Museum Fellow Dr. Annie Bird has developed a guide for assessing risks of atrocities and identifuing options to reduce the threat of violence against civilians.
Less than 20 miles downriver from the GIFT site, the future prosperity of Indian society is less assured. In the Chamanpura area of Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s largest city, sits the Gulbarg Society, a Muslim-majority neighborhood. In February 2002, during Modi’s first term as governor of Gujarat, the Gulbarg Society was the site of one of the two largest massacres in a wave of statewide violence that killed more than 1,000 civilians over the course of three months.
In April 26, Pierre Nkurunziza, the president of Burundi since 2005, announced he would run for a third term in upcoming elections, prompting protests and violence in Bujumbura, the country’s capital. Civil society actors and opposition advocates argue that Nkurunziza and his political party, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy–Forces for the Defense of Democracy (CNDD-FDD), have violated the terms of the 2005 Arusha Accords, which ended a decades-long civil war that saw over 300,000 civilian deaths.
In the early morning of March 6, a masked gunman attacked a crowded nightclub in Bamako, the capital of Mali. In a combination of automatic gunfire and grenade blasts claimed by the northern Mali-based militant group Al Mourabitoun, the gunman killed five people, including four civilians. Beyond Bamako, rebel violence since the conclusion of a French-led military operation against militants in the country’s northern region in early 2013 has periodically targeted civilians throughout Mali.
On March 11, Nigerian officials announced that a coalition of West African security forces had occupied 36 towns in northeast Nigeria previously held by Boko Haram, the Nigerian militant group. Earlier the following week, Nigerian security forces also claimed control of Bama, a town in northeast Borno state strategically located along the road between Maiduguri, the state capital, and the Nigeria-Cameroon border. The coalition’s territorial gains are the latest display of military strength by troops that, until recent months, have been unable to stem Boko Haram’s attacks against civilian and military targets in northeast Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and southeast Niger.
Experts discuss the growing desire of the policy community to make atrocity prevention a national and international priority.
The fourth anniversary of the Syrian civil war is this week, and the statistics showing the human toll of the conflict are bleak. Nine children are killed in Syria every day. 6-percent of the population has been killed, maimed, or wounded. Life expectancy has fallen by 27-percent, from 75.9 years to 55.7 years. And 3.3 million Syrians have fled and are living as refugees in neighboring countries; 7.6 million people are internally displaced.
On the fourth anniversary of the uprising in Syria, the Museum calls for effective and sustained efforts to end the horrific suffering of the Syrian people, who are in the midst of the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II and facing the threat of genocide.
As one of the 20 countries most likely to experience the start of a new episode of state-led mass killing, according to our statistical risk assessments, Yemen demands our attention. In recent weeks, several countries have shut their embassies in Sanaa, and the UN has continued to warn of the potential for civil war.
Simona Cruciani works on information management, early warning, and risk assessment in the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect. She joined the Office in July 2008, after having served in United Nations field operations in Burundi and Sudan. In Burundi, Cruciani served in the United Nations Peacekeeping Operations ONUB as an Electoral and Civil Affairs Officer. In Sudan, she worked as Civil Affairs Officer for UNMIS. Cruciani’s focus has primarily been on supporting human security, democratization and human rights in conflict and post-conflict situations. She owns Master’s Degrees in Contemporary History, International Affairs and Public Health.
Find information on historical cases of genocide and other atrocities.
