Background
The violation of human rights due to ethnic differences has occurred throughout the world.  In some cases, it is a minority being oppressed by a majority, other times, it is two groups fighting for the same resources or land.  Whatever the problem, violations of human rights based upon ethnic background have increasingly become the focus of the world.

Irish Potato Famine
Great Britain had been in control of Ireland since the mid 17th century.  Under British control, Irish farmers grew wheat and oats for export to England.  The Irish grew potato crops for domestic use.  In 1845, disease destroyed most of the potato crop. Even though the Irish were facing a great famine, Great Britain refused to allow them to keep enough of their export crops to survive, and as a result over 1 million Irish died of starvation or disease, while millions of others migrated to the United States.

Stalin & the Soviet Union
Stalin became leader of the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin.  He setup a totalitarian state where his one party government attempted to control every aspect of their people's lives.  In the late 1920s, he started a policy called Russification, which was to transform the various ethnic groups in the Soviet Union into good Russians.  This policy promoted Russian language, culture, and history above all others.  He forbade the use other cultural practices and languages, and often denied non Russians many basic human rights.  During the late 1930s, Stalin set out to eliminate all opposition to his rule.  He imprisoned or executed millions of people, many of them prominent figures from the ethnic republics.  As a result, many ethnic groups were denied their freedom, culture, and religion until the collapse of the Soviet union in the early 1990s.

Tribalism
Africa was controlled by Europe to provide raw materials and new markets for industrialized goods.  This period, known as Imperialism, had a negative effect on African culture and did not completely end until after World War II.  A major effect of Imperialism on Africa is tribalism.  When the Europeans took control, they redrew Africa's boundaries to suit themselves.  They had little regard for the tribal boundaries already in place.  

When Imperialism ended, many newly independent countries, using the European boundaries, found themselves with many different ethnic groups within their borders.  This resulted in violence, civil war, and a lack of political, social, and economic unity in many African nations.  An example of this is Nigeria.  During the 1960s, Nigeria experienced a civil war as the Ibo, a minority ethnic group, attempted to gain independence after the massacre of 20,000 of their people.  By the end of the war, over a million people had died as a result of war and starvation.

Another example of tribalism leading to gross human rights violations is the civil war in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi.  Tribal rivalries had existed for years between these groups, often leading to violence since independence.  In 1994, the United Nations had concluded a peace agreement to end the violence in their country.  Unfortunately, it was short lived.  The Hutu dominated Rwandan army initiated a genocide against the Tutsi, killing more than a million of them in under a year.  This was ended when a Tutsi rebel army seized the government.  Since this time, UN Peacekeeping forces have worked to end the violence, with little success.

Balkans
Yugoslavia was created at the end of World War I.  It contained various ethnic and religious groups.  After World War II, this area was dominated by the Soviet Union.  After the fall of communism, the various ethnic and religious groups, including the Orthodox Christian Serbs, the Roman Catholic Croats, the Muslim Albanians, and others, attempted to separate from Yugoslavia and form their own nations. The nations of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina all gained independence at this time.  

However, this independence came at a price.  War and ethnic violence have devastated this once united country.  In Bosnia and Herzegovina, many non Serbs were either killed or forced out of the country by Serb forces.  This policy was called Ethnic Cleansing.  Gross violations of human rights occurred, such as the systematic rape of non Serb women, and the widespread use of terrorism and death.

The Yugoslav army, under the guidance of Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, fought to keep non-Serbs from breaking away from Yugoslavia. During the 1990s, he used his army to terrorize ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, who were asking for self rule.  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) finally put a stop to this violence, and Milosovic has since been arrested and awaits trial for war crimes.  The former Yugoslavia continues to face many problems regarding ethnic strife.