December 9 2018
By Joel Freedman
As an 18 year old, the study and prevention of genocide is quite the unique passion.
Brought up, as a member of the Jewish community, I was educated on the horrors of the Holocaust from a young age. This only increased in secondary school with countless talks, assemblies, history classes being dedicated to the subject. As a budding historian, I was always fascinated by the causation of the holocaust and thus, like many other people, questioned how a select group of people can be this evil? Also, how could the world let this happen?
Eventually at the age of 16, I started to become aware that this kind of evil was not a lone event. Through the research that I undertook in my Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), I began to explore the atrocities of other genocides and in doing so decided to focus my research on the Genocide against the Tutsi, which took place in Rwanda. As the project progressed, my frustrations grew regarding my previous lack of awareness of the genocide as well as becoming overwhelmed by the lack of any form of education I had on all the other genocides that had taken place (excluding the Holocaust). The moment that I truly knew I had to take action was when I found out that genocides are still taking place, in mass, around the world. To some readers it might sound absurd that an educated, fairly academic, 16 year old did not have any real knowledge on genocides that are happening today and yet that is the truth.
This new comprehension led me to quickly realise that rather than being in the minority for my previous lack of knowledge I was actually in the vast majority. Other than regarding a personal connection to a specific genocide, I would strongly argue that very limited numbers of teenagers have any real understanding of the crime of genocide as a whole as well as having little to no knowledge of genocides taking place today.
This realisation led me to search social media for a survivor of the genocide against the Tutsi to come into my school in order to raise awareness of the genocide in my year. After a couple of failed attempts I discovered Eric Murangwa Eugene MBE. Not too long after meeting Eric, having had, a fair to say, almost instant rapport, he was in my school talking about his experiences. The outcome of this talk was greater than could have been imagined. Along with people crying, the line of students and teachers alike waiting to say thank you to Eric for enlightening them on both the genocide in Rwanda and the crime as a whole was from a personal perspective both moving and rewarding at the same time.
Fast-forwarding almost a year, I am now the Youth Trustee of Eric’s charity the Ishami Foundation. The foundation aims to utilise genocide survivor experience to connect us all to our common humanity. Working with Eric as well as Dr Zoe Norridge, the Chair of the Board of Trustees and a Senior Lecturer at Kings College London, I came up with the initiative to mark International Genocide commemoration and prevention day (December 9th), which was created to remember the passing of the Genocide Convention in 1948. We decided to create a social media campaign with the aim of enlisting 70 individuals/organisations (for 70 years since the passing of the convention) to post on Twitter on December 9th describing what the convention and/or the crime of genocide means to them.
The aim of raising awareness for both the day and the crime of genocide is simple and yet of huge significance. Awareness, followed by education are the steps that must be taken before genocide can be prevented.
The quote from a 2014 Save the Children advert “Just because it isn’t happening here, doesn’t mean it isn’t happening,” seems very much so appropriate. With racial polarisation becoming ever more present in our society, it is of increasing importance to remember and respect our common humanity.
As such, whether it is through our social media campaign #Genocide70 or through any other means; I hope December 9th 2018 can forge the way for newfound genocide awareness and education for as many people as possible.