Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

“CNN EFFECT”
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Washington Post story quoted reports that the Rwandan employees of the major international
relief agencies had been executed ‘in front of horrified expatriate staffers.’ On April
10, a New York Times front-page article quoted the Red Cross claim that ‘tens of thousands
were dead, 8,000 in Kigali alone and that corpses were in the houses, in the streets, everywhere.’
The Post, the same day, led its front-page story with a description of ‘a pile of
corpses six feet high’ outside the main hospital” (Power, 2002, p. 356). There were also, of
course, the regular updates that any U.S. president receives on a daily basis from a variety
of intelligence sources.
“CNN Effect” (also commonly referred to as “CNN Factor”). The “CNN effect”
refers to the impact of the media (and particularly twenty-four-hour news covering all
parts of the globe) to both inform and ostensibly influence public opinion about major
conflicts and/or humanitarian disasters. It also refers to the debatable issue as to whether
the CNN effect provides the public with the leverage to prod the international community
to address and ameliorate, in some way, the conflict/disaster. The term itself refers to
the first television station, CNN, to provide twenty-four-hour coverage of global events.
Coalition for an International Criminal Court (CICC). The CICC was formed by the
more than one hundred nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that were officially
represented at the Rome Conference (June and July 1998), which was held to finalize the
International Criminal Court Statute. Though the NGOs lacked the rights and privileges
of the individual nations (some 162) represented at the conference (meaning that they
had no vote and were not even allowed to observe the major informal negotiations that
were taking place), their presence was significant in that they carefully followed the many
and intense negotiations, provided technical expertise to national delegates, and wrote
and distributed papers on major issues. Ultimately, the various NGOs worked together
through the CICC in order to maximize their impact, reach, and effectiveness.
Coalition for International Justice (CIJ). CIJ, which had offices in Washington, D.C.,
and The Hague, was an international, nonprofit nongovernmental organization (NGO)
that supported the international war crimes tribunals for Rwanda (ICTR) and the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) and justice initiatives in East Timor, Cambodia, and elsewhere. CIJ
initiated and conducted advocacy and public education campaigns, targeting decision
makers in Washington and other capitals, the media, and the public. Working with other
NGOs in Washington and elsewhere, CIJ helped to focus and maximize the impact of
individual and collective advocacy. In the field, CIJ provided practical assistance on legal,
technical, and outreach matters to the tribunals and/or justice initiatives. During the summer
of 2004, CIJ headed up the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Project, which collected
evidence for the U.S. State Department in order to ascertain whether genocide had
been perpetrated in Darfur, Sudan, against the Massaleit, Fur, and Zagahawa peoples.
Using the outcomes of the analysis of the data, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
declared that genocide had been perpetrated by the government of Sudan and the
Janjaweed (Arab militia). CIJ shut down in 2006, having completed the tasks it initially
set out to do.
Coalition Pour la Défense de la République (CDR) (French, Coalition for the
Defense of the Republic). A Rwandan political party established in February 1992. Composed
of radical members of the Mouvement Révolutionnaire Nationale pour le Développement
(MRND), the CDR has been described as “Rwanda’s version of the Ku Klux Klan”
(i.e., racist, extremist, and hateful). The party was founded by three extreme anti-Tutsi