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This photo of a Rwandan woman embracing the daughter born from rape during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 has won the National Portrait Gallery’s annual photographic prize.

The above picture of Joseline Ingabire, a Tutsi, embracing her second daughter Leah Batamuliza, was taken by photographer Jonathan Torgovnik as part of a series documenting the lives of the thousands of Rwandan rape victims. Leaning against the mud wall of their home is Ingabire’s first daughter.

When the genocide started, Joseline was married and two months pregnant. An armed militia came to her village and brutally killed her husband in front of her.

What followed was months of rape, which continued during her ninth month of pregnancy with Hossiana, and quickly resumed after the birth, from which she became pregnant with her second daughter and infected with HIV.


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This seems to be a development of the post on Zimbabwe. It effectively questioned whether the United Nations is right to require the international community to intervene in a sovereign territory to stop a humanitarian disaster.

A couple of years ago the UN decided the international community should intervene, subject to Security Council approval/veto in each case. Under a new doctrine: ‘Responsibility to Protect’.

But currently, the permanent members of the Security Council are not big supporters of UN peacekeeping missions. At September 2007, for example, these missions were carried out by 71,185 troops. Of this total, SC permanent member China had volunteered 1,573; France 1,777; Russia 122; United Kingdom 365; United State 9.

Has China the right model of intervention for the world to follow, and is the US wrong? Not quite, but close says TPM Barnett in his research paper. See comment 6 at his site for some of the highlights of the paper.

IJ added these pithy words on 08 Nov 07 at 9:45 am
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The Human Cost of War

Posted on 08 Nov 07 by Curzon. Subscribe to follow comments on this post. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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