United we stand, divided we fall

In this week’s lecture we talked about the different types of responsibility. We’ve talked about individual responsibility and collective responsibility. The main course of the lecture was the case about the refugees that have begun to flee in larger numbers towards Europe.

In the lecture we did a game which dealt on how the individual and on the collective level. All this deals with how to solve the current problem we face. However when I was reading up on the news I was more intrigued by how the current status quo in Syria itself is obtained and what is being done about that.

What I read was the report about Iran and Russia sending armed forces to Syria to aid the regime ofAssad. This made me think about the collective responsibility of the world’s nations that believe theyhave an interest in this part of the world.

Since we also talked about the Millenium Goals in the lecture it also made me think about the goal that is called “Global Partnership for Development”. For me this goal also includes helping countriesin special situations, such as the present situation in Syria. Ofcourse I believe that the refugees that have already fled and will be fleeing should be taken in and taken care of to the best of our ability. However finding solutions to this situation does not solve the problem that creates the refugees itself.

When thinking about these two aspects it struck me how wrong the world’s nations are handling the situation in Syria itself. Each of these nations is handling in their own self-interest. They are all trying to solve the situation in Syria in their own way, by helping their “own” parties in the conflict. For example the article that I read was Iran and Russia helping the Assad-regime, on the other hand there is the US and allies that are helping the “moderate”-rebels, lastly there are reports of Saudi-Arabia and Turkey aiding ISIL in one way or the other. All these groups are fighting each other. As you will probably also notice, this does not solve the situation in Syria at all. It only lengthens the conflict which in turn will make sure the stream of refugees will only grow. This stream of refugees also raises the prospect of so called “brain drain” from Syria, which does not promise good things for Syria when this conflict will end.

What I am trying to say with this is that where I previously thought about the Millenium Goal on “Global Partnership for Development” as not that important, the importance of this goal struck me after reading and thinking about this situation. All the world’s nations vying for power against each-other in certain situations is getting us nowhere. In the present day world I don’t believe there is much collective responsibility between the large nations. When these nation’s resources would be pooled together these crises could be resolved much more efficiently.

United we stand, divided we fall