Bianca's Reflection

--This event tells me that human rights and the UDoHR sometimes have no effect on a country or government decision. If you think about how the government went corrupt in South Africa and created an apartheid that ultimately separated and sometimes killed people because of the color of there skin, its hard to say that the UDoHR or human rights are always taken into consideration of a citizen’s wellbeing.
--This event can be related to the holocaust because in South Africa, the coloreds and whites were separated, and the “racially pure” were given the best treatment while the other “undesirables” were put in very harsh living conditions and were sometimes killed by people who didn’t like them. Although the killing and the living conditions was better than the mass genocide of Jews and other “racially impure” that occurred during the holocaust, the South African apartheid still relates in those ways.
--In accordance to the South African apartheid, the principle of humanism being that all individuals mattered is definitely denied. If the principle of humanism was reaffirmed, the South African apartheid would not have even taken place. Nobody would be killed because of there skin color, nobody would be shoved into rundown neighborhoods of shacks because another group of people believed that someone else’s race was ethnically strange or wrong. And that’s exactly the opposite of the apartheid that took place. The coloreds were treated like they didn’t matter at all; the principle of humanism is almost irrelevant because of what happened with the apartheid. Nobody mattered but the whites.
--I feel that this apartheid that took place was absolutely wrong and it was one of the largest mistakes that other parts of the world made because of another group’s skin color. I believe someone like Nelson Mandela was a martyr and only wanted what was best for everyone, and because of what he believed, he was thrown in jail for roughly half of his life. The victims were cruelly treated as well and the perpetrators were absolutely wrong to do this. I do feel a lot of sympathy and sorrow for what happened at the apartheid and in no way should the actions of the state be justified.
--I think that peacekeeping efforts by the United Nations are highly acceptable. The United Nations works together as a group to solve issues occurring in each other’s countries. If the U.N. decided to step into our country to maybe make changes or something along those lines its okay, but farther than that, I don’t really know if it would be necessary to have them do anything farther than that. The USA is a “melting pot” of mixed nations basically, and I figure that the USA is strong enough to not need massive support right now.

------Bianca LaRocco