In December 1948 the UN General Assembly adopted the universal declaration of human rights. The article1 of the declaration reads as follows:
” All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
Let’s overlook the gender bias of the word ‘brotherhood’ and concentrate on the words ‘reasons and conscience’. So, UN General Assembly declares that as humans we possess both the ability to reason and conscience. That’s really gratifying, particularly the element that we have got a conscience.
American Psychological Association defines conscience as ‘an individual’s sense of right and wrong or of transgression against moral values.’ Cambridge Dictionary explains it more clearly as the part of individuals that assesses the morality of their own actions and evokes feelings of guilt for wrongdoing or responsibility for things they have done. Given these definitions, it won’t be an overstatement to say that conscience is central to humanity. The world would, undoubtedly, be a heavenly place if we all had a conscience. But unfortunately, the world we live in is far from being a heavenly place – we have widespread injustice, discrimination, corruption, war, and everything.
Recall the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when an estimated 800,000 people were massacred. The Rwandan population comprises, basically, two ethnic groups – Hutus and Tutsis. Although Hutus are the majority but the country was ruled by the Tutsis. According to a BBC news article published on April 4, 2019, Hutus ousted the Tutsi monarchy in 1959 which led to tens of thousands of Tutsis fleeing to neighboring countries. A group of Tutsi exiles founded the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), which launched an invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The conflict persisted until a peace agreement was reached in 1993. In April 1994 a plane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi – both Hutus – was shot down by unknown assailants killing them both and everyone else on the plane. Hutu extremists blamed the RPF for the incident and began a systematic campaign of slaughtering the Tutsis. At that time, ID cards included the ethnic identity of people, which made it easy for the militias formed by the ruling party’s youth wing to identify and murder Tutsis by setting up roadblocks. Neighbors killed neighbors and even there were cases where husbands murdered their Tutsi wives. There were UN peacekeepers, Belgian troops, and French troops stationed in Rwanda but nobody did anything to stop the carnage that went on for more than three months. It finally ended only when RPF captured the capital Kigali and overthrew the Hutu government on July 4, 1994.
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This article was published in the Daily Sun on April 1, 2023. Please read the full article here or here.