By Pratima T. Narayan, Ronnate D. Asirwatham, and Abiola Afolayan

This paper examines global systemic racism’s influence on mass atrocities. The authors, Pratima T. Narayan, Ronnate Asirwatham, and Abiola Afolayan, explore policy changes that can help bring about shared and sustainable peace, leading to greater recognition and dignity for survivors and communities harmed by racial injustice worldwide. Each of the three sections of the paper is geared to challenge thinking on systemic racism in mass atrocity prevention.

The authors analyze racism during the time of the founding of the United Nations, as well as in its present-day application in different international mechanisms such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) and domestic mechanisms such as the United States Atrocities Prevention Board and subsequent Atrocity Prevention Task Force. The countries discussed include South Africa, Sri Lanka, Burma, the United States, and Nigeria. The issues discussed include the interplay on the international and domestic levels where there was, at times, mutual reinforcement of the dynamics of racism and mass atrocities. Read the full report which consists of the following three sections:

How the Quest for Racial Equality Led to a Modern Human Rights Movement

Pratima Narayan

The institutions, policies, and initiatives introduced to eradicate racism have fallen short in consistently providing victims and communities of racially- motivated violations adequate redress, and have arguably perpetuated racial subordination. This section explores that systemic failure.

Institutional Racism in the Conceptualization and Implementation of the Principle of Sovereignty

Ronnate D. Asirwatham

This section explores the conceptualization of state sovereignty, its use to further structural racial injustice and resulting mass atrocities, and the use and application of sovereignty by the UN Security Council, including through the Responsibility to Protect.

Ending Business as Usual: Mass Atrocities of People of African Descent

Abiola Afolayan

The paper’s final section examines the intentional exclusion of people of African descent from the originating conversations that formed such central mechanisms as the United Nations, US Constitution, and US Atrocities Prevention Board, as well as the consequences thereof.

Muscatine, IA: The Stanley Center for Peace and Security, 2022. 36p.

By Ariana Markowitz 

This research explores how urban violence intersects with mass atrocities to establish identity-based mass violence (IBMV) in cities as a cross-disciplinary field of scholarship and practice. Cities affect mass violence in three main ways. First, cities offer places and reasons to gather. Second, neighborhoods, mobility infrastructure, utility systems, and other city spaces can be read as proxies for specific groups of people. Third, violence can be both a cause and a symptom of urbanization, a uniquely urban process by definition, such that urbanization can be one way to mortally wound a city. Scholars and practitioners working to prevent urban violence and the atrocity prevention community have more that unites than divides them, and preventing urban atrocities requires the active engagement of them all. Nine case studies of IBMV from Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina; Mazar-i Sharif, Afghanistan; Kaduna, Nigeria; San Salvador, El Salvador; Nairobi, Kenya; Flint, Michigan, USA; Aleppo, Syria; Ciudad Juárez, Mexico; and Jerusalem, Israel, illustrate the multiplicity of forms that such violence can take. The cases aid in the development of a typology of urban atrocities, a tool to identify potential risk and protective factors. An overall finding is that the local context and the built environment were salient for efforts to prevent mass violence. This was especially true where the city (1) was an enclave or was divided into enclaves, (2) had a place of encounter where groups in conflict were likely to cross paths, or (3) experienced a recent political shock. Attackers sought to dehumanize their victims as often as they sought to kill them and were most likely to define their victims based on religion. Given the prevalence of cases that featured enclaves, places of encounter, and recent political shocks, we mapped out how these values related to all other values and compared those results to the overall frequency analysis, revealing relationships that differed from what the overall frequency analysis would have predicted. Taken together, the cases shed light on four pivotal questions for preventing urban atrocities: – How does structural violence contribute to both acute and chronic mass violence in cities? – How does scaling atrocity prevention to the city affect the Responsibility to Protect? – How can municipal actors be better recognized, resourced, and empowered? – How can city residents and institutions work in partnership to take inclusive steps toward justice and healing? The analysis discusses urban vulnerability to lethal and especially nonlethal violence and unpacks the perils and possibilities of external involvement. By acknowledging the challenges to effective local peacebuilding while celebrating successful initiatives, this report establishes common ground between atrocity prevention and urban violence prevention, identifying five strategies to sustain and strengthen cities, their inhabitants, and the communities of scholarship and practice that support them. This research thus champions the fundamental role that cities play in reducing risk, building sustainable peace, and enabling community transformation. The report advocates for using urban space for justice and healing, learning from local peacebuilders, working with formal and informal actors and tools, identifying models of urban violence prevention practices, and committing to an inclusive ethics of care 

Muscatine, IA: The Stanley Center for Peace and Security, and Impact Partnere, 2020; 35p.

By Neil J. Kressel

The twentieth century has been a century of hostility, an epoch in which the brutality of humankind has erupted and flowed more expansively than ever before. During the past eight decades, mass hatred has reached genocidal proportions in Turkey, Germany, Indonesia, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Burundi, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Blood has gushed so freely, and with such frequency, that one might consider the urge to kill one's neighbor an inborn characteristic of our species. Moreover, during the latter part of the century, the power to wreak bloody havoc on innocent civilians across the globe has fallen into the hands of terrorists whose hate knows no bounds. By the early years of the next century, these terrorists may possess nuclear devices that will make their previous methods seem quaint.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, 1996, 342p.