I find it interesting but not surprising that the UN wasn’t helpful in the attack in the Central African Republic. I’m not against the UN in any way, but I do wish they handled humanitarian crises better. They tend to turn a blind eye to a lot of things–for example, the Rwandan Genocide–because they don’t feel like handling it. I understand that it’s an economic issue, but my opinion is that the stable, powerful, first world countries should help those countries that are struggling and its citizens who are suffering and dying because the UN doesn’t want to spend the money. Many times, the crises are situations that can be relatively easily with the power that the stronger countries have. This issue frustrates me so much because I have a difficult time understanding how so many people can be suffering and the people who can stop it don’t care about them.
On another note, the gold mine in Zimbabwe was concerning. Sixty something people reported missing and possibly dead is a lot of people. I’m curious about the dangers and survival statistics on gold mines; I’ll probably do some more research on it later.
The Nigerian elections are confusing to me, I’m not completely sure what’s going on. I know that they’re afraid of corruption but I’m not totally sure where their government’s at right now. The whole thing sounds super unstable and stressful, and if Nigeria technically has democratic elections, there has to be something deeply flawed in the system for the people to not want to vote because they’re scared of corruption.
Every time I read anything about Africa and how much the entire continent is struggling I get frustrated because of the history of the continent and its oppression by European colonizers. So many of the problems there are because of ethnic conflicts, because too many different ethnic groups were forced to live together when they never should have.