Why does ethnic cleansing continue to happen?

Answer 1

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing - Edmund Burke.

Ethnic cleansing, or genocide, is generally the result of many factors. Some have to do with the current socio-economic status of a certain population. Some have to do with ancient grudges against another group of people. Some have to do with our basic nature as humans.

Let me explain using the example of the Holocaust. After WW1, the German nation went through a great depression much like other nations of the time (U.S., Great Britiain, Russia, etc.), but the German one was by all accounts worse than those in other nations. The people in Germany felt powerless; their money was worth nothing, the Versailles Treaty that ended WW1 put Germany in a situation where economic growth was extremely difficult. Into this troubled time stepped a charismatic and very, very evil man named Hitler, who used the fears and powerlessness feeling of the German people to convince them that their problems stemmed from the influence of the Jewish people. This is called scapegoating. He gave the people a way to better their situation (building the economy through military spending) and to end their "problem" by starting the Final Solution, a program that both got rid of the perceived "enemy" and allowed the people to not have to take a direct part in it (thereby granting them the excuse that they did not know and therefore could not stop the program). Obviously, this was a terrible thing, and it took the combined efforts of the Allied Nations to stop it, a difficult process that cost numerous lives in many countries.

In more modern times, ethnic cleansings have happened in numerous countries. Although the dressing is different (in Sudan the excuse is "ancient tribal differences," in Cambodia the excuse was "better life through social engineering"), the result is the same. So why aren't they stopped? Because those in a position to stop it don't.

Modern, functioning democracies may have racism, prejudice, and other numerous problems, but they don't have genocide, because democracies thrive on the coming together of a plurality of people. You can't win votes if you can't connect with people, and you can't connect with people if you don't occasionally work out a way to give them what they want and are always blaming someone else for your problems. However, democracies also tend to make people believe that their personal freedoms and their very life is sacrosanct, in essence their life is more important than fighting for the very system that gave them freedom in the first place . Simply put, the vast majority of people in modern democracies are not willing to go to a third world country and die so that someone they've never met and don't care about can live a full and happy life. It's not nice, but it's the truth. And the government of said countries cannot find a reason (oil, an ally in trouble) to convince their citizens to fight.

And so you ask why ethnic cleansing continues to happen. The answer is: the cause of ethnic cleansing and the unwillingness of others to stop it is because people are willing to say that they care about people, but not willing to die for them.