Attachments
Foreword
Genocide and related crimes against humanity are devastating in their scale and scope, causing enduring scars for survivors and their families and long-term trauma in societies. The economic, political, and social costs and consequences often extend far beyond the territory in which they were committed.
Working to prevent future genocides requires an understanding of how these events occur, including considerations about warning signs and human behaviors that make genocide and mass atrocities possible. We know from studying the Holocaust and other genocides that such events are never spontaneous. They are always preceded by a range of early warning signs. If warning signs are detected and their causes addressed, it may be possible to prevent catastrophic loss of life.
Museum Founding Chairman and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel envisioned that the Museum would seek to do for victims of genocide today what was not done for the Jews of Europe: “Only a conscious, concerted attempt to learn from past errors can prevent recurrence to any racial, religious, ethnic, or national group.”
The Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide was established to help fulfill that vision. The Center’s mandate is “to alert the national conscience, influence policy makers, and stimulate worldwide action to confront and prevent genocide.” As a trusted resource for government officials, we strive to promote broad and enduring bipartisan commitment among policy makers to preventing genocide and related crimes against humanity.
The Early Warning Project—a joint initiative of the Simon-Skjodt Center at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College—has produced a global risk assessment every year since 2014. Since then, we have seen multiple mass atrocities occur, including a genocide against the Rohingya in Burma, the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in South Sudan, and identity-based killings of civilians in Ethiopia. Even in cases like these where warnings have been issued, they have simply not prompted enough early action.
This assessment identifies the risk—the possibility—that an intrastate mass killing may take place. On average, one or two countries experience a new episode of mass killing each year. But relative infrequency does not make the brutality less devastating for victims. An intrastate mass killing, by our definition, is the deliberate killing of 1,000 or more civilians within a country by armed forces in the same country (whether government or nonstate), over a period of a year or less, because of their membership in a particular group. Virtually all cases of genocide include mass killings that meet this definition.
For nearly two decades, US presidents have reaffirmed that preventing mass atrocities is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility. Preventing mass atrocities is crucial to US national security because instability and violence abroad often spill across borders, leading to refugee crises, the spread of extremism, and threats to global economic stability—all of which can directly impact the safety and prosperity of Americans. When we act to prevent atrocities, we help stabilize regions and foster global peace, which, in turn, reduces the likelihood of threats to our own nation.
One of the Simon-Skjodt Center’s goals is to ensure that the US government, other governments, and multilateral organizations have institutionalized structures, tools, and policies to effectively prevent and respond to genocide and other mass atrocities. The Early Warning Project is listed in the bipartisan Global Fragility Act (2019) as a source to help determine where the US government should prioritize its Global Fragility Strategy, a landmark ten-year effort to improve US action to stabilize conflict-affected areas and prevent extremism and violent conflict.
The more governments and international organizations develop their own early warning tools and processes, the better our Early Warning Project can help serve as a catalyst for preventive action. For example, the US Atrocity Risk Assessment Framework, updated in 2022, sets out guidance for the kind of in-depth analysis that should be conducted on countries near the top of our Statistical Risk Assessment.
In many places, intrastate mass killings are ongoing—in countries such as Burma, Ethiopia, and Sudan. These cases are well known. But this risk assessment’s primary focus—and the gap we seek to fill—is to draw attention to countries at risk of a new outbreak of intrastate mass killing. We use this model as one input for selecting countries for more in-depth research and policy engagement. The Simon-Skjodt Center focuses on situations where there is a risk of large-scale, group-targeted, identity-based mass atrocities, or where these are ongoing, and where we believe we can make the most impact based on a combination of factors. These factors include the ability for Simon-Skjodt Center staff or partners to conduct rigorous field work in the area (or a pre-existing level of staff expertise in the area), opportunities for effective engagement with the community at risk, and the need to draw attention to cases where policy, media, and public attention are lower than merited by the level of risk.
Preventing genocide is of course difficult. In deciding how to respond, policy makers face an array of constraints and competing concerns. As we confront ongoing crises, we must not neglect opportunities to prevent new mass atrocities from occurring. We know from the Holocaust what can happen when early warning signs go unheeded. We aim for this risk assessment to serve as a tool and a resource for policy makers and others interested in prevention. We hope this helps them better establish priorities and undertake the discussion and deeper analysis that can help reveal where preventive action can make the greatest impact in saving lives.
Naomi Kikoler
Director
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide
December 2024