Can we Predict Genocide? Forecasting Mass Atrocities Atrocity Forecasting Project: National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Otago University of Sydney University of New South Wales

What is Genocide? A contested term: UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (1948): “The convention defines genocide as any of a number of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about it’s physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” More recently: Political Instability Task Force (2010): “Genocide and politicide events involve the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents - or in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities - that result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a communal group or politicized non-communal group. In genocides the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal (ethnolinguistic, religious) characteristics. In politicides, by contrast, groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant groups (Marshall, Gurr, and Harff, 2010: 14).”

Genocide and Mass Killing – Historical By PITF definition 45 cases of geno/politicide from

Uses of Genocide Forecasts Forecasts for prevention States have limited resources and prevention efforts need time to work. Prevention strategies need to be tailored to at-risk groups and states Forecasts for Intervention Ignoring genocide is costly. MONUC is the largest and most expensive peacekeeping mission to date. Conflict in the DRC is directly linked to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Sanctions and intervention can work “Naming and shaming also works” Forecasts would help us ‘where to look’ – especially in collaboration with other projects such as the Satellite Sentinel project. Information Gathering, Plausible Deniability Forecasts for Prosecution

Our Aim at the Atrocity Forecasting Project To provide a (relatively) accurate register of states at risk of genocide every year. Forecasting is using what we know about relationships in the past to make predictions about the future. But we used statistical methods to try to do this ‘rigorously’. Actually had to produce two forecasts: One for ‘serious political instability’ and one for ‘genocide/politicide’. Because mass-killing (since world war 2) almost always occurs in the context of an ongoing violent conflict: Civil Wars (Guatemala in the 1980s) Ethnic Wars (Rwanda from early 1990s) Coups (Idi Amin in Uganda) Violent Political Instability Genocide No Genocide Very Low Probability of Genocide

Forecasting Method For each year we first predicted the probability of violent political instability with: Past Instability Political and Economic Characteristics: Regime Type, Infant Mortality Rates, Past Discrimination, Population Time Varying Factors Assassinations, Neighboring countries in conflict, Elections in Divided Countries Then we used this ‘probability of instability’ variable in a second model to predict genocide that also included: Past Genocide Episodes Political and Economic Characteristics: Constraints upon the executive and the ‘human defense burden’, Infant Mortality, Trade, Relevant ethnic divisions Time Varying Factors Assassinations, Election Periods, Guerrilla warfare This allows us to make a prediction for every country for every year

How do we know if it is any good? First used statistical methods to build a model of what influences instability and genocide from Then we used this model to ‘predict’ genocides from We got 82% of new genocide onsets correct and 79% of years with no genocide onsets correct. In another test, we correctly classified 7 out of 11 new genocides when predicting one-year into the future for each year from in the top 5% of cases. What does this look like? model_predictors.shtml model_predictors.shtml model_slideshows.shtml model_slideshows.shtml

Forecasting into the ‘future future’. Made 5 year forecasts for the period based on data from So, what ‘caused’ (or was correlated with) genocide from and based on this knowledge, what would we predict for 2011 – 2015?

Genocide Forecasts

Economics and Genocide Some important economic variables in our model: Infant mortality ‘Human Defence Burden’ Trade Plus anything that is also correlated with the likelihood of civil wars, etc. Some variables were not important Economic downturn Some variables have been shown important in recent studies but not tested for forecasting ability Oil production Onshore diamond depoisits Interactions between economic downturn and institutional capacity