Another Balkans Unfolding in Africa?

Our emotional attachment to other human beings diminishes as our concentric circles of identity and belonging also diminish. As such, the Central African Republic is just too far removed from our moral horizons to evoke meaningful sympathy. As natural as this might seem, it is a stance that delineates moral concern in no less an arbitrary manner than the Seleka or Anti-balaka. It legitimises chance of birth as a barrier to moral obligation, it narrows sympathy to commonality and circumstance, it destroys all hope of a truly cosmopolitan human ethic – it means that, insofar as they occur in the Central African Republic, mass atrocities and immeasurable human suffering are easy to ignore.