Hello to the President of the United States. I’m an 18-year-old senior that attends Pattonville High School in St. Louis, Missouri. I wanted to address you on a problem that been bothering me since the beginning of my junior year of high school. This problem is genocide. I believe that people shouldn’t be slaughtered for just being who they are. We live in a judgmental world that shouldn’t decide who lives or not. Places like Africa, Europe, and Asia need our help. I’m not saying you have to send American troops to help solve other countries problems, but we do need a solution to prevent this from happening, and people need to be responsible for their unspeakable actions.

Genocide is the destruction of a political, religious, racial or ethic group. In the 1940s, a lawyer name Raphael Lemkin introduced the world genocide. Lemkin used Genocide to describe the Nazi policy of murdering Jewish people during the Holocaust. Before the Holocaust, there had been a record of mass slaughter of people. In the 13th century, Genghis Khan ordered his Mongol horsemen to kill entire nations and they left behind nothing but empty ruins and bones. In 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; this made genocide an international crime (“Does the global community have a responsibility to intervene in states committing genocide”). 

Although genocide is still an international crime, it happens every day. Every day hundreds or even thousands of people are killed and people are getting away with it. There are 16 countries around the world that are in risk of Genocide. Most of these countries are in Africa, some in Europe, and a little in Asia (Genocide Watch). You will never hear anyone of this on the news because either United States is unaware of it or they don’t even know to deal with this situation.

 In some cases people don’t even know what genocide means. During the Armenian Genocide anniversary, President Obama said a speech about the lives that were lost that day. He never once described it as genocide. I read an essay about Henry Morganthau and Armin T. Wegner about how they are noble figures within the history of the Armenian genocide. Morganthau talked to a Turkish official who admit that they did horrible crimes to the Armenians and didn’t care. Not all the Turkish officials got charged for their crimes but if they did, it would be already too late because they were old people with too many health issues to benefit from anything.

History is repeating as we speak and no one is aware of it. I ask my classmates around me if they know what genocide is, and they look at me with confused faces. I’m from Africa and it is horrific to see my people dying because they don’t share the same values as the people that are massacring them. I believe that there must be a way to prevent this from happening less or even not all. I’m not asking you to send American troops, I’m asking you to stop the suffering.

Sincerely,

Iveren 

Citation 

"Does the Global Community Have a Responsibility to Intervene in States Committing Genocide?" ProQuest SIRS Knowledge Source. ProQuest Staff, n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016.

"Genocide Watch." GeoRSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2016

The picture below describes what I said in the bolded text.

http://www.slideshare.net/AnnenbergPLC/taking-the-stand

If you look up this link, It is slide number 4.