Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

COMPLEMENTARITY PRINCIPLE
against humanity. In 2000, the COC issued a genocide warning in regard to a situation in
Sudan, where, the committee asserted, “starvation was being used as a weapon of destruction,”
which, in part, with other offenses, was “threatening the existence of entire groups.”
In 2004, the COC declared that the plight of the black Africans of Darfur and the attacks
being carried out against them by government of Sudan troops and the Janjaweed (Arab
militia) constituted a genocide emergency.
Communism. A political ideology and economic system that advocates a society
devoid of social classes, or differences based on wealth or possessions. The communist
ideal sees the withering away of states, such that all people live in a harmonious world
where national boundaries no longer exist. The most fundamental identifying feature of
communism is its advocacy of worker (i.e., proletarian) control of the means of production,
within an urban-industrialized social environment, and a forced repression of those
who either stand in the way of the realization of such an ideal or come from a class seen
as holding back those who seek it (most specifically, the industrial bourgeoisie, or middle
class). Communism is thus an extreme form of the broader socialist movement. Although
the term was first introduced by Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels
(1820–1885) in the aftermath of the failed 1848 revolutions in Europe in their pamphlet
The Communist Manifesto, issued in 1848, it was the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir
Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin (1870–1924), who gave the ideology its modern expression
as an intolerant, repressive, and potentially (when not actually) genocidal political
force in the modern world. Whereas in many states classical socialism evolved into social
democracy, working within a democratic political structure, in others it took on a revolutionary
form of communism, first in Russia (1917) and then in many other countries supported
by a Russia reconstituted as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR); after
World War II (1939–1945), these nations included Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia,
Bulgaria, and East Germany. Other states that were successful in imposing a
more distinctive, indigenous but still totalitarian form of communist regime were
Yugoslavia, Albania, North Korea, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Cuba, among others.
In most cases, the revolutionary nature of communism saw the new regimes tear down
existing socioeconomic structures using brutal, even exterminatory, methods.
Compassion Fatigue. Compassion fatigue (which is also referred to as donor fatigue) is a
concept that some use to explain a lack of interest in or concern about humanitarian emergencies,
including genocide. More specifically, it suggests that the international community,
regional organizations, and/or individual states are hesitant, tentative, or unwilling to effectively
address a conflict or humanitarian crisis. The tentativeness and/or unwillingness to
provide such assistance is due to numerous factors, including but not limited to the sheer
number of crises erupting across the globe; the endless, and ultimately overwhelming, expectation
to address each and every crisis; along with the sense that not every single one can
be addressed adequately and thus some sort of “triage” must be undertaken.
Conversely, both terms are also used to attempt to explain why individuals and/or
nations over time seem to care less and provide less assistance when such emergencies
crop up. The terms also suggest that donors may have become so overwhelmed by the
ever-increasing humanitarian emergencies in the world and their concomitant needs that
they either cut back their giving or cut out giving entirely.
Complementarity Principle. The complementarity principle refers to the notion
that political leaders and military officers who perpetrate crimes that are universally
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