The Origin of Conflict

Conflict has been going on since the beginning of this earth, but it has many factors and variables that people don’t take into consideration. The main one is the origin of conflict. When there is conflict, people don’t care too much about how it started or who created it; all they want to do is find a way to end it. Conflict can be as insignificant as a fight in the playground between two children, or it can be as serious as two or more countries going into war.

                Children can start a fight over anything. Let´s say two kids are playing in a ground and they both want to go down the slide, but they both want to be first. This causes an argument which then escalates into a fight. When a teacher sees them the first thing he/she tries to do is stop the conflict. They don’t bother to ask how the argument began or who started; all they want is for the conflict to end. As children can have these arguments, so can adults; but the problem is that conflicts between adults tend to have greater consequences.

                Conflicts between adults have the power to affect more people, than children´s arguments can. Take the conflict that happened in Rwanda some years ago. The problem was between the Hutu and the Tutsi. These are the two major tribes in Rwanda. When Belgium took over Rwanda they divided the people into two groups, Hutus and Tutsis. Even though the majority were Hutus, Belgium decided to give the Tutsis the all the power because the thought the Tutsis had “leadership values.” The Hutus resented the Tutsis for what Belgium granted them. The Hutus then wanted to get pay back so they mass slaughtered thousands of Tutsis. The problem became so big that in turned into a genocide. This demonstrates how the conflict between two different groups that are made by the same race of people can result in an atrocious genocide. When the UN got involved they weren´t looking for how the conflict started or who was responsible, all they wanted was to stop the mass slaughter caused by the Hutus.

                Conflict can surface because of many different reasons, but they last thing people care about doing when conflict comes about is the origin of the problem. In the case of Rwanda, the origin of the problem happened so many years in the past that the people who were trying to end the conflict didn’t care about why it started; all the wanted was to stop the slaughter. The origin of conflict is not the most important thing when it comes to major issues; the most important thing is to preserve the peace.