"History teaches us that mass atrocities are preventable," United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. has a new initiative which sets out to prove that mass killings are preventable. The Museum has created an online tool which will provide information based on statistical analysis and expert feedback to the public. The system aims to warn government officials, policy makers, advocacy groups and scholars of possible atrocities so that they can concert their efforts and keep such events from happening.
Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images
According to experts, data from past genocides, crimes against humanityand war crimes such as the ones that occurred in Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, Germany and Eastern Europe have provided clear early warning signs preceding mass violence. GoDanRiver.com on Sept. 21 cites Cameron Hudson, director at the Simon-Skjodt Center: "Tracking those indicators in at-risk countries around the world will, for the first time, allow us to look over the horizon to implement smarter, cheaper and more effective policies that prevent mass violence."
Atrocity crimes’ “status as international crimes is based on the belief that the acts associated with them affect the core dignity of human beings, in particular the persons that should be most protected by States, both in times of peace and in times of war,” explains the United Nations. For this reason, it’s important for officials and experts to be held accountable for the prevention of such acts.
Developers at The Simon-Skjodt Center have been testing the Early Warning Project in collaboration with the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College for two years. The official launch is Monday, Sept. 21.
The project has flagged numerous countries at-risk for mass killings. The top 10 are (in order): Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, Central African Republic, Egypt, Congo-Kinshasa, Somalia, Pakistan, South Sudan and Afghanistan.
According to Benjamin Valentino, one of the project’s creators, "Most of these countries as you go down the list have some form of civil conflict involving the government and some insurgent group or rebel group, often divided along ethnic lines, and there's a risk of violence going in either direction, either the government killing civilians or the rebel group killing civilians."
Valentino also says that though the government keeps private watch lists for mass atrocities, this is the first time this kind of data has been made fully available to the public. In the past, there were a few public programs but they were run by small groups that were “making judgements about the world.”
The Early Warning project differs from these programs, not only because it is public but also because it uses statistical data gleaned from historically logged catastrophes over the past 50 years. It also gleans from a large pool of over 100 regional and subject matter experts who address specific questions and concerns. "When we ask them to tell us which countries are at risk, we ask them to tell us exactly how at risk they are and for what kind of event, and that way we can know in the future whether their forecasts are right or wrong," Benjamin Valentino, told Associated Press.
The developers of the project say that it’s not a perfect system. Some countries may be missed and human error always comes into play. However, people will know exactly why these catastrophes are happening. With that added information, the system can be improved and those working to prevent such events will be able to hold themselves and others accountable.
*originally published on the now defunct Examiner.com
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