Here’s what Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said about the risk of mass atrocities this year in the Worldwide Threat Assessment he delivered today to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence...
New Republic correspondent Graeme Wood provides a vivid account of his recent trip to Burma, which he undertook with support from the Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide.
In a recent post, I noted that 2013 had distinguished itself in a dismal way, by producing more new episodes of mass killing than any other year since the early 1990s. Now let’s talk about why. Each of these mass killings surely involves some unique and specific local processes, and people who study in depth the societies where mass killings are occurring can say much better than I what those are. As someone who believes local politics is always embedded in a global system, however, I don’t think we can fully understand these situations by considering only those idiosyncratic features, either. Sometimes we see “clusters” where they aren’t, but evidence that we live in a global system leads me to think that isn’t what’s happening here.
This review tracks the major events over the past ten years in the lead-up to the current crisis, and examines the response of the international community.
The Museum has released previously unpublished material about a pivotal moment in the lead-up to the 1994 Rwandan genocide as part of new project that examines the massive failure of the international community to stop one of the most horrifying and brutal episodes of mass violence that the world has seen since the Holocaust.
In an article for Defense One, Madeleine K. Albright, former Secretary of State and co-chair of the Museum–co-sponsored Working Group on the Responsibility to Protect, discusses the steps taken by the Obama administration to address the situation in the Central African Republic, outlines why atrocities perpetrated in the heart of Africa are important to the strategic interests and moral values of the United States, and why the “responsibility to protect” is applicable here.
The Museum expresses grave concern over reports that members of ethnic groups are being targeted for killing in South Sudan and warned of the potential for catastrophic violence if leaders of the country do not act quickly to contain their supporters.
Over at Foreign Policy‘s Peace Channel, Sheldon Himmelfarb of USIP has a new post arguing that better communications technologies in the hands of motivated people now give us unprecedented access to information from ongoing armed conflicts.
Sixty-five years ago today, in the wake of the Holocaust, the UN General Assembly adopted its first-ever human rights treaty. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide obliges signatories to prevent genocide—defined as acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group—and to punish the perpetrators when it occurs.
Which countries in the world are most likely to see new episodes of state-led mass killing in 2014? To help us answer this question, we'd like you to participate in a pairwise wiki survey, the aggregated results of which will be made public on our program's web site when it launches early next year. Participation can take as little or as much time as you like, and even just a few minutes of your time will really improve our results.