(OPINION) In December 2020, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, published a new report “Countries at Risk for Mass Killing 2020–21: Early Warning Project Statistical Risk Assessment Results.” The report, prepared in cooperation with Dartmouth College’s Dickey Center for International Understanding, shines a spotlight on countries where mass killings have not begun, but where the risk of such violence is high. The authors of the report define mass killing as “when the deliberate actions of armed groups result in the deaths of at least 1,000 noncombatant civilians targeted as part of a specific group over one year or less.”

The report identified the countries most at risk for new mass killings in 2020 or 2021. Topping the list is, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Furthermore, several countries have been consistently rated as high-risk over multiple years, including Yemen, South Sudan and Sudan. Other countries where risk has increased since last year’s assessment include Colombia, Turkey, and Nigeria. 

Seeing Pakistan at the top of the list may be surprising. However, as the report indicates, Pakistan has ranked among the ten highest-risk countries every year the report has been produced by the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide. It adds that: “The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf government has imprisoned political opposition on alleged politically motivated charges and backed controversial blasphemy laws, which are used to incite hatred, persecute individuals from minority religious groups, and allow for attacks on minority religious communities.”

Furthermore, “The Early Warning Project considers there to be an ongoing mass killing perpetrated by the Taliban Movement of Pakistan and associated militias since 2001; this risk assessment relates to the possibility of a new and distinct non-state-led or state-led episode beginning, not to the ongoing episode continuing or increasing.”  Indeed, only a few weeks after the report was published, 11 coal miners from the minority Hazaras in the western Pakistani province of Balochistan were abducted and killed by gunmen. Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack. However, the attack is still being investigated. Members of the Hazara minority group are often subjected to attacks because of their religious affiliation.

Some countries remain absent from the assessment, including Myanmar and Syria. The report focuses on new instances of mass killings where either a new perpetrator group emerges and kills more than 1,000 civilians of a specific group, or an existing perpetrator group begins targeting a new group of civilians - not countries where an existing mass killing continues. In Myanmar and Syria mass killings continue. Indeed, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide has assessed that the atrocities in Myanmar amount to genocide. 

The purpose of the assessment is to equip states with information that would help them to consider whether preventive action is necessary. The report highlights key questions for policymakers and other users: “Are threats of mass atrocities in high-risk countries receiving enough attention? What events or changes explain the big shifts in estimated risk from last year’s assessment? What accounts for any discrepancies between the statistical results and experts’ expectations?”

These are important questions to engage with. Prevention mass atrocities, such as genocide, requires an understanding of how these events occur. This often involves an analysis of the early warning signs and human behaviors that enable mass atrocities to occur. As Naomi Kikoler, Director of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, emphasizes:

“Genocide and related crimes against humanity are devastating in their scale and scope; in the enduring scars for survivors and their families and the long-term trauma they cause in societies; and in the economic, political, and social costs and consequences, often extending far beyond the territory in which they were committed. We know from studying the Holocaust and other genocides that such events are never spontaneous. They are always preceded by a range of early warning signs. If warning signs are detected and their causes addressed, it may be possible to prevent catastrophic loss of life.” 

Ewelina U. Ochab is a legal researcher and human rights advocate, PhD candidate and author of the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East” and more than 30 UN reports. She works on the topic of persecution of minorities around the world. This piece was re-published from Forbes with permission.