Leanne (center in green) working on ice-breaker question sheet on human rights
This past weekend, our group attended a human rights training weekend with 25 people from African countries. The majority were of South African descent, but there were also representatives from Somalia, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Namibia. The training was organized by Africa Unite (great job Sharielle and Siobhan!) and facilitated by Vincent, who is also our Political Science professor. It was great to be able to interact with new people close to my age in a more academic setting, and then also in a more relaxed way during the breaks. I learned some fun group games, a few more words of Xhosa, and even had a bit of a dance lesson!
The exercise that I found to be the most enlightening was when the large group was divided into smaller ones, each of which was assigned to an existing African country. We then were told that earth was in peril and our countries were in various stages of populating a new planet; Planet X. My country, the DRC, had landed on the fertile side of Planet X and established a colony there. Three of the countries had landed on the infertile side of Planet X. A fifth country, Zimbabwe, was still on earth and had requested the permission of the DRC to come to Planet X. In our countries, we had to establish five rights for ourselves and five rules for the other countries, as well as make the decision of whether or not we would grant entrance to the Zimbabweans.
The DRC agreed unanimously on allowing Zimbabwe to come to Planet X and on the nature of our human rights. The issue of rules for the other countries proved much harder to decide. We agreed to establish a forum for representatives from each of the five countries on Planet X, in the hopes of creating a new democracy, rather than remaining as five sovereign nations. One of my group members was hesitant to ever allow the other countries to be able to vote on Planet X. Another one of my group members wished for the DRC to remain the dominant government for an interim period of five years and then grant the others the right to vote. The majority of the group disagreed, and wanted everyone to be able to vote right away.
Leanne (left of center in green) works with her group
I initially found it really surprising that anyone would want to deny voting rights to people who were supposed to be coming together to cohabitate a single country. My perspective changed after having a conversation with the man who had voiced that opinion. He is actually from the DRC, a nation that, I learned, shares a border with nine other countries: Burundi, Uganda, Rwanda, Congo Brazzaville, Tanzania, Sudan, Angola, the Republic of Central Africa and Zambia. Border control is an area in which the DRC is severely lacking. When any of its nine neighbors have internal conflict, so too does the DRC. Refugees spill across its borders, competing for access to already scarce resources. Militant groups surge across its borders, raping, pillaging and terrorizing citizens. Life in the DRC is unstable and insecure. I can now understand my group member’s hesitation to allow outsiders to vote. As a DRC citizen, it must be incredibly frightening to imagine allowing anyone who found their way into the DRC the right to impact policy. With nine bordering nations, it could be feasible for entering groups to eventually amass enough power to drastically change the political system, and the lives of the Congolese citizens. I can see now that his hesitation to allow others to vote on Planet X stemmed from his fears about the safety and security of himself and his family members in the real DRC. These are issues that I, as an American citizen, had never considered. I am so glad that I got the chance to look at the situation from another perspective. The experience will help me to remember to always try to see where other people are coming from. There can be many different and valid ways of looking at the same situation.
Leanne preparing for group presentation on the DRC
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