Dr Stephen Mcloughlin1, Dr Deborah Mayersen1
1Coventry University, Coventry, United Kingdom
Biography:
Stephen Mcloughlin is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University in the United Kingdom. Stephen’s research interests include mass atrocity prevention, peace education and challenges to authoritarian populism. He is the author of The Structural Prevention of Mass Atrocities: Understanding Risk and Resilience (2014) and co-author of Rethinking Humanitarian Intervention (2018) with Alex Bellamy. He has published in journals such as International Affairs, Global Governance, International Peacekeeping and Journal of Genocide Research.
Abstract:
Risk of mass atrocities is often recognised well in advance of its onset. Yet the path from risk to atrocities is far from inevitable. The vast majority of places in which there are risk factors for mass atrocities present will never go on to experience such violence. This highlights that risk and resilience can evolve over time in multiple ways. Understanding this dynamic evolution of risk, and the factors that influence it, therefore becomes an important component of evidence-based atrocity prevention. This paper will contribute to building an understanding of the evolution of risk over time through a longitudinal comparative case study analysis of multiple at-risk countries. As baseline data, it takes four countries identified as at relatively low risk of mass killing on the 2006 ‘Peoples Under Threat’ annual risk assessment (and tracked using fifteen years of annual risk assessment). This risk assessment used a basket of several risk indicators to produce a quantitative ranking of risk of mass atrocities onset for approximately seventy countries. Amongst them, China (ranked 49th), Dominican Republic (ranked 56th), Sri Lanka (ranked 61st) and Tanzania (ranked 64th) were all deemed as having a similar risk profile. Yet subsequently, China and Sri Lanka went on to experience episodes of mass atrocities, while the Dominican Republic and Tanzania did not. Through an examination of the divergent pathways taken by each country, this study will offer new insights into risk and resilience to mass atrocities.