In August 2024, a popular uprising in Bangladesh ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her political party, the Awami League, from power. The abrupt shift has raised concerns about heightened political instability and the potential for mass atrocities. This piece addresses concerning trends to monitor regarding the risk of large-scale, systematic, group-targeted, identity-based violence against civilians in the country.
Dr. Ali Riaz shares his analysis of mass atrocity risks following PM Sheikh Hasina’s resignation and the formation of a new interim government.
As the coronavirus pandemic ravages the globe Rohingya refugees face an impossible predicament.
The incumbent Awami League’s sweeping electoral victory appears to signal a lower risk of mass atrocities in the near term.
Six months ago the Simon-Skjodt Center published a report on risk for mass killing in Bangladesh, focusing on scenarios related to the elections later this year. The assessment’s conclusions stand today.
Bangladesh has made considerable social and economic progress in recent years, but sharp divisions between major political parties, past violence around the 2014 election, increased authoritarianism, impunity for security forces, localized patronage politics, and exceptionally high stakes for the coming election indicate a threat of violence that could reach a greater scale than in the past.
Last month, we shared the results of our Early Warning Project’s latest Statistical Risk Assessment (SRA)—a list of 163 countries ranked by their risk for onset of state-led mass killing. As we’ve taken our results on the road, we’ve found that we are commonly asked some variation of this question: This is all very interesting, but what am I supposed to do with it?ewp@ushmm.org
Andrea Gittleman, Program Manager for the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, testifies before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on the human rights and humanitarian situation of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State in Burma, and along the Bangladesh border.
Find information on historical cases of genocide and other atrocities.
