British Media and the Rwandan Genocide

John Nathaniel Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317382607
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Throughout the 1990s, humanitarian interventionism sat at a crossroads, where ideas about rights and duties within and beyond borders collided with an international reality of civil conflict where the most basic human rights were violated in the most brutal manner. This growing awareness of humanitarian crises has been enabled by a more globalized media which increasingly shapes public perceptions of distant crises, public opinion, and political decision-making.

Clarke examines the extent to which the public discourse, and particular concepts, including those of an ethical and legal nature, influenced British newspaper coverage of the 1994 crisis in Rwanda, and, in turn, the extent to which that coverage influenced the British Parliament's response to the crisis. Through his development and application of a broader methodological approach that combines both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the book offers a fuller understanding of the relationship between media coverage, parliamentary debate, and policy formulation, and the central role that the globalized media plays in this process.

Integrating ethics, law and empirical analysis of the media to obtain a more cohesive understanding of the chemistry of the media-public policy nexus, this work will be of interest to graduates and scholars in a range of areas, including Genocide Studies, the Responsibility to Protect, the Media & Politics and International Relations.

Part I

Introduction

• Argument in brief

• Methodology

• Explanation of case selection

• The Rwanda crisis in brief

• Structure and organization

• Conclusion

With the end of the Cold War came a level of enthusiasm for a new world order in which the American President George H.W. Bush declared that justice would protect the weak against the strong and that: “the United Nations—freed from Cold War stalemate—is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders.”¹ Two years later, an equally optimistic United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared “[a] new chapter in the history of the United Nations.”² The reality of the 1990s, however, fell far short of this initial euphoria.

Instead, the end of the Cold War was accompanied by an increase in the scale, brutality, and impact of civil wars, some of which destroyed previously functional states.³ Beginning with the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 688 in 1991, which authorized humanitarian action on behalf of the Kurdish population of northern Iraq,⁴ the years that followed saw a new trend whereby the Security Council increasingly used Chapter VII of the UN Charter (dealing with threats to international peace and security) to justify intervention in civil conflict. Human rights violations within countries came to be seen as threats to international peace and security, and therefore matters that were no longer exclusively within the domestic jurisdiction of states.⁵

States have traditionally used military force in cases where a national interest can be clearly defined and a strategy with a sufficiently high probability of success can be developed. Throughout the 1990s, however, states came under ever-greater pressure to respond to egregious violations of human rights in distant crises where a strict national interest was less apparent. Bosnia-Herzegovina, East Timor, Kosovo, northern Iraq, Somalia, and Rwanda—these are by now the familiar benchmarks of the international community’s attempts to address the civil conflicts of the 1990s. In these and other cases, the ethical and practical rationale for committing troops was considerably more opaque than in cases where the national interest, and the path to success, was clear. Despite the immense human suffering that characterized all of these crises, and without minimizing the practical challenges of intervention, the response to them has varied considerably.

In many respects, the increasing prominence of humanitarian intervention in policy and political discourse reflects the following five trends:

1 the growth and development of the human rights framework since 1945, including through the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, both passed in 1948. While holding weak or even no enforcement mechanisms, the former document had a growing impact on state practice, including normative claims about human rights, and other obligations that extend beyond national borders;

2 the post-Cold War change in the geopolitical reality, such that the superpower rivalry of the Cold War no longer constrained action; intervention carried less potential to exacerbate the previously tenuous relationship between East and West;

3 the increase in the number of cases for potential intervention in the years following the end of the Cold War, as civil wars broke out around the world, particularly in Africa;

4 the increase in the targeting of civilians as a central objective of belligerents. This has presented a more compelling moral case and one which, it has been argued, could be resolved through external intervention; and

5 the increasing role of a globalized media, which brought distant crises into people’s living rooms and onto the policy agenda in countries that were capable of intervention.

The resulting changes in the norms and practice of humanitarian intervention represent a striking contrast to the often glacial pace of change in the international system. This has been reflected in a greater level of scrutiny of states’ domestic behavior, but also in an increased—if unevenly applied—use of Chapter VII of the UN Charter to justify intervention in intra-state conflict. This normative and legal change, however, has not always been accompanied by the material resources necessary for authorized interventions to succeed.

Though the international arena is still dominated by states acting in their own interests, many interventions of the 1990s, such as those in Somalia and the former Yugoslavia, cannot be explained by reference to national interests alone. Pressure within states, including through politicians and policymakers’ perceptions of public opinion, now also affects the decision to intervene, and the media are a critical intermediary in this process. This volume examines this nexus: distant crises, the media, and public policy.

Traditionally, analysts have been divided between those who suggest that governments manipulate the media to support their desired course of action and those who suggest that the media have an independent effect, pushing governments to act in crises where they would prefer not to. As will be shown in this volume, the process through which the media influence the foreign policy behavior of states is more complex than this dichotomized understanding. Instead, it is the interaction of interests and ideas, through the media, the legislature, and executive branch within governments, at both the domestic and international levels, that affects the decision as to when and how to intervene.

Argument in brief

While the idea of humanitarian intervention has a long history, the exigencies of the Cold War and the pursuit of national interests arguably put these ideas into a deep freeze.⁶ In 1994, interventionist ideas were still in the process of “thawing out,” with the result that there was a conceptual vacuum on the question of where, and when, intervention was justified. In part, the media filled that vacuum and played an increasingly important role in shaping both public opinion and foreign policy.

Arguments for intervention both prior to and since the end of the Cold War have commonly been underpinned by a sense of moral outrage at massive violations of human rights and human suffering—whether the herding of Bosnian Muslims into concentration camps, mass starvation in Somalia, or the genocide in Rwanda. The emotive power of such cases derives from an ideational substructure, consisting of both ethical and legal principles. Even traditional schools of international relations theory contain at least implicit normative assumptions about morality in international relations. The Realist school that emphasizes the anarchic nature of the international system and the importance of power politics, for example, sanctions exceptions to any ordinary set of moral principles, and thus “the reasons for overriding the constraints of ordinary morality in emergency situations are themselves moral.”⁷

Thus, beneath the visible currents of practical policymaking lie deeper intellectual structures that influence behavior and decisions in sometimes imperceptible ways. Concepts such as human rights, genocide, and specific articles of law such as Chapter VII of the UN Charter were, and remain, central to the debate on intervention. What has been less well understood is the extent to which these sets of ethical and legal ideas and other conceptual content have an impact in pushing policymakers to intervene in cases where they might otherwise have been reluctant to do so.

This growing awareness and responsiveness to humanitarian crises has been enabled by a more globalized media which increasingly shapes public perceptions of distant crises, public opinion, and political decision-making. As one American policymaker commented: “Pictures of the starving children, not policy objectives, got us into Somalia in 1992. Pictures of U.S. casualties, not the completion of our objectives, led us to exit Somalia.”⁸ In Rwanda, Gérard Prunier has made a similar, and starkly put, point about the French intervention in 1994 (Opération Turquoise), which he suggests was mounted because “Rwanda and its chopped-up babies now looked as if they could give good political mileage in terms of public opinion ratings.”⁹ Beyond fearing a negative backlash against their government should they fail to act, politicians may also see a domestic political benefit for acting decisively in foreign crises. The incentives within states have arguably changed, and the media continue to play a central role in this process, drawing attention to particular crises, and serving as a moral amplifier and disseminator of political language and ideology. This book analyzes how, in the context of the 1994 Rwanda crisis, these ethical, legal, and other key concepts were reflected in British media coverage and British parliamentary debate. It also examines the relationship between the media coverage and parliamentary debate of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

The media have often been criticized either for having missed the story, or for providing information “imperfectly and late.”¹⁰ In the context of Rwanda, however, these criticisms have been overstated and instead high-quality, unambiguous field reporting that conveyed the scale and nature of the violence was published from the start of the crisis. However, editorial opinion failed to match this high-quality coverage, and at no time did the media argue forcefully for a British military intervention to halt the genocide. This more detailed understanding of the dynamics of media coverage helps to clarify how the media might influence politicians.

Though Parliament does not determine government policy, it is able to question and criticize it, putting down markers of principle and pragmatism by which the government is judged. Overall, Parliament did not perform well on this count. The criticism that did occur was restricted to a small but committed group of parliamentarians who intervened repeatedly and regularly in debate. At no point, however, was there a groundswell of pressure, with few, if any, high-profile advocates for intervention in Bosnia arguing for intervention in Rwanda.

While the media did influence Parliament, and may have encouraged greater humanitarian aid, their effect fell short of producing a policy shift on the main question of military intervention to halt the genocide. The government response to questions often minimized the estimated impact of the crisis, and emphasized the collective responsibility of the UN Security Council—thereby reducing any perception of any one country’s responsibility for action. Ethical and legal ideas about intervention did, as will be shown, play an important role in influencing Parliament. That influence was characterized by a dual movement whereby the content of coverage influenced the amount of parliamentary debate, which in turn influenced the amount of media coverage. Although there is indeed a strong link between the content of coverage and the level of parliamentary debate, it fell far short of compelling a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Part I
• Part II
• Part III
• Appendix: Coding scheme for analysis
• Bibliography
• Index