Samantha Power, political scientist and journalist. February 2008. (23:09)

I. Pre-watching task.

  • Working in pairs discuss the questions:
  • What are genocide and a crime against humanity?
  • What defines them? Is there a difference?
  • What anti-genocide movements do you know about?

II. Identify the topic of Episode A.

III. For questions 1-9 choose the best answer:
1) The Rwandan genocide exterminated
a) 800000 people
b) 8 000 people
c) 18 000 people
2) The Rwandan genocide media coverage was similar to that of the Holocaust in being
a) inaccurate
b) low-profile
c) biased and politicized
3) The anti-genocide movement grew up in response to the atrocities in
a) Rwanda
b) Darfur
c) Kosovo
4) The anti-genocide movement is comprised of
a) students, religious groups and journalists
b) academics, politicians and evangelicals
c) Jewish and Evangelical groups, college and school students, common
people who learnt about the Rwandan genocide from films
5) The number of anti-genocide chapters on college campuses is around
a) 30
b) 3000
c) 300

6) The movement has managed to persuade around
a) 55 universities in 23 states
b) 52 universities in 25 states
c) 55 universities in 22 states
to divest their holdings of stocks with regard to companies doing business in
Sudan.
7) To stop the Darfur genocide the movement used the following methods
a) economic pressure and political accountability
b) bottom-up pressure and international public opinion
8) The Bush administration had to commit itself to
a) having Darfur crimes referred to the ICC
b) providing 3 mln dollars for refugee camps
c) deploying 26,000 American troops in Darfur
9) So far the movement has had a limited effect on the world’s atrocities
because
a) it is mainly American
b) it encountered resistance on the part of American politicians and
administration
c) it lacks financial resources


IV. Identify the topic and the thesis of Episode A.


V. Give the gist/summary of the episode.

VI. Discuss in pairs/groups:
How can you account for the fact that despite the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide the Rwandan genocide was not seen as newsworthy at first? How can the Convention be made to work in order to prevent mass atrocities in the future?

NOTE

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and entered into force on 12 January 1951. So far it has been ratified by 143 countries. It is considered to be the first human rights treaty adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
According to the convention:
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.