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I tend to agree the world is much better today. However, to keep things in perspective I have highlight 3 recent wars/genocides: 1. The Great African War/the
by will_brown 11y ago
I tend to agree the world is much better today.
However, to keep things in perspective I have highlight 3 recent wars/genocides:
1. The Great African War/the African World War (1998-2003): 5.4M deaths (some estimates as high as 20M);
2. Bosnian Genocide (1992-1995): 100,000 deaths;
3. Darfur Genocide (2003-ongoing?): 500,000 deaths and counting, 3 million displaced.
While my examples are no where near the scale of WW2, perhaps hidden in there is a much larger human tragedy. Namely how few people are familiar with the existence of these 3 modern events that took the lives of 6M people in the last 20 years.
- abrak 11y agoI agree that the amount of lives lost post WW2 have been largely ignored.. You may find this visualisation of deaths in WW2 interesting: https://vimeo.com/128373915 https://vimeo.com/128373915
- RachelF 11y agoThat's a great visualisation. Thanks.
- tomjen3 11y agoEssentially everybody has heard about 2 and 3, as well as Rowanda, which you left out, but a quick look to wikipedia shows that most of the people who died in 1 died of disease and malnutrition and also that the conflict to place in Congo. Basically there is a place in the world that is consistently behind the rest - sub saharan Africa - where all your examples, other than the one in Bosnia, came from. And Bosnia is arguably a very important exception, at least I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950.
- will_brown 11y agoWhat is your point? Do these wars/genocides not matter because they did not take place in the "developed world"? That war time deaths attributable to anything beyond death on the battlefield do not count? Are you saying civil wars don't count, because the US lost as many soldiers in our civil war as all other US wars combined...or is it as you point out that civil wars in the Congo don't count? If like you say "essentially everybody" has heard of these wars/genocides, then I stand corrected the great human tragedy is not that we are ignorant of what is happening in the world but apparently that we should only concern ourselves with deaths/wars/genocides in the "developed world". Edit: > I don't recall any other genocides in the developed world since 1950. How about the ingeniousness populations in Brazil, 2 of which I am aware are on the brink of extinction in the last 30 years. Yet, despite being a world top 10 economy, you/some may say Brazil is not part of the developed world, or highlight these genocides are not driven by war so much as "progress"; therefore, you may not consider these genocides.