Ignoring African Genocide

. Rwandans' lives mean as much as those of Bosnians.

In Rwanda, another disaster unfolds as the United Nations stands idly by. Racial fighting on an immense scale has proceeded in and outside of Kigali, the capital city, while only private relief organizations have aided civilians. Has the terror in the former Yugoslavia tied the U.N.'s hands completely?

U.N. security forces have been in Bosnia for weeks; they're sitting around, wringing their hands, as the Serbian shelling continues. But Rwanda, on U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali's home continent, has not received more than cautious rhetoric.

When Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down by a rocket last Wednesday, previously moderate fighting between the powerful Tutsi minority and the president's Hutu loyalists escalated to tragic proportions. As in Bosnia and Croatia, race has become the only criterion for murder. Hundred of thousands of people--Hutus and Tutsis--are fleeing Kigali, but they have nowhere to go. Espcaping the fighting gives them a chance at life, but starvation is already claiming thousands in the barren lands around the city.

The U.N.'s obligation to these people is clear. They must be fed, cared for and protected. Further more, anyone who wants to leave Kigali must be made free to do so. As foreigners are escorted out of Rwanda by their own military forces, native residents can only look on. Where are the tent cities, the makeshift hospitals, the guarded convoys of refugees? Though these are the lamentable bastions of civil war, they do serve a humanitarian purpose. And still, the aid of the U.N. has been missing.

The reason for the apathy is painfully base: Hutus and Tutsis are not Bosnians and Croats. Few Hutus and Tutsis live abroad; unlike Serbs and Croats, no international network of kinspeople can be enlisted to save them. They are not united with people all over the world by religion, as are the Bosnian Muslims. Their economic importance to the major powers cannot be underemphasized. No historical significance can be attached to their region and their struggle by the West. In effect, the people of Rwanda must be worth next to nothing in the eyes of the plenum of the U.N. Lack of resources isn't keeping the U.N. out of Rwanda, so what else could it be?

This glaring racial and economic supremacism must come to an end. The U.N. was not (openly) founded to protect the social and economic interests of the West. The plight of the Rwandans should have gravity equal to that of the splintered races in what was Yugoslavia. Who can say that a Croat is worth more than a Tutsi? Who can say that a U.N. "peacekeeper" from France is worth more than a Hutu? Plenty of French people certainly can, but that doesn't mean that they're right.

When it comes to dividing the U.N.'s attentions between different conflicts around the world, only numbers should matter. "Where can we save more lives?" should be the only question. Not too many people are being saved from starvation, exposure, and the spray of machine guns while U.N. forces loll around in their home countries and strategically important but militarily dormant areas.

The U.N. can't stop people from fighting who have been born to fight, have fought for generations and actually thrive on fighting. But it can prevent those who want to live in peace from being caught in the fray. When discrimination becomes part of the plan, however, the U.N. will never create a truly just peace.

Daniel Altman's column appears on alternate Mondays.