Research Question

-Why is it so common to have child soldiers fighting in battle in Sierra Leone?

-What is the reason for having child soldiers be in battle in Africa?

-What is the role of child solders in Africa that are fighting for human rights from the UN?

-How have child soldiers made such an impact on developing human rights for all?

-How much progress has been made for getting human rights for children (child soldiers) in Africa to be protected from armed conflict?

Countries to look further at Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, ad Uganda.

Potential sources:
http://saiv.net/SourceBook/Storage/documents/doc_armedconflict_children.pdf

http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=6714BA85B70D593FF60C42990726EF91.inst1_3a?docId=5001368863

 

1. I was interested on how countries in Africa are sending letters of concern for their own countries on human rights problems to the Unites States government.  This shows that other countries around the world look up to the Unites States because of the success of our human rights.  In the link below there is a letter from Chad to Barrack Obama pleading about the waivers for Children Soldiers prevention act.  Many countries in Africa like Chad are in desperate need to rebuild their human rights programs to not have child soldiers in battle.  
The LRA is taking over Africa and the victims of the LRA are speaking out to President Obama and other world leaders to help stop the War against the LRA.

2.Links:
-http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/11/05/ngo-letter-president-obama-regarding-waivers-child-soldiers-prevention-act
-http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/11/10/congocentral-african-republic-lra-victims-appeal-obama



3.Questions: Why are countries in Africa relying on the Unites States to help them maintain human rights in their countries?

Response to first part of Maus 2

When I was reading the first part of Maus 2, one question came to my mind, why did Art Spiegelman use Mice for his main characters?  In my opinion, using mice as the characters can easily organize the hierarchy in the concentration camp and in the Holocaust in general.  For example, the guards were cats and the prisoner guards were pigs.  In the context of the Holocaust it makes perfect sense to have cats be the prison guards because in real life they scare mice and frighten them.  In the eyes of mice, cats are their primary enemy.  The use of pigs whom were prisoner guards is useful to show that they had more power than mice, but not a much as cats because they were not predators.  Pigs were a piece of meat which was bigger than the mice and gave them more power and in a sense they were more useful.  Overall, Art Spiegelman's use of characters to create a social and political hierarchy during the Holocaust is very creative by using mice, pigs, and cats. 

Human Rights in class Activity response.

What is the challenge to address human rights to everyone?

-The challenge with addressing human rights to everyone is that there are so many people and different circumstances which come about.  Human rights are given to everyone once they are born and it is there right to use these rights that the United Nations has created for them to further their life in the best way possible.  It becomes challenging when these rights conflict with religion or faith.  Also when giving these rights to people they tend to abuse them.  Such as the freedom of speech right which can cause riots, strikes, and bad publicity.  Overall, human rights are for everyone, but it is challenging to keep them in order all the time.

DRC Current Events

-http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3786883.stm
This article is about the rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, that was arrested in 2009 after he was put on trial.  He was accused of violence and mass killings by the lead of his troops.  Also he was accused with rape and and torture while he was in charge.  Overall, he violated the Human Rights bill which initially put him on trial and arrested him after he was found guilty.

-http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/10/01/congo.atrocities.un.report/index.html?iref=allsearch 
This article is about violation of human rights in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Throughout this article it describes the reports that the United States has reported on human rights violations such as rapes, killings, and torture over a 10 year period.  Along with all of this violence the military force in the Congo is recruiting at least 30,000 children for troops to fight.  Worst of all there are random mass killings of civilians when villages are raided by the rebel military.

Both of these articles have similar points due to the fact that they both talk about violence, rape, torture, and mass killings.  This is a serious problem that you will most likely find in a report about the Democratic Republic of the Congo.                 
   

Let it Linger (after group discussion)

1. One idea or question that is lingering after the discussion was why did the Author name the chapter, "Where there aren't no ten commandments."


2. In the group discussion we did not have that much support other than a few references from the text.  This is mainly because we did not have time to prepare and the questions that we picked from the list were mostly one sided questions.  This created an unsuccessful discussion.   

Discussion questions and response from King Leopold's Ghost

1. Why do you think King Leopold does not ever come to Africa to witness the bloodshed and slave trade?

2. What were the main reasons and or resources that the Europeans wanted to colonize Africa?

The part of the reading I liked was about the native African people such as priests and leaders of the community of the Kongo that eventually fell under the greed because of the goods received from the Europeans.  Even Affonso, the African ruler, submitted to the greed of the money and goods exchanged for their own people as slaves.  Reading this part was very interesting because it showed two sides of the situation by the view of the African people.  One was from the beginning when men, women, and children were being sold and shipped out to other countries as slaves.  The African's saw this as terrible and begged the Europeans to stop the slave trading.  When the African's realized that the Europeans would not budge they eventually started accepting the fact that their own people were being used as slaves.  Then they started to like the goods in which they were receiving and became greedy.