After watching the documentary Ghosts of Rwanda, saying the three Quls before you sleep has added meaning and just might cause tears to flow from this the hardest of hearts as you pray not only for your own protection but for the protection of every innocent person, human being, and soul.
Without question, the most important, moving, and poignant film and set of images that I have seen for many years.
There is a clause in the UN Convention, which states that the members of the UN have a duty to intervene to stop genocide. This clause however is fatally flawed rather the world community has a “responsibility to protect“.
Towards the end of the film, Kofi Annan has a remarkably sad quote in which he says that if faced with such genocide in the future, he is not sure the UN will be able to act or intervene.
“Then when you are faced with the question — which I was last month in Stockholm at the genocide conference — whether I think that we can avoid the Rwandas of tomorrow, and that if we were to be confronted with a new Rwanda, is the world ready to do it? Will the world move in to stop it? And my answer is, I really don’t know. I wish I can say yes, but I am not convinced that we will see the kind of political will and the action required to stop it.”
And of course, we know from the experience in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Darfur that it won’t. The phrase “never again” is just that only a phrase, nothing more.
Ify Okoye 