Pious Words, Puny Deeds: The "International Community" and Mass Atrocities (Viewpoint Essay‪)‬

When it comes to magnitude of killing, wars among states are now overshadowed by wars within them. Since the mid-1970s, more than million people have been killed in internal wars in Cambodia, Iraq, Bosnia, Rwanda, the Congo, and the Sudan, and countless others have been raped, displaced, and dispossessed. (1) In the Congo alone, some 5.4 million have perished, and another 1.7 million have died in Cambodia. World leaders are prone to proclaim that the "international community" will not abide such atrocities. Yet in too many instances it has done just that, or responded only after thousands have been murdered or abused, and then too often through half measures. While the press and civic groups have publicized these horrors and pressed for action, their focus can be arbitrary: Darfur, where some 135,000 people died (a third because of violence, the rest from disease), has received far more media coverage and attention from celebrities and campus and religious organizations than the Congo, where millions have perished. (2) THE (VIRTUAL) INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY