Anika Kiddoe | It is time to treat genocide, like genocide

In her July 2022 Stanford Social Innovation Review article, ‘When It Becomes Impossible to Look Away’, Ann Lamont explored what drives social change leaders to dedicate their lives to problems larger than themselves. While relaying the clarity it brought to her own journey, Lamont invokes Ursula Le Guin’s short story, Those Who Walk Away From Omelas. Here’s the crux of it, as summarised by Lamont.

“There is a child, only one child, who has been removed from all human company and kept in a tiny, windowless, cellar-like space. The child is filthy and malnourished, stunted and fearful. “It”, the pronoun Le Guin uses, is given a pitiful meal often enough to keep it alive, but receives no care: the rule is that no one is allowed even to speak a kind word to it. Everyone in Omelas knows about the child. But they believe that if the child were saved and cared for – “in that day and hour, all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed”. These are the terms of their comfortable lives.

It should be disturbing to consider how much of this analogy is mirrored in reality. So, let me ask: Are you someone who’s willing to be disturbed today? Roughly four per cent of the global population (309 million people across 71 countries) are navigating hunger crises. The primary drivers are conflict and insecurity, extreme weather and climate variability and economic shocks. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organization and World Food Programme, Palestine, South Sudan and Mali are in the worst straits vis-à-vis existence or risk of mass starvation and death. Closer to home, an estimated 1.6 million Haitians face ‘emergency’ levels of food insecurity.

Simultaneously, many are dealing with lack of access to water, the slaughter of loved ones, physical and emotional trauma with limited or no access to health services, displacement from their homes, ruination of tangible cultural heritage, destruction of critical infrastructure and loss of virtually all their earthly possessions. In the specific context of genocides, the scale of these horrors is overtly due to the victims’ race, ethnicity, nationality and/or religion.

DO THE MOST YOU CAN

Still, if anyone set out to make a case for why you should care indeed, for why you should do the most you can to alleviate other human beings’ suffering, they’re quite likely facing an uphill battle, unless you already have a generally strong sense of duty embedded in your consciousness. It’s difficult to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. It’s even more difficult to wrap our brains around the suggestion that evils or misfortunes befalling them could ever happen to us, or anyone we care deeply about. It’s easier to pretend it isn’t happening. It’s easier to ‘mind our own business’. It’s easier to confuse selfishness with self-preservation.

At the start of the year, in the article ‘Wars all around us: Our role in preserving humanity’, I sought to underscore this generation’s determination to honour our ancestral legacy of moral leadership in the world by standing against all genocides, including the one unfolding in the occupied Palestinian territories. Three and a half months later, on April 22, with what appeared to be the looming prospect of Jamaica’s inclusion in a regional advocacy tour by the UN Committee for the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, our representatives finally afforded official recognition to the State of Palestine. However, the announcement didn’t include an expression of intention to act against the genocide of her people or even acknowledge it. Despite the toll associated with ignoring clamouring local voices, our representatives stopped short of truly representing us.

WHY?

More importantly, why has nothing changed since April? As we witness bombings of refugee families in ‘safe zones’ (flagrantly defying multilateral calls, resolutions and pronouncements for ceasefire), can anyone credibly claim to value all human lives equally and not refer to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in Palestine as genocide, even at this stage? Why is there still a divergence in our government’s official stance from that of most of our citizens?

We can’t afford to be passive about rogue states further devaluing the legal system we depend on to protect us. The inequities Jamaica faces regarding climate change, finance and trade are already enough and surely too much for us to tolerate further compromise. It’s time for our elected representatives to treat genocide, like genocide.

Civic leaders overwhelmingly refuse to support national decisions that mistake selfishness for self-preservation, thereby ceding diplomatic leverage and increasing our collective vulnerability. We respect the moral duties encoded in our National Pledge, we understand that brute disregard for international law poses the greatest risk to small states en masse, and we know taking decided action will cost us less than the alternative. As such, our representatives must:

1. Unequivocally decry all genocidal assaults and endorse South Africa’s case at the International Court of Justice.

2. Demand the cessation of arms shipments to genociders, regardless of their location, in compliance with international law.

3. Fully disclose interests in and – until the humanity of Palestinians is equally honoured – cut all Jamaican-Israeli trade and diplomatic ties.

Government officials must and will do these things if committed to honourably representing the majority, because, to us, the case for action is unassailable: No matter who the perpetrators are, denouncing gross inhumanity will always be Jamaica’s business.

Anika Kiddoe is an economist, a recipient of the George Beckford Prize, and a Thomas De La Rue scholar. Send feedback to anikakiddoe@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com.