Wonderful, Sir Toyin! You are our new Preacher! An apt biblical quote!!
We will need you at Heaven's gate to intercede for us to enter God's
Kingdom.
Brother Ed, be happy about our new Preacher, who is also in a serious
academic robe.
A.B. Assensoh.
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2022 11:02 AM
To: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>; usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Subject: [External] USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: HUMANISM, UKRAINE, AND UNIVERSES OF MORAL OBLIGATION.
Ed:
This is for the record---an integral archive. There is nothing to disagree with: we must seek self protection. We must be peace-obssesed, even in personal life.
21 Then Peter came up and said to him, "Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?" 22 Jesus said to him, "I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Matthew 18:21-22.
TF
From: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Date: Friday, March 11, 2022 at 11:47 AM
To: Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>, usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Subject: RE: HUMANISM, UKRAINE, AND UNIVERSES OF MORAL OBLIGATION.
Chief TF,
Very good questions.
My earlier write-up answers some of them. But let me add more.
There is no doubt in my mind (and I have had some good and close interactions with you beyond the Dialogue) that you have a larger universe of moral obligation, and ethical concern. Your queries here about Congo, Ethiopia, and Rwanda are additional evidence. My Kwawu people say "yenam tekyerema so na eko nnipa tiri mu" (it is through the tongue that we can get into a person's head). The concerns you express in speech and in writing are highways to your mind and heart—-your thoughts and feelings. In this regard, we are kinsmen of the same moral community. Where there might be a difference in our perspectives on "appropriate responses" to humanitarian crises in Africa is that in my view distant people could care less about what nearby communities should care more about. Thus, instead of "global response", I yearn for "nearby, regional, and continental reactions."
Remember my article "Obligation to Prevent", in 2016, which I deliberately sent to African Security Review, in South Africa, for publication to get people in Africa mobilized towards a new and "third way alternative" to the two dominant thoughts on how to respond to humanitarian crises in Africa? Those dominant thoughts are the UN's Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, and the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies' idea of a Canadian Will to Intervene (W2I). I thought about an alternative that could work in Africa for Africans. I called it Obligation to Prevent (O2P). Mindful of the uncertainties about "global responses", I argued for regional and continental solutions to humanitarian disasters, including genocides, in Africa. I gave my idea a fine Christian name "moral pan-Africanism".
Perhaps, Chief, we should get the AU to adopt my idea and devise home herbal medicine for home diseases. Moral pan-Africanism may be that herbal medicine. I came up with the idea of a moral pan-African response to humanitarian disasters and genocide in Africa because of what I read in 1994 and 1995 as a graduate student about the tepid "global response" to the genocide in Rwanda. As a grown scholar of genocide studies, I have often asked why Rwanda's neighbors, and the rest of Africa, had to wait for some "global" UN, European, or American response to a problem in our own backyard?
Chief, it might interest you to note that I was in Addis Ababa, from December 1994 to December 1995, doing research, as a doctoral candidate, on the history of famines in Ethiopia, between 1950 and 1991, and the national and "global" responses to Ethiopia's humanitarian crises of those years. I was particularly eager to document "African relief and development aid" to Ethiopia in the 1970s and 1980s when this African country experienced its most devastating famines. I did not find that evidence. All I saw in Ethiopia's own archives were "global" (European and American) relief aid. Why? Why could African countries, nearby and beyond, not come to the aid of their kinsfolk with whom they share many characteristics? If there was aid from any African source, why did the Ethiopian governments of this period, and especially the Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, of the 1980s, not record that African assistance? Or, perhaps, there was none. Herein, Chief, lies the problem I think we should address.
While doing my research in Ethiopia (where I first met our own Akin Ogundiran), I went to the then headquarters of the OAU and asked to be permitted to attend the then upcoming OAU summit meeting of heads of states and government as a "Guest". Brazen, but I am built that way. I am bold in my quests. I was granted that permission and so had the honor of attending, as a graduate student, and a guest, the "31st Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the OAU" held in Addis Ababa, from June 21-28 1995. You might remember that there was an attempt on the life of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak while he was on his way to the OAU conference center from the airport. He and his delegation turned around and fled back to Cairo.
I sat at the OAU Conference Hall and listened to speeches upon speeches. I am here to report that not a single African head of state who spoke mentioned what had happened in Rwanda in 1994, and what Africans should have done to respond. So, if our own people don't seem to care much about what happens in their regions, and on their continent, I cannot hold Europeans and some "global" entities to account for their inaction or indifference to what happens in Africa.
And oh yes, I have been following what has been going on in Ethiopia. As you well know my wife is from Ethiopia in my deliberate desire to unite the African continent by marriage. But more seriously, you will also remember that I was invited by The Conversation-Africa, last year, to put my idea of moral pan-Africanism to analytical and policy test on the war in Ethiopia. As you know, I responded to that patriotic call for service and offered some thoughts about regional responses, and not necessarily European or global reactions, to the ongoing war in Ethiopia. The BBC interviewed me later about my piece. I am here to report that I got some vicious attacks, by email, from some partisan Ethiopians for even daring to poke my mind and thoughts into Ethiopian affairs. These partisans in Christian Ethiopia forgot "Blessed are the peacemakers…." So, Chief, we have a lot of work to do, and let us start with mobilizing regional and continental responses to what happens on our continent.
I have often wondered why there are more Somali refugees in Minnesota, USA, than there are in nearby Ethiopia, or in distant Ghana? I am aware of what many Ethiopians think about Somali refugees. I inquired. And I am also aware of what many of my own people in Ghana said and thought about Liberian refugees who settled there in the wake of the Liberian war in the 1980s and 1990s. I inquired in Ghana, and I cross-checked when I did some research in Liberia, a decade ago, thanks to the assistance of our own AB Assensoh. So, Chief, we have work to do in translating our individual moral solidarities toward one another to a continental humanitarian kinship.
And yes, I am aware of what is going on in the DRC. In my own small way as a teacher, I developed, with my good tech-savvy friend Bob Hill, a website---The Congo War Resource---as a forum of documents and testimonies about what we have called "Africa's World War"---a moral catastrophe in the heart of Africa that has taken millions of African lives. I use that resource to teach my course on African History Since 1850. Chief, I am also here to report that the students who are moved by that resource to often ask me what they could do to help are not the African students who take that course.
My Kwawu people have a proverb for everything and every occasion. They say that "wo nsa akyi beye wo de a, ente se wo nsa yem". Literally, if eating with the back of your hand will please you, it is not as pleasant as eating with the palm of your hand. That is the most natural way to eat and enjoy food. In other words, it is better to eat with your palm than with the back of your hand.
No matter how many global (European and American) responses we may mobilize to deal with humanitarian crises in Africa, there is nothing more pleasing than seeing Africans on the continent mobilizing cultural and material capacities to respond to crises in their own perimeter.
In short, our moral arc must bend towards our own. That is a source of delight. It could also earn us some "global" respect.
Edward Kissi
From: Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu>
Sent: Friday, March 11, 2022 6:49 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Cc: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Subject: Re: HUMANISM, UKRAINE, AND UNIVERSES OF MORAL OBLIGATION.
Ed:
Hope you are following the crisis in the Congo with 5.5 million people displaced, one of the greatest humanitarian disasters in the world today.
Add Western Cameroon.
My question is always the same: where is global response, as of the scale we witness regarding Ukraine, in the Congo, in Cameroon, in Rwanda?
Why was there no European coalition against Bush when he invaded Iraq?
I pose this question not to undermine the support for Ukraine but to keep pointing to a racialized world where my own people don't count.
TF
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2022 at 10:46 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Edward Kissi <ekissi@usf.edu>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - HUMANISM, UKRAINE, AND UNIVERSES OF MORAL OBLIGATION.
The term "universe of moral obligation" was coined by sociologist Helen Fein to study human responses to genocide, and other forms of mass murder. She argued that it is in such moments of atrocity against a group that we see the depths of the humanity and indifference of other humans, nearby and distant. The victim group becomes subjects and objects of our moral precepts and other calculations. There are certain victim groups in mass murders that some humans choose to include in or exclude from their universe of moral obligation to care about.
What is happening in Ukraine, and human reactions all over the world to the Ukrainian victims of Russian atrocities, illustrate Fein's idea of universe or universes of moral obligation. Do our reactions (empathetic or indifferent) to the victims reflect our ethnic, racial, regional, and religious affinities and solidarities, or do they reflect the choices we make, irrespective of affinities, to put certain victims of atrocities within our circles (universes) of moral concern?
The Kwawu (my ethnic group)—a subset of the Akan—a Ghanaian people with whom the Kwawu share skin color, language, and other cultural affinities—-have complicated conceptions of humanity and universe of obligation. Two of their precepts illustrate this. They think that "obiara ye onyame ba" (everyone is a child of God). Therefore, wherever any human being lives (Ukraine or Nigeria) or whoever that person is (Ukrainian or Yoruba), any Kwawu person must be concerned about that person's life. That means the Kwawu have a broader sense of humanism. Theoretically, they put every human being in their universe of moral obligation.
But the Kwawu are also pragmatic, even calculating. Their axiom "di wo fie asem" (concentrate on what is happening in your house) is reflective of their pragmatism, or the Kwawu "moral paradox". Perhaps the Kwawu are mindful that while the distant must be a subject of moral concern to express human solidarity, what is nearby (or in the house, or region) is what must be the object of thought and immediate action to deal with existential threats. The Kwawu say that "akyirikyiri wo akyiri"—-the distant is far and beyond us. Simply put, what is distant must be the concern of the nearby. Thus, although the Kwawu share skin color with the distant Akyem and the Akwamu, it is not all Akyem and Akwamu wars, and their victims, that the Kwawu put in their universe of moral obligation to think about in Kwawu history.
It appears then that my people are no different, in their thoughts and actions, from Europeans in Ukraine's neighborhood. After all, a nearby house on fire is what threatens every home in the neighborhood. The Kwawu understand this. In fact, like Europeans, the Kwawu are "regionalist" in their understanding of kinship, solidarity, and universes of moral obligation. The Kwawu proverb—-"anomaa nua ne nea one no da dua koro" (a bird's relative and the one to whom it owes obligation is the bird with whom it lives on the same tree) captures Kwawu regionalism, and even ethnocentrism. That is no different from European regional feelings.
As far as Kwahu humanism and moral universalism go, they are reflected in an ambiguous moral precept----"onipa ne nea odwen nnipa ho". Literally, a human is one who thinks about other humans. The Kwawu distinguish between "humans"---those who feel for others, and those who are indifferent to other people. Even here, the Kwawu, like many Europeans, and other humans, understand that distance can only evoke empathy and sympathy. Action and intervention fall within the universe (or pluriverse) of the moral obligations of the nearby.
I have often viewed debates on "international" (read American and European) interventions in Africa's atrocity zones, or European "indifference" to African victims of genocide, from my understanding of Kwawu humanism, pragmatism, and moral calculations. The Kwawu may be right when they say "nnipa mu ni ahoro" (meaning: there are no differences between and among humans). They all behave alike.
Or are the Kwawu overstating the case? I leave that to others to assess!
Edward Kissi
From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Toyin Falola
Sent: Wednesday, March 9, 2022 8:06 AM
To: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Three Pleas on Ukraine
Great ones:
Let me make three pleas on Ukraine. I am not a gatekeeper and do feel free to ignore my request.
- Given the loss of lives, serious agonies of refugees, death, unpredictable calamities, the reasons for the war should take a back seat to give relevance to the war process and its possible outcomes. So let us muster our intellectual resources on mitigations. If other European countries join, Putin may have no option other than to use the nuclear bomb.
- The racialized aspect of this crisis has been so disturbing that I wonder why some of you are focused on the European tribal war. No one assisted us when we were looking for solutions to prevent the break-up of Ethiopia. Who donated to the Hutu and Tutsi? Who assist us with the victims of Boko Haram. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that the people who matter are Europeans and not us. Let us talk about us since they can take care of themselves.
- The ongoing calamity in the Sahel may be far worse than what you see in Eastern Europe. Be warned.
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.
Matthew 7:5
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