Rwanda. Omar, there have been several military
confrontations in the 21st century, many
of them verging on genocide. Is the United
Nations Security Council still needed in
a new multipolar world and what proactive
measures can we take to stop the escalation
of armed conflict and improve the management
of it globally within the UN Security Council?
Well that is a big question, the subject
I suppose of several books. The answer is
yes. I think, in my view, that the UN Security
Council is still needed. But I guess I would
obviously acknowledge the anachronistic nature
of the Security Council, the permanent members.
It reflects the balance of power at the end
of World War II, so that we end up with countries
that today are not as internationally or
militarily or economically as significant
as they were in 1945. So there's that, the
anachronistic nature of the balance of power
that's been institutionalized in the permanent
membership of the Security Council. There's
also the more general issue that the capabilities
that the UN, well the expectations that the
UN greatly exceed the UN's capabilities.
And much of the critique that I heard, for
example, when I was in Rwanda talking to
Rwandans, much of the hostility does come
from this idea that, well, the UN failed
us and they had this expectation that the
UN should have done more and so forth. And
then also the fact that the veto that each
permanent member has means that it's very
hard to get resolutions passed, as we have
seen, I suppose, until recently with this
resolution to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
with the US having vetoed earlier resolutions,
and this time abstaining with the most recent
one. So it's very hard to end that, to kind
of change that architecture. But I still
think despite all of those problems, you
know, the capabilities problem, the veto
problem, etc. I still think that there is
a very important role for the CUN Security
Council in matters of international peace
and security and for preventing genocide
as well. Because it is the only truly supranational
architecture that we have. It's still the
only space that we have in which these issues
can come to be debated and potentially acted
upon. And even if there isn't action, if
there's inaction, because there is veto,
because there is paralysis, well, at least
there's a record that these things are happening
have happened. And there's a record of the
inaction as well. And that that's important
when it comes to assessing historic responsibility
as well. So yes, I still think there's a
need for the UN Security Council. Your second
question is even bigger, I think. What can
we do about this? Well, I think there's no
silver bullet to deal with the scourge of
armed conflict in the world. If you were
to look at the post-World War II history,
I would say that there was a great power
conflict largely ended with 1989, with the
end of the Cold War. and then we entered
a period in history where we saw much of
the armed conflicts that we saw were intrastate
rather than interstate conflicts. These were
civil wars fought within countries and this
of which Rwanda's genocide is the combination
of one such civil war. I say we're now entering
possibly a new phase, which perhaps is the
return of interstate conflict and maybe even
great power conflict. So looking at Russia
and Ukraine, Armenia and Azerbaijan, looming
conflict perhaps between Israel and Iran,
or even China and the United States, and
also in my own home country, Guyana, with
Venezuela over Guyana's newly found oil wealth.
So, but, you know, if I were to say and to
try to pick on one thing that I think could
help reduce the incidence of armed conflict,
I would say it would be continue support
for a rules-based system, of which the UN
Security Council is one very important element.
We need to ensure that there is not impunity
for violations of the international legal
order. But I actually think the institution
that needs the greatest political support
and has the greatest potential for preventing
war and atrocity is actually the International
Criminal Court. Unfortunately, we seem to
be moving in the opposite direction rather
than strengthening it. The world seems to
be taking steps to weaken it. But I do think
it is the institution that is best equipped.
for deterring war and atrocity, because it
means individual accountability. And that
means that the people at the top, the leaders,
it changes their calculus. If they know that
if they start a war, or if they engage in
a bombing campaign that results in the mass
killings of individuals, that there is potentially
a reckoning to be had, then I think that
would mean that they would think much more
deeply about engaging in such actions. But
the ICC obviously has some severe constraints.
It's largely seen as an institution that
targets politically and internationally weaker
countries in the global south, rather than
coming after or starting investigations into
the actions of politically more important
countries. But I think that the greatest
testament to the capabilities of the ICC
is to look at the record of the countries
who have refused either to sign or to ratify
the Rome Statute. because they fear and they
know what could potentially happen and how
it would limit their range of actions. So
the United States, Russia, China, so great
powers, India, Indonesia, Israel, these are
all countries which have refused to either
sign or ratify the Rome Statute because the
ICC would so severely limit what it is that
they felt that they could do.
The title of our podcast is, Why Genocide
is the Responsibility of the Entire World.
On September 27th, 2022, you published a
powerful paper in a journal, Africa Affairs,
entitled, Securocratic State Building, the
Rationales, Rebattles, and Risks Behind Extraordinary
Rise of Rwanda After the Genocide. You wrote
the following, and I quote, In a striking
example of this polarization and these differing
priorities, the British government's decision
in 2022 to ask Rwanda to process and settle
asylum seekers to the UK drew starkly divergent
reactions on the day the new policy was announced.
The government justified its decision by
pointing to Rwanda's international recognition
for its safety strong governance, law corruption,
gender equality, and as one of the fastest
growing economies across Africa. Human Rights
Watch, in contrast, challenged the decision
by pointing to Rwanda's known track record
for extrajudicial killings, suspicious deaths
in custody, and lawful or arbitrary detention,
torture, and abusive prosecutions particularly
targeting critics and dissidents. On November
15th, 2023, the UK Supreme Court in a landmark
decision found the UK Rwanda asylum scheme
unlawful. Omar, please explain to our audience
why the problem of genocide is and should
be the responsibility of the entire world
in the context of a podcast theme and in
the light of the ongoing controversy surrounding
the genocide in Rwanda and its aftermath?
And how important is telling the truth with
special reference to the Rwanda safety bill?
for the record, I think that the decision
to the wish to make Rwanda a place to process
and settle asylum seekers to the UK, I think
that that's a that's a bad decision. And
how important is it to tell the truth, I
think it's very important to tell the truth
about the record of a country. But at the
same time, you know, the UK has has a real
problem. And Rwanda presents in the minds
of the current conservative government a
solution to that problem. So the problem
is that the post-World War II system for
dealing with refugees is under strain. There
is simply more refugees than governments
feel capable of being able to manage. And
the UK has a point. There are many people
who are coming on small boats to the United
Kingdom, and they are choosing the United
Kingdom to seek asylum. And the Conservative
government makes the point that, well, the
reason for asylum is that you face persecution
in your home country. That doesn't give you
necessarily an unconditional or unfettered
right which country you can seek asylum in,
you should simply be able to seek asylum
in a country where you would not face this
persecution. Why are you coming to Europe?
Why are you coming to the United Kingdom?
There are other countries where you could
also feel safe and escape persecution. So
the Conservative government believes that
people are coming to the UK not only because
they wish to escape persecution, but because
the UK provides economic opportunities for
them and a political environment that is
better in other countries. And So they want
to discourage this. They think they shouldn't
be able to shop. Refugees shouldn't be able
to shop for the country that they wish to
seek asylum in. So they want to create it
less attractive. They think, well, Rwanda
is less attractive economically, but might
be able to provide asylum seekers with safe
haven. So dealing with the political issue,
but not with the economic issue. And, you
know, from the Rwanda perspective, it's great
because the Rwanda government really wishes
to establish a reputation internationally
and to be recognized as a place where the
UK government feels it is safe for asylum
seekers to be settled, well, that sends a
very powerful signal to the rest of the world
and to Rwanda's critics. So it's a win-win
from the UK government perspective and the
Rwandan government perspective. The losers,
the refugees, are the asylum seekers themselves.
because it's very clear from the human rights
organisations, independent human rights organisations,
that Rwanda is not a safe place for asylum
seekers and that many Rwandan citizens themselves
flee Rwanda seeking asylum elsewhere. So
it's hard to understand how then a country
that has people fleeing, it can also be a
place that can be safe for other asylum seekers.
The response to that you cited in that article
to this Rwanda safety bill is polarized and
it mirrors the polarization, the wider polarization
about Rwanda after the genocide. So and that
polarization, you know, we're coming up to
30, it's 30 years, this year, since the genocide,
and, you know, views on Rwanda are still
polarized, not just among Rwandans, but among
those who observe Rwanda and follow Rwanda.
And, you know, the part of this polarization
is simply a consequence of the civil war
and genocide, but part of it is also simply
a consequence of what do you think is more
important when you try to evaluate a country.
So, you know, if you think that, you know,
the Rwanda is a country which has visionary
leadership, it's technologically very forward-looking,
and it has strong, effective state institutions,
it has political stability, it's a good environment
to do business in, then yes, Rwanda, if those
are your normative priorities, then Rwanda
is a very attractive country. But if your
normative priorities are different, if you
think, well, democracy is important and civil
and political liberties are important and
justice and reconciliation are important,
well then no, Rwanda is not such an attractive
country to live in. And this reflects the
polarization in the academic views on Rwanda
as well as some governments as well. So both
of those views are potentially correct. I
published that article that you mentioned
in African Affairs because I thought that
these polarized views, neither of them truly
captures or does justice to what Rwanda's
post-genocide government is doing in the
country. They're too characterized, right?
On the one hand, Rwanda is this great developmental
state with high modernist ambitions. On the
other hand, it's this dictatorship and ethnocracy
and repressive regime. So neither of those
fully captures what Rwanda is doing. So I
developed this idea of a securocratic state
builder, of which I think the Rwandan government
is an exemplar of. And the Rwandan model,
it's important, Rwanda has, the fate of Rwanda
has more to do with just, you know, what
happens to Rwandan citizens. There are international
organizations, there are other African leaders
and countries who are looking at Rwanda and
asking, will this model succeed? Because
we'd like to see if it does, because maybe
it's one that we should copy. So it has an
impact far beyond the borders of Rwanda.
So what about the Securitatec state building
model? So it's neither liberal nor illiberal.
Rwanda is essentially the only principle
that I think that the Rwandan government
as a securocratic state builder follows is
simply the principle that security comes
first all the time. Security trumps liberty.
Security trumps equality. It's not that we
are against liberty. It's not that we are
against equality. It's simply that security
is much more important. And that's reflected
in the grand strategic choices that the Rwandan
government has made since the genocide, right?
In terms of the political system and political
philosophy, it said no to competitive politics
and yes to consensus democracy, because it
thinks that competition is destabilizing.
So it's a security risk. It said no in the
social realm. It's an undertaken social engineering.
It said that we are going to eliminate in
the public sphere the identification along
ethnic lines because the history of ethnicity
is that it's divisive and leads to conflict.
And then lastly, in the realm of the state
and the economy, its ambition has been to
modernize both the state and the economy,
to have strong, effective institutions and
to generate high levels of growth. None of
those choices is a bad choice in itself,
but none, I'm afraid, in my view, is sustainable
in the long run. And I don't hold much hope
that the model will not end in some dramatic...
I fear that it may end in some dramatic way
that is not peaceable. And the reason for
that is that each of those three grand strategic
choices that Rwanda made in respect of the
political system, well, you can't really
have consensus if you coerce people and don't
let them to have a choice. You can't really
talk about consensus if there is no choice.
And in terms of engineering, you know, eliminating
ethnicity, well, you can't really eliminate
ethnicity if your policies reflect your fear
that ethnicity is still a socially and politically
powerful force in the country. So you know
these laws outlawing genocide ideology, its
recognition that it is a genocide of the
the Tutsi, this memorialization of the genocide.
These all, you know, institutionalize ethnicity
and they all reflect the fear, the government's
fear that ethnic extremism still exists somewhere
inside Rwanda. So you can't really talk about
outlawing it and trying to be kind of post-ethnic
if you still fear that it is there. And then
you can't lastly have strong independent
institutions if you're going to control all
of the appointments to government offices.
It's not enough for the Rwandan government
that you're competent, that you appoint individuals
who are competent, you also have to be loyal.
to the regime. And that, I think, is problematic.
You can't really have independent institutions
that can survive a change of political party,
a turnover of government, if loyalty has
been baked into the appointment process.
So fundamentally I think there is this strategic
contradiction at the heart of the securocratic
state building model. It's that it emphasizes
security at the expense of unity and that's
why I don't think it's sustainable in the
long run.
As an academic studying genocide and armed
conflict, what scares you the most?
Well let me talk about genocide. I think
two things that I worry about and these are
first an under-appreciation of the effect,
the long-term effect on the behavior of the
victim group, once they are in power, if
they come to power. And then the second is
an under-appreciation again, but this time
of the long-term impact on the behavior of
the perpetrator and the bystander group.
So it's about the long-term effects of genocide,
underestimated or under-recognized long-term
effects of them. And the two countries that
I have in the back of my mind here are Rwanda
and Israel, because the Tutsi and the Jews
have similar experiences. They're not perfect
parallels, but there are some similarities
here. So both are people who have experienced
persecution and exclusion, Both are people
who have had to leave their homeland and
become refugees. And both are people who
have returned to their homeland and also
ascended to power in their homeland as well.
So they've come to rule in their homelands.
And when I talk then about effect on the
behavior of the victim group? Well, what
I worry about is that we fail to recognize
just how profoundly strong is the sense of
victimhood among the victim group itself.
So this sense of that we are always the victims
of everything, very pronounced sense of victimization.
I also think it makes the victim group very
sensitive, hyper sensitive as well to criticism.
And because it's motivated by this fear that
we need to defend ourselves. And indeed,
that's the third thing is that there is this
willingness to always invoke their security
fears or this need to defend themselves against
an enemy out there. It's very strong. And
it can lead then to extreme repression, to
extreme actions to defend themselves, and
so potentially to further wrongdoings, to
further even atrocities. So I worry about
not recognizing how victim groups, when they
come to power, behave once they're in power.
They have these They have this set of characteristics,
I think, that could lead to further atrocities.
And then from the perpetrator or bystander
perspective, I think there were impacts on
their behavior as well that we do not fully
recognize. So I think the perspective is
one of guilt and shame. for both perpetrators
and bystanders, right? So in the case of
the Jews, it would be Germany's very pronounced
sense of public shame and remorse for the
Holocaust and how that's impacted German
foreign policy vis-a-vis Israel to make it
so strongly an ally of Israel, potentially
at the expense of preserving its own liberal
values around liberal and moral values. And
then with bystanders, so in the case of Rwanda,
it would be the international community or
external actors who failed to act and who
let the genocide happen. So their guilt and
shame enables the Rwandan government to do
things because there's a unwillingness to
speak out and criticize because, well, who
are they to speak out and criticize? Because
where were they in 1994? And it means then
that the Rwandan government can get away
with things that perhaps other governments
could not. And then lastly, I would say this
has a long-term impact in the other countries.
So it could have an impact on civil liberties.
and free speech. If you think about, take
the case of Israel and what's happening at
the moment, this overly expansive definition
of anti-Semitism. Let me just take a sip
of water. It's made it very difficult to
have legitimate dissent on Israeli government
policies. And it's led governments to outlaw
criticism of Zionism. It's led to making
even peaceful dissent difficult, outlawing
boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.
France, for example, banned marches that
are considered to be supportive of Palestinians.
The UK has led to a redefinition of what
is extremism in the UK. So I worry about
also the impact on civil and political liberties
in our own countries as well that are allies
with these victim groups that have come to
power. More generally, I think it reinforces
a very strong sense of zero-sum thinking,
them versus us, when victim groups come to
power and see themselves only as victim groups
and not as representative of something more.
Finally, Omar, please advise our listeners
where they may find your book, The Path to
Genocide, in Rwanda.
Sure. It's available on Amazon, and it's
also available on the Cambridge University
website as well, both in paperback and in
hardback and as an e-book as well.
Dr. Omar MacDoon, thank you very much for
being a guest on this podcast.
It was my pleasure, Stephen. Thanks for the
invitation.
This podcast was brought to you by the Kamgassa
Challenge in partnership with Democracy in
Africa. Democracy in Africa is a platform
dedicated to building a bridge between academics,
policymakers, practitioners and citizens.
The third episode in the series is entitled
Genocide. How to challenge identity politics
in the 21st century. An interview with Dr
Jochen Lingelbach, postdoctoral research
assistant at the Chair of African History
in the Cluster of Excellence. at the University
of Bayreuth. The podcast will go live on
June 10th, 2024. If you enjoyed this podcast,
please support us by subscribing to Conversations
with Stephen Kamgasser through your favorite
podcast app. Thank you very much for taking
the time to listen to this podcast. Until
next time, goodbye.