Mass Atrocities, Risk and Resilience examines the relationship between risk and resilience in the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities and explores two broad areas of neglect. In terms of prevention, there is very little research that analyzes how local and national actors manage the risk associated with mass atrocities. In the field of comparative genocide studies, to date there has been very little interest in examining negative cases. Although much is known about why mass atrocities occur, much less is established about why they do not occur. The contributions in this book address this neglect in two important ways. First, they challenge commonly-accepted approaches to prevention. Second, they explore negative cases in order to better understand how local and national actors have mitigated risk over time.

This book offers a different approach to the structural prevention of mass atrocities. It investigates the conditions that enable vulnerable countries to prevent the perpetration of such violence. Structural prevention is commonly framed as the identifying and ameliorating of the ‘root causes’ of violent conflict, a process which typically involves international actors determining what these root causes are, and what the best courses of action are to deal with them. This overlooks why mass atrocities do not occur in countries that contain the presence of root causes. In fact, very little research has been conducted on what the causes of peace and stability are, particularly in relatively countries located in regions marred by civil war and mass atrocities. To better understand how such vulnerable countries prevent the commission of mass atrocities, this book proposes an analytical framework which enables not only an understanding of risk which arises from the presence of root causes, but also of the factors that build resilience in countries, and consequently mitigate and manage such risk. Using this framework, three countries – Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, are analysed to account for their long term stability despite their location in neighbourhoods characterised by decades of civil war, ethnic repression and mass atrocities. This work is a significant contribution to the field of genocide studies and crimes against humanity and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

This interdisciplinary volume aims to understand the linkages between the origins and aftermaths of genocide. Exploring social dynamics and human behaviour, this collection considers the interplay of various psychological, political, anthropological and historical factors at work in genocidal processes.

This proposes a new framework for atrocity prevention, featuring scholars from around the globe including three former UN special advisers.

Historical dialogue and mass atrocities / Elazar Barkan -- Preventing mass atrocities : the role of conflict history in risk, response, and resilience / James E. Waller -- Historical commissions in Germany since the 1990s : potential for social and political conflict solving / Christoph Cornelissen -- Attempted transitional justice and historical dialogue : the case of Israel's Or Commission / Sigall Horovitz -- Historical dialogue in post-conflict Kosovo / Anna De Lellio -- The foundation "remembrance, responsibility and future" and the ambivalence of reconciliation and conflict prevention / Constantin Goschler -- Common history textbooks as a tool of preventing mass atrocities / Karina Korostelina -- Dialogue in the trenches : confronting political narratives in Ugandan secondary schools / Ashley L. Greene -- Is the memory of war in contemporary Europe enhancing historical dialogue / Stefan Berger -- Museums and memorials as sites of dialogue : historical narratives, mass violence, and atrocity prevention / Alexander Karn -- Exhibiting war to understand peace : how do military museums adjust to the need to foster international understanding and peaceful conflict resolution? / Falk Pingel -- Witnessing the past and the present : photography and Guatemala's fight for historical dialogue / Kaitlin Murphy -- "Daisy in the dirt" : visualizing women's historical injustices of war and violence / Olivera Simic -- Memory encroachments and re-plotting the past : cartographies of violence and memory in post-atrocity Argentina, Germany, and the United States / Kerry Whigham.

"The spotlight on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle has often centered around the possibility of intervention, but attention must be refocused onto preventive measures that countries can take to stop crimes against humanity. At its 54th annual Strategy for Peace Conference, the Stanley Foundation brought together officials, mass atrocity prevention specialists, and civil society representatives to explore mechanisms that states could incorporate into national policies to mitigate mass atrocities. Participants at the event on October 16-18, 2013, talked about how an atrocity prevention lens might put the broader objectives into focus and also shared their experiences in navigating the myriad challenges in applying prevention priorities."--Stanley Foundation website.

Alongside other types of mass atrocities, genocide has received extensive scholarly, policy, and practitioner attention. Missing, however, is the contribution of economists to better understand and prevent such crimes. This edited collection by 41 accomplished scholars examines economic aspects of genocides, other mass atrocities, and their prevention. Chapters include numerous case studies (e.g., California's Yana people, Australia's Aborigines peoples, Stalin's killing of Ukrainians, Belarus, the Holocaust, Rwanda, DR Congo, Indonesia, Pakistan, Colombia, Mexico's drug wars, and the targeting of suspects during the Vietnam war), probing literature reviews, and completely novel work based on extraordinary country-specific datasets. Also included are chapters on the demographic, gendered, and economic class nature of genocide. Replete with research- and policy-relevant findings, new insights are derived from behavioral economics, law and economics, political economy, macroeconomic modeling, microeconomics, development economics, industrial organization, identity economics, and other fields. Analytical approaches include constrained optimization theory, game theory, and sophisticated statistical work in data-mining, econometrics, and forecasting. A foremost finding of the book concerns atrocity architects' purposeful, strategic use of violence, often manipulating nonrational proclivities among ordinary people to sway their participation in mass murder. Relatively understudied in the literature, the book also analyzes the options of victims before, during, and after mass violence. Further, the book shows how well-intended prevention efforts can backfire and increase violence, how wrong post-genocide design can entrench vested interests to reinforce exclusion of vulnerable peoples, and how businesses can become complicit in genocide. In addition to the necessity of healthy opportunities in employment, education, and key sectors in prevention work, the book shows why new genocide prevention laws and institutions must be based on reformulated incentives that consider insights from law and economics, behavioral economics, and collective action economics.