Since the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, the risk of mass atrocities has increased for vulnerable groups, including ethnic and religious minorities. The Hazara community is experiencing increasing and widespread attacks by ISIS-KP and the Taliban alongside a history of persecution, necessitating an immediate response by the US and other governments.
Real challenges remain, but the strategy represents important progress. Here's what civil society experts want to see next.
One strong theme in the new US government’s United States Strategy to Anticipate, Prevent, and Respond to Atrocities is the importance of evaluation, learning, and adaptation. These elements of the strategy reflect the same basic tenets that motivated the Simon-Skjodt Center to conduct the project, “Lessons Learned in Preventing and Responding to Mass Atrocities”—namely, that atrocity prevention efforts should be informed by what has been learned about how to accomplish this goal, and that continued learning is crucial to help address gaps in our current knowledge.
This new strategy marks the first time the US government has made public a written strategy concerning mass atrocities, signaling the potential for a stronger, more coordinated effort across the US government.
Although conflict frequently disrupts food systems, in the case of Ethiopia there are credible reports that parties to the conflict have destroyed food, crops, livestock, and civilian infrastructure such as water sources and that the Ethiopian federal government is responsible for deliberately starving civilians.
Remarks delivered on June 27, 2022, by Simon-Skjodt Center Director Naomi Kikoler at the International Religious Freedom Summit.
For the ninth year in a row, the Early Warning Project ran a comparison survey in December to solicit wisdom-of-the-crowd opinions on countries' relative risks for new mass killing. Due to less participation this year, we take the opportunity to reflect on two aspects of the survey methodology.
The Taliban’s takeover has increased the risk of mass atrocities in Afghanistan. Here’s how the United States can help prevent them.
Between August 25 and September 4, 2017, Rohingya villages across Burma’s Rakhine State experienced what they would each come to know as their own “Massacre Day.” Read about their experiences of forced displacement.
Remarks delivered by Naomi Kikoler, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, at the Embassy of France’s screening of the film “Bringing Assad to Justice.”