Human Rights: The Problem of Good Intentions

Abstract

If any country has had an ambiguous experience with human rights institutions and discourses, it is Rwanda. In the months of April to July 1994, arguments about human rights were evoked against intervention to stall, if not stop, the genocide against the Tutsis, and the ambiguous and harmful French intervention – Operation Turquoise – was termed as humanitarian. Since the genocide, Rwanda’s remarkable recovery record has been questioned on the basis on human rights, and the famous interactions of Victoire Ingabire and her lawyer, Peter Erlinder, with the Rwandan justice system on charges of genocide denial, brought to the fore the ambiguous nature of human rights discourses, especially in the African continent.

Supporters of the human rights ideal have failed to connect the conduct of the humanitarian enterprise both during and after the genocide. Instead, they simply end the failure of the international community in 1994 with apologies and regrets – like that of Bill Clinton and of Kofi Annan – rather than fundamentally question the humanitarian enterprise. In this paper, I will argue that this narrative of individual human failure, especially when combined with that of good intentions – is precisely what makes human rights discourse so problematic in Africa. It points to the fact that the problem of human rights is a theodician one – the challenge of explaining how evil occurs in the face of a benevolent God, or in this case, in the face of a benevolent desire for just and peace for all.