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Flare-Up in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region
June 9, 2014
Our statistical risk assessments continue to identify Ethiopia as one of the world’s countries at greatest risk of state-led mass killing, and recent reports of violent repression in Ethiopia’s Oromia region suggest one pathway by which that dismal but still unlikely outcome could happen.
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Policy Options for Ending Attacks on Civilians in Sudan: Wiki Survey Results
June 6, 2014
Since May 28, we have been running a wiki survey asking “What are the best policy options for engaging with the government of Sudan to end or curtail its attacks on civilians across the country?” Recently overshadowed by the civil war in South Sudan, atrocities in Sudan have continued in regions such as Blue Nile, Kordofan and Nuba Mountains.
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Another Take on the Risk of Mass Killing in Rwanda
June 4, 2014
In a new post on African Arguments, Bert Ingelaere and Marijke Verpoorten ask rhetorically if state-led mass killing could happen again in Rwanda and answer with an unequivocal yes.
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Do U.N. Peacekeepers Stop Atrocities?
June 3, 2014
The ongoing mass atrocities in South Sudan have been particularly stunning because they have taken place in the presence United Nations peacekeeping forces. Shouldn’t U.N. peacekeepers have prevented these attacks on civilians? More broadly as we consider our annual statistical risk assessments for state-led mass killing, does the presence of U.N. peacekeeping operations reduce the risk of a mass killing episode?
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The Colombian Elections and Prospects for Peace
May 30, 2014
On Sunday, May 25, 2014, Colombians went to the polls to elect their next president. Electoral rules are such that if no candidate receives 50% of the vote, a second round (a run-off) occurs between the two candidates that received the most votes in the first round. Given relatively strong showings by “non-traditional” or “third parties” in the election (more about this below) and historically high levels of protest ballots cast for no candidate (“voto en blanco”), no candidate cleared the 50% threshold. The two top vote-getters, incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos (who received 25.66% of the vote) and Óscar Iván Zuluaga (who received 29.26% of the vote) will face one another in a run-off on June 15, 2014.
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Eyes on Mali
May 29, 2014
The civil war in northern Mali is flaring anew, and with it, possibly, the risk of mass atrocities.
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Alarmed By Iraq
April 30, 2014
Iraq’s long-running civil war has spread and intensified again over the past year, and the government’s fight against a swelling Sunni insurgency now threatens to devolve into the sort of indiscriminate reprisals that could produce a new episode of state-led mass killing there. The idea that Iraq could suffer a new wave of mass atrocities at the hands of state security forces or sectarian militias collaborating with them is not far fetched.
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Chad: Does Regional Instability Contribute to the Risk of a Mass Killing?
April 4, 2014
In our statistical risk assessments, Chad currently ranks among the 30 countries worldwide at greatest risk of an onset of state-led mass killing. At the same time, our pool of experts has set Chad’s risk at 8 percent, low compared to several other countries in that Top 30. For example, our experts’ current forecasts for Iraq and Pakistan, both in the Top 30, are 22 and 23 percent, respectively, and for Myanmar, 38 percent. Considering the relative instability of Chad’s neighbors and Chad’s history of coups and ethnic conflict, why do our experts see such a low chance of a mass killing episode, and what might change their predictions?
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Will the UN Human Rights Council Adopt a Resolution on Sri Lanka?
March 15, 2014
The Early Warning Project’s primary goal is to assess risks of mass atrocities, but our expert opinion pool lets us glean insights into related issues, too. For example, we can ask experts to predict how international institutions, such as the United Nations or the International Criminal Court, will respond when atrocities occur. Right now, we’re asking our experts to consider whether or not the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will adopt a resolution concerning Sri Lanka during its 25th regular session, which began this week and ends March 28.
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States Aren’t the Only Mass Killers
March 7, 2014
We tend to think of mass killing as something that states do, but states do not have a monopoly on this use of force. Many groups employ violence in an attempt to further their political and economic agendas; civilians often suffer the consequences of that violence, and sometimes that suffering reaches breathtaking scale.
