Preventing Mass Atrocities : Policies and Practices

What can be done to warn about and organize political action to prevent genocide and mass atrocities?

The international contributors to this volume are either experts or practitioners, often both, who have contributed in substantial ways to analyzing high risk situations, recommending preventive policies and actions, and in several instances helping to organize remedial actions. Whereas current literature on the prevention of genocide is theoretically well grounded, this book explores what can be done, and has been done, in real-world situations. Recommendations and actions are rooted in a generation of experience, based on solid historical, comparative, and empirical research and with a grounding in quantitative methods.

This volume examines historical cases to understand the general causes and processes of mass violence and genocide, and engages with ongoing genocidal crises including Darfur and Syria, as well as other forms of related violence such as terrorism and civil conflict. It will be key reading for all students and scholars of genocide, war and conflict studies, human security and security studies in general.

Barbara Harff is Professor of Political Science Emerita at the US Naval Academy and was distinguished visiting professor at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She co-founded the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network and served for a decade on the US Government’s State Failure (later Political Instability) Task Force. In 2013 she received the Raphael Lemkin Award from the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

Ted Robert Gurr was Distinguished University Professor of Political Science (Emeritus) at the University of Maryland; Founder and Consultant of the Minority at Risk Project; Former Senior Consultant to the US Government’s Political Instability Task Force; Former Olof Palme Visiting Professor, HSFR, Uppsala University.