Obama's First Humanitarian Crisis

Mark Leon Goldberg of UN Dispatch, wrote an article for the New Republic on Obama's response to the Sri Lanka crisis, the first humanitarian crisis to take place entirely during his administration. According to Goldberg, the response "augurs well for the place of human rights in American foreign policy."

Over the past four months an estimated 6,500 ethnic-Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka have died at the hands of their own government. Tens of thousands more have been injured. Unlike humanitarian crises in places like Darfur, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this outbreak of violence occurred almost entirely during President Obama's first 100 days. It is the first man-made humanitarian crisis of the Obama era. So far, the Obama administration's response to the crisis in Sri Lanka is encouraging to those who believe that human rights--in name and deed--should enjoy a prominent place in American foreign policy.

The Foreign Policy blog, Passport, has a response.

First, the Sri Lanka crisis didn't start during Obama's administration; it's been going on for literally decades. This most recent episode has been brewing since the government ended a 5-year truce with the Tamil Tiger rebels in early 2008. Since then, the government has pushed the war into a final phase, vowing to finish the job this February in an independence day address. But the short point is: the U.S., and everyone else, has had a long time to see the current crisis coming. It was no surprise -- or should not have been.

(Image from the TNR story.)