The cheapening of human life

The conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Lebanon highlighted once more for me the cheapening of human life which is now taken almost for granted by those in power. Unsurprisingly it is the stories of human interest, those stories of individual suffering, of the elderly and infirm unable to flee Katusha rockets, of families sleeping on the floors of Beirut car parks and children bereaved of entire families through air strikes that pull at our heart strings and grab our attention.

But there are no resources enough in the media for telling the stories of each individual life that is lost.

Yet for both sides the political and propagandist pictures presented of their opponents reinforced the gradual de-humanising which takes place in conflict; where the life of an individual is less valuable once they wear a label of terrorist, soldier or militant and where the deaths of innocents are regretted in the same breath as the next volley of rockets are launched or air sorties scrambled.

And whilst militarism succeeds in dehumanising individuals, genocide succeeds in dehumanising whole tribes. So it is for the people of Sudan, where the situation in Darfur is now reaching the levels of slaughter last seen in Serbia and Rwanda. Edmund Burke's words that "for evil to triumph it requires only good men to do nothing" serve as condemnation for the wandering interest of Western governments.

In the absence of an effective UN intervention in Sudan, the suffering will continue. The UN has lacked the will to intervene and the African Union has lacked the means. Until there is an effective intervention by the United Nations in Darfur, which would be entirely legal and proper under international law by virtue of Security Council resolution 1706, our collective inaction on this issue will lead to the triumph of evil over and above God's purposes for that place.