What do Europeans do when they hear the war waged by the government of Ethiopia has killed more people than the war in Ukraine?
In a way, Ukraine points to a new breed of oppression in a world in which oppression is commonplace. The Russian invasion of Ukraine dovetail with both the cultural and geopolitical aspects of oppression.
A genocide is taking place in Tigray. Why is there no mobilization of African civil society organizations, non-governmental bodies, religious institutions, and individuals in support of Tigrayan refugees?
After years of complaint about being “overwhelmed” by trickles of new arrivals, Europe has absorbed millions of refugees fleeing the conflict in Ukraine virtually overnight. However, the solidarity that underpins this dramatic turnaround would appear to exclude non-Europeans.
As Africans, we are going to have to come up with our own mechanisms for dealing with the accountability of our leaders and managing conflicts when they take place.
As the total disregard for people of African descent is shown in the context of the deadly invasion of Ukraine by Russia, Christiane Ndedi Essombe and Benjamin Maiangwa argue that the contempt and compulsive need to invalidate, belittle and dehumanize people of African descent remains unchanged in an irredeemably racist Europe. Essombe and Maiangwe ask what does this racism reveal about international human rights frameworks?
After an eight-decade hiatus, Europe is again at war, and as with all European conflicts past, the invasion of Ukraine is about business; when capitalists want something, they find an excuse to start a war in order to get it.
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That is the tragedy of history, of Europe’s regional wars that have been resurrected from the past. The relatively long lull from regional wars that Europe enjoyed in the post-World War II era, which survived during the nerve-wracking tensions of the Cold War, is over.
Events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 offer a sobering lesson on why we cannot rely on the UN Security Council to save the world from the scourge of war.