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1. Halting Genocide in Sudan

Author:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide
Publication Date:
01-2025
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
In January 2025, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide published a report, “History is repeating itself in Darfur in the Worst Possible Way”: Halting Genocide in Sudan (PDF). This report focuses particularly on ethnically targeted mass atrocities in Darfur committed since the outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023. It also assesses future risks, particularly as the rise in identity-based targeting by both the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces increases the risk of further mass atrocities. On January 7, 2025, the United States Department of State determined that genocide is being perpetrated in Darfur by members of the RSF, a powerful paramilitary group, and their allied militias. This determination is a somber acknowledgment of the horrific crimes endured by communities who experienced genocide 20 years ago and have been neglected for too long. This genocide is ongoing. Civilian protection must be an urgent priority for the US government and the international community. This report offers policy options for the US and other governments—acting individually and as part of regional and international bodies—to halt mass atrocities, bolster accountability mechanisms and local documentation efforts, and protect civilians from harm. These actions should include increased pressure on states that provide financial support to the RSF, securing pathways for humanitarian aid, and prioritizing civilian protection, including by supporting locally-led prevention and protection efforts.
Topic:
Genocide, Armed Forces, Atrocities, Armed Conflict, and Rapid Support Forces (RSF)
Political Geography:
Africa, Sudan, and Darfur

2. Climate Change, Response, and Mass Atrocities

Author:
Tallan Donine, Madeleine Maclean, and Daniel Solomon
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
This paper aims to stimulate and frame discussion during the Sudikoff Interdisciplinary Seminar on Genocide Prevention about the relationship between climate change, climate response, and mass atrocities. Based on a review of relevant research, the paper surveys current knowledge about how factors related to (1) climate change and (2) climate response measures might contribute to the risk and prevention of mass atrocities. In the coming decade, climate change will pose significant risks for communities around the world (Buhaug et al. 2023). Mitigation and adaptation measures taken in response to these risks will occupy a large amount of international attention and have important consequences for global political events. Effective action to help prevent and respond to mass atrocities will require clear analysis of the risks and opportunities that these trends present.
Topic:
Climate Change, Atrocities, Adaptation, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Global Focus

3. What Could Changing Conflict Dynamics Mean for the Risk of Mass Atrocities in Burma

Author:
Andrea Gittleman and Denise-Nicole Stone
Publication Date:
04-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
In March 2024, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide hosted a private roundtable discussion on potential conflict scenarios in Burma/Myanmar. The discussion explored plausible trajectories of the conflict over the next six months, and whether these paths may lead to increased risk of mass atrocities for civilians. The convening included researchers, policymakers, and civil society representatives and discussed the following questions: • What are the plausible scenarios in which the conflict could evolve in the coming six months? • What would these changes mean in terms of the mass atrocity risks to civilian populations? • Are there specific regions/areas in Burma where civilians may be at especially high risk? • What particular developments should policymakers monitor? • What potential resiliencies exist to mitigate growing or changing mass atrocity risks, and what strategies should US policymakers use to support them? • What are the policy options available to US policymakers? The discussion took place under the Chatham House rule. This report summarizes key topics from the conversation without attribution.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Atrocities, and Armed Conflict
Political Geography:
Burma, Southeast Asia, and Myanmar

4. The Ongoing Genocide in Gaza

Author:
John Cherian
Publication Date:
01-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
India International Centre (IIC)
Abstract:
There seems to be no end in sight to the genocidal war being waged in the Gaza Strip. As the new year dawned, more than 22,835 Gazans, the majority of them children and women, have been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).1 The true mortality rates are, of course, much higher as at least 7,000 Palestinians remain buried under the rubble.2 In three months of fighting, one out of every 10 persons living in Gaza has been killed. As international humanitarian organisations and local eyewitness accounts have testified, the Gaza civilians were intentionally targeted by the Israeli military. The deaths of civilians and the damage to civilian infrastructure were not due to collateral damage in the fight between Israel and the Palestine militias in Gaza. After the 7 October 2023 Hamas military attack along the highly fortified border with Israel that had resulted in the deaths of 1,200 residents, Israeli leaders and top army generals had publicly vowed to hit the people of Gaza ‘with fire and brimstone’, quoting Old Testament prophets. It was the worst humiliation the Israeli army had suffered in more than 50 years. There were open calls to ‘ethnically cleanse’ Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories so that Israel could realise its long-held dream of an ‘Eretz Israel’ (Land of Israel) extending from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing the Israeli parliament shortly after the bloody onslaught on Gaza began, promised to fulfil ‘the prophecy of Isaiah’. The prophecy, a part of the Bible’s ‘Book of Isaiah’, speaks about the creation of a Greater Israel extending from the Nile River to the Euphrates River. In a later speech, Netanyahu said that Israel was on ‘a holy mission’ in Gaza while invoking another Old Testament story of Amalek. According to the Hebrew Bible, the kingdom of Amalek was the arch-enemy of the Israelites. Amalek was the grandson of Esau, the eldest son of Isaac. Esau is believed to be the father of Edomites, a Semitic tribe often in conflict with the Jews. According to the biblical story, God had ordered his ‘chosen people’, the Israelites, to completely obliterate the Amalekites. No Western leader condemned this blatantly ‘genocidal’ statement by the Israeli Prime Minister. Juan Cole, an American academic and expert on West Asian politics, has charged the Netanyahu government of declaring ‘a holy war of annihilation of civilians in Gaza’.3 The Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, had earlier asserted that there were ‘no innocent civilians’ in Gaza. The Israeli Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, vowed to ‘eliminate everything’ in Gaza. The Israeli government’s ‘genocidal intent’ has become even more evident after three months of war. The number of people killed in the war on Gaza has exceeded the casualty figures of three previous major Arab–Israeli wars. In 1948, the year Israel was recognised as an independent state, around 15,000 Palestinians were killed as they were forcibly dislocated from their ancestral land. More than 20,000 people were killed when Israel invaded Lebanon to remove the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under the leadership of Yasser Arafat from the country.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Genocide, Atrocities, Hamas, Benjamin Netanyahu, Armed Conflict, and Healthcare System
Political Geography:
Middle East, India, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

5. Inflicting Unprecedented Suffering and Destruction: Seven ways the government of Israel is deliberately blocking and/or undermining the international humanitarian response in the Gaza Strip

Author:
Oxfam Publishing
Publication Date:
03-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Over five months into the Israeli mass atrocities on the Gaza Strip, in response to the horrific 7 October 2023 attacks by Palestinian armed groups, a meaningful and safe humanitarian response is made impossible by the government of Israel. In this briefing we outline seven fundamental humanitarian access constraints.
Topic:
War Crimes, Atrocities, Palestinian Authority, Humanitarian Response, Blockade, 2023 Gaza War, and Forced Displacement
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

6. Revisiting Gaza Ghetto

Author:
Shifaa Alsairafi
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
Gathering for Alarba’een, a day of remembrance when mourners come together on the 40th day after the death of a loved one or prominent figure, is a common practice in much of the Arab world. The 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking film Gaza Ghetto: Portrait of a Palestinian Family, 1948-84, which was co-directed by CCAS Professor Joan Mandell and was the first documentary produced about Gaza, was accompanied by a similarly solemn tone—not only because the neighborhoods depicted in the film have been destroyed since the documentary was released in 1984 but also because the situation in Gaza has grown exponentially worse in recent decades. Gaza Ghetto is set in Jabalia, which—along with the entire Gaza Strip—came under Israeli occupation following the 1967 war, and by the 1980s had become home to the largest refugee camp in the occupied Palestinian territories. Mandell and her co-directors chose Jabalia as the primary site for the documentary not only because of its size and historical importance, but also because of her familiarity with many intellectuals and artists living there who could narrate their story. “Jabalia had a vibrant life of arts and activism, and many people who wanted to share it,” recalls Mandell. Although the film includes interviews with many Jabalia residents, its producers decided to center the story around an individual family so that they could document daily life under occupation. They ultimately selected the family of Abu el-Adel because of the family’s openness and ability to articulate their own experiences as part of a collective story. Indeed, the personal stories narrated by Abu el-Adel, his daughter Itidhal and son-in-law Mustafa, were representative of the tragedies facing thousands of Palestinians and the mass dispossession forced upon them by the Israeli state. Mandell recalls that Itidhal and her daughter Ra’ida—both strong female figures—were a major reason she was drawn to portray this family. The film opens with Itidhal confronting the Israeli settlers who live in a town that displaced her father’s village and includes scenes of Itidhal caring for her six children while husband Mustafa works the nightshift, as well as sharing the story of how her mother died in childbirth when Israeli soldiers would not allow an ambulance to reach her during a camp lockdown.
Topic:
Human Rights, History, Film, Atrocities, and Documentary
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Gaza, and Jabalia

7. Scholasticide in Gaza

Author:
Samar Saeed
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS)
Abstract:
As a PhD candidate researching the Palestinian Revolution during the 1960s and 1970s, my discussions with former revolutionaries, known as the fidayeen, are always marked by their enthusiastic recollections of the books that profoundly transformed their being, thoughts, and imaginations. These books have transported them to other anti-colonial struggles, solidifying their commitment to revolutionary ethos and the liberation of Palestine. Take Suhayla Bahlwan, an avid reader whose cozy apartment in Amman was filled with old and rare books, periodicals, and novels. As a young woman, she used to return home from her work as a teacher and pour into the works of Socrates, Descartes, Kant, Sartre, deBeauvoir, Camus, Hegel, Marx, and Lenin. Then, after witnessing the devastation and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 1967, Suhayla began voraciously reading Palestinian history. She says that hearing first-hand accounts from Palestinian refugees who arrived in Jordan transformed her life’s trajectory and prompted her to join the Palestinian revolution. Khadijeh Habashneh, a clinical psychologist and a revolutionary, also underscored the pivotal role of reading in fueling her own commitment to revolutionary struggles. For Khadijeh, liberating the land was tied to liberating one’s mind and soul through the accumulation of knowledge. She loved theater, literature, and history and read everything from Arabic, Russian, and French poetry to political books on the Algerian, Vietnamese, and Cuban Revolutions. Besides her political engagement, Khadijeh authored a book highlighting Palestinian women’s contribution to the revolution, produced two films in Lebanon, and helped establish and document the journey of the Palestinian Cinema Unit, which, in turn, played a major role in documenting the Palestinian revolution. The experiences of Suhayla and Khadijeh echo a common narrative among the fidayeen I interviewed—that reading had been, for them, an emancipatory practice. Reading expanded their horizons and connected them with other revolutionaries, thinkers, and philosophers, while also arming them with historical facts and theories that informed their revolutionary work and strengthened their commitment to returning to Palestine.
Topic:
Atrocities, 2023 Gaza War, and Scholasticide
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, and Gaza

8. Leveraging Social Media for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention: Understanding the Digital Toolbox

Author:
Shannon Raj Singh
Publication Date:
11-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
Much of the existing literature discussing social media focuses on how it might fuel or incite mass atrocities, drawing from experiences in contexts such as Sri Lanka and Burma. But there is significantly less awareness of how tools deployed or developed by social media companies might reduce the risk of mass violence and contribute constructively to atrocity prevention efforts. This report aims to address this gap by focusing on how social media tools can support two core atrocity prevention strategies: (1) protecting vulnerable civilian populations at risk of mass atrocities, and (2) degrading potential perpetrators’ capacity to commit mass atrocities. It provides a landscape assessment of the suite of social media product, policy, and operational interventions that may offer potential to support these strategies and articulates some of the associated limitations, risks, and important considerations when these tools are deployed. This report is primarily aimed at those inside social media companies with authority to develop or deploy tools in moments of heightened atrocity risk (which may include trust and safety professionals, human rights or crisis response teams, and senior leadership), as well as atrocity prevention experts and policy makers who may be able to encourage or incentivize the use of digital tools to support atrocity prevention. Select tools may also be of interest or use for humanitarian and civil society advocacy organizations that operate in atrocity risk settings. The objective of this report is to fill a gap by expanding the understanding of both policy makers and social media platform representatives about the available tools in the digital realm to support atrocity prevention efforts, to stimulate future research in this space, and to broaden our collective imaginations in designing modern atrocity prevention policy strategies that leverage digital tools and opportunities. This report is based on a series of semi-structured expert consultations, held under the Chatham House Rule of non-attribution, with more than 30 current and former representatives of social media companies, academics and practitioners specialized in technology and atrocity prevention, and members of at-risk communities who lent their experiences and insights to support this project. The report concludes that expanding the atrocity prevention toolbox to include digital tools and interventions offers an opportunity to develop more modern atrocity prevention strategies to meet the challenges of the moment.
Topic:
Social Media, Atrocities, Digital Policy, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
South Asia, Sri Lanka, and Burma

9. "A Perfect Storm is Gathering": Risk of Mass Atrocities in South Sudan

Author:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide
Publication Date:
11-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
The Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide has published two reports detailing the risk of mass atrocities in South Sudan, first in February 2022 and then in January 2023.1 In these reports, we identified a number of factors contributing to the risk of mass atrocities in South Sudan, including armed conflict in which civilians are targeted for brutal attacks, shrinking civic space, and the failure to fully and credibly implement measures of the peace agreement that ended South Sudan’s civil war in 2018. These challenges persist, exacerbated by the onset of war in neighboring Sudan and the impacts of severe flooding and drought. In September 2024, the government of South Sudan announced a two-year extension of the transitional period and postponed the holding of national elections. This extension is an opportunity for the government to make progress on key commitments to peace and justice. However, this delay is not itself a panacea for the mass atrocity risks that persist in South Sudan, which could see a return to violence if the transition falters or fails. This brief will examine ongoing and compounding risk factors for mass atrocities and offer recommendations for addressing these risks during the next two years.
Topic:
Elections, Transitional Justice, Atrocities, Armed Conflict, and Risk Assessment
Political Geography:
Africa and South Sudan

10. Social Bonds: A Lifeline for Atrocity Victims

Author:
David Scheffer, Caroline Kaeb, and Madeline Babin
Publication Date:
09-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
This report examines the funding gaps that undermine the delivery of sufficient funds—reparations and assistance—to victims of “atrocity crimes” (genocide, crimes against humanity, and serious war crimes) and options for developing a funding mechanism in the form of a social bond for the benefit of such victims. The report aims to generate an innovative means to scale funds in order to meet the immediate and long-term needs of survivors and those adversely impacted by atrocity crimes. This exercise has become even more vital in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic as funding shortages have erupted for human rights and humanitarian priorities across the globe. This is no small matter. The victim populations of atrocity crimes encompass the survivors of ongoing atrocities in addition to those stretching back years and decades. Atrocity victims currently number in the tens of millions globally. Addressing their needs—both with short-term provision of assistance to meet victims’ economic, health, and living requirements in the immediate aftermath of atrocities as well as with the long-term objectives of securing justice and reparations—remains at the forefront of policy priorities. The victim populations of atrocity crimes encompass the survivors of ongoing atrocities in addition to those stretching back years or even decades, including the assaults on civilians in Afghanistan, the Balkans, Cambodia, central Africa, Colombia, Darfur, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, Syria, Ukraine, Xinjiang (China), Yemen, and many other regions and countries. Stripped of their human rights, and often enduring the losses of their relatives or friends, millions of these oppressed peoples are internally displaced or forced to flee as refugees. Tribunals, transitional justice mechanisms, and some domestic courts endeavor to hold criminally accountable those responsible for atrocities. Just as the millions who perished during or survived the Holocaust continue to be entitled to criminal justice and reparations, those who have endured contemporary atrocities seek compensation for the injustices suffered. This is proving increasingly difficult.
Topic:
Transitional Justice, Atrocities, and Social Cohesion
Political Geography:
Global Focus