FWD Ishaan Tharoo, Map: The risk of genocide round the world, Washington Post, Washington, Monday 21 September 2015

(The world’s countries, as reflected by the risk of mass atrocities in each – Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)

Communities living in the countries in darker colors on the map [above] are at greater risk of state-led mass violence, according to a think tank connected to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On Monday [21 September 2015], the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide launched a tool aimed at forecasting the risk of state-led mass killings. The Early Warning Project tracks the apparent signs of a potential pogrom or assault on minorities within a state. Its findings stitch annual statistical risk assessments of individual countries — based on a number of models conceived by political scientists — alongside crowd-sourced opinion surveys of regional experts.

The 10 countries at the highest risk of experiencing a future episode of mass killing are as follows:

Myanmar

Nigeria

Sudan

Egypt

Central African Republic

South Sudan

Democratic Republic of Congo

Afghanistan

Pakistan

Yemen

Earlier this year, WorldViews talked to Cameron Hudson, director of the Simon-Skjodt Center, about the threat in Burma (also known as Myanmar). Hudson had been part of a fact-finding mission to the country, studying the risks faced by the beleaguered Rohingyas, a Muslim minority that has been rendered stateless by decades of discriminatory Burmese policies.

A report concluded then that the Rohingya were a people “at grave risk for additional mass atrocities and even genocide.”

“We’re very cautious when we invoke the term ‘genocide,’ knowing that it can be quite polarizing and sometimes even unhelpful,” said Hudson at the time. “But there is a combination of factors — many of which you saw in 1930s Germany and 1990s Rwanda — that are quite concerning.”

The project now is anchored in the Holocaust Museum's moral mission to educate against and prevent future atrocities, says Michael Chertoff, former secretary of Homeland Security and chairman of the museum's Committee on Conscience, in an e-mailed news release.

“No longer can governments say that they 'did not know' as a means of justifying their inaction,” he said.

Ishaan Tharoo is foreign affairs writer for the Washington Post

Twitter@HerbertEkweEkwe

Referendum result: South Sudan votes decisively for restoration of independence

The “Berlin-state” is now in freefall. Africa is back – Indeed! Which peoples, which nations, are next positioned in this celebrative, illuminated pathway to join the historic freedom journey of our age? Igbo? Darfuri? Constituent nations, Democratic Republic of the Congo? Constituent nations, Kenya? Constituent nations, the Cameroon? Constituent nations, Uganda? Constituent nations, Nigeria? … Who? … Which? … Africa and the rest of the world await ecstatically! O di egwu!

South Sudan day or Beginning of the end of the Berlin-state of Africa

Let Freedom Ring!

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

24 HOURS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

48 HOURS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

72 HOURS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

4 DAYS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

5 DAYS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

6 DAYS

Countdown to south Sudan – and Africa freedom

7 DAYS

Slogans for the future?

Less than 90 days to the Sunday 9 January 2011 historic south Sudan referendum for independence from the Sudan, the people have been organising mass rallies to campaign for the great day – and future. In a recent rally in Juba, the capital, two prominently displayed slogans read: “Unity by force is slavery” and “Separation means peace”. Are these contradictory expressions? Do these slogans represent the future for/of Africa? What do you think?

No one should ever be scared of freedom

Jean Ping, the chair of the Addis Ababa-based Commission of the Africa Union, recently criticised the likely outcome of next year’s referendum by the people of south Sudan on the restoration of their independence. Ping told a French radio station interviewer that he feared that the Sudan was “sitting on a powder keg” and that a “yes” vote for south Sudanese freedom could have “catastrophic” consequences: “Will the independence of Southern Sudan not lead other players in Darfur and in other places, which are currently not asking for independence, to seek independence as Southern Sudan will have done?”

These are shocking and sad comments made by such a highly placed African public official. It is not certain how much of the Sudan’s recent history, especially the 1956 post-British conquest epoch, that Ping is familiar with. The 2011 referendum that he refers to is in fact a crucial feature of the terms of the 2005 cessation of the north-south Sudanese war that had been waged for 22 years. 1.5-2million Sudanese, overwhelming majority of them southerners, were killed during this war. South Sudan has long resisted its totally subject sociopolitical status, occasioned by the British hand-over of supreme political power to the minority Arab north Sudanese population on the eve of the formal termination of its occupation of the Sudan in January 1956. We mustn’t fail to recall that James Robertson, the outgoing British occupation governor in Khartoum who sealed the infamous Sudan deal, flew southwest to Nigeria, another conglomeration of British-occupied African peoples and states, and crafted and sealed yet another “post-conquest” albatross in Africa in October 1960.

The 2011 referendum is therefore an historic opportunity for Africans in south Sudan to regain their freedom. Africans, elsewhere in the Sudan and indeed anywhere else on the continent, who similarly wish to exercise their freedom to be free from the burden of subjugation, cannot be stopped by any interests and calculations. Freedom is inalienable. No one should fear freedom – and its consequences.