Academic Writing.

This page contains excerpts and clippings of my academic writing - essays and research projects. Please get in contact for full text and to commission work (standard fee applies).

All excerpts are copyright protected - Rebecca Corn 2011 (c)

(Political Science)

Humanitarianism and the Rwandan Genocide - An NGO Revolution?[1] (excerpt)

"In 1994 the world was stunned by the news of genocide in Rwanda. Despite repeated warnings from humanitarian organisations on the ground, the United Nations (UN) was paralysed as between 800 thousand and 1 million people were murdered and 3.9 million people became refugees and internally displaced peoples[2]. Designated as the ‘global conscience’[3], humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) responded where states would not dare to tread. Ten years on, the international community wrings its hands with guilt, vowing ‘Never Again’.

There are too many examples throughout the world today of peoples excluded from the global dialogue, in humanitarian crisis and unable to effect change, or forced to extreme measures in order to enter the world’s consciousness. Global politics is exploding as never before with a dissonance between evident dialogical structures, and possible dialogical reach. We remain governed by a war-time distribution of power of influence. Crucially, global response to ‘complex emergencies’[4], when necessarily tailored to such a framework, become increasingly inappropriate and dangerously inapplicable. Perhaps as a global community it is time to look to more appropriate structures of representation, that focus on giving voice to the affected, not simply those with the power to effect. And perhaps, a more politicised role for the ‘global conscience’, should be the first step.

[1] Annan, K. “SECRETARY-GENERAL EXAMINES 'MEANING OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY' IN ADDRESS TO DPI/NGO CONFERENCE” (United Nations Press Release SG/SM/7133 PI/1176, 17/09/1999)

[2] Wright, N ‘The Hidden Costs of Better Coordination’ in Whitman, J. and Pocock, D. After Rwanda: The Co-ordination of United Nations Humanitarian Assistance (Houndsmill: MacMillan Press ltd, 1996)

[3] Rieff, D. A Bed for the Night : Humanitarianism in Crisis (London: Simon & Schuster, 2003)

[4] Duffield, M. Global governance and the new wars: the merging of development and security (London: Zed Books, 2001)