ABSTRACT
Civilization is, more importantly, the capacity to eschew the characteristic double-standard that has continued to make genocide one of the manifestations of the transgression of the principles of humanity, a controversial subject in today’s world. But in contemporary African armed conflicts, radical evils are prevalent. In the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, radical evils are so prevalent that one of their variants—the instrument of rape— has long been so perfected that it has become an instrument or weapon of war. Of all the violations of the rules of armed conflict that can be considered as falling into the category designated as radical evils, genocide is, perhaps, the most benumbing because of the large scale or enormous proportion of human lives that are destroyed in its gale. Moreover, from inception, the African traditional and cultural approaches do not reckon with such radical evils as genocide.
