Complex emergencies (CEs) have been the most common human-generated disaster of the past two decades. These internal conflicts and associated acts of genocide have been poorly understood and poorly managed. This article provides an epidemiological background and understanding of developing and developed countries, and chronic or smoldering countries' CEs, and explains in detail the prevailing m...

Episodes of genocide involve both a mental and physical element in their evolution. The mental element appears to be rooted in authoritarian parenting and societies that engender fear and anger in children and stifle their capacity for emotional empathy. The repressed emotions find expression when societies produce false narratives to target particular groups. When these false narratives are in...

From 1992 to 1995 the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina experienced a war of genocidal proportions between the Bosnian Serbs, the Bosnian Croats, and the Bosnian Muslims. The international Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has indicted Dr. Radovan Karadzic--former President of the Bosnian Serb Republic, psychiatrist, and poet--as a suspected war criminal for his role in war crimes, crime...

I am Charline Musaniwabo. I was born in 1976. My parents were farmers. I lived with them up to April 1994. My life completely changed during the genocide, having been married forcibly and losing many of my family members. I was born into a family of nine children, four boys and five girls. Five siblings and both my parents died during the genocide. Four of us escaped. I did not get a chance to ...

Many words have been used to name and describe the Great Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33, including “famine” “catastrophe,” “the Holodomor,” now “genocide.” Was famine genocide? part a Is word genocide an exaggeration? naming attempt dramatize events for political purposes today? refusal call act denial? This article argues that, though more than seven decades passed Soviet Union has come gone, que...

Using the notion of a ‘‘triggering mechanism’’ as a guidepost, this article details the sequence of events precipitated by the accidental explosion of a bomb a young Armenian was tinkering with in anticipation of a new round of massacres he hoped to obviate. The ensuing massive and indiscriminate arrests throughout the length and breadth of the district, the attendant use of a variety of method...

My name is Berthilde Uwimbabazi. I come from the Eastern Province, where I was born in 1960, one of 11 children of my farming parents. I married my husband in 1977. We had five children. When the genocide took place, it found us in Bugesera District. My parents, seven brothers and two of my sisters were all killed. Only one of my sisters and I escaped. However, I also lost my husband and four c...

AIMS War and conflict are known to adversely affect mental health, although their effects on risk symptoms for psychosis development in youth in various parts of the world are unclear. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 and Civil War had widespread effects on the population. Despite this, there has been no significant research on psychosis risk in Rwanda. Our goal in the present study was to investig...

Genocide is different from civil war: it usually involves deaths on a much larger scale and targets particular groups – mostly civilians often with the aim of exterminating them. The violence is one-sided, and, fortunately, genocides are much rarer than civil wars. Although with genocide, as with civil wars, it is possible to identify underlying political and economic patterns that make genocid...