United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Early Warning Project - Statistical risk assessment

This project uses quantitative and qualitative methods to assess where risks of mass atrocity violence is high.

The focus of the Early Warning Project is on risks of future violence, rather than ongoing atrocities. There is a lot of useful information on how to interpret their data on the website. This is a great source for learning about risk assessment and early warning, as is the genocide prevention resources at the USHMM. Since the risk assessment is issued yearly, it is a less useful resource for ongoing or rapidly changing mass atrocity situations.

A statistical assessment is issued annually, presenting the risk of new onset of mass killing in an upcoming period of two years. The project presents places to watch, including countries with highest risk, increasing risk and consistently high risk. Available for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018-2019 and 2019-2020. From 2018, assessments include mass killings from state and non-state actors. Their resources include, in addition to the annual risk assessments, country reports, blog posts, and a map showing countries most at risk.

The statistical risk assessment relies on publicly available data, and the analysis is therefore very transparent.

In addition to their statistical risk assessment, the Early Warning Project issues a Crowd Forecasting, which uses an ongoing public opinion poll and an annual comparison survey to identify countries at risk.

Relevant terms: Mass killing: «We consider a mass killing episode to have occurred when the deliberate actions of armed groups, including but not limited to state security forces, rebel armies, and other militias, result in the deaths of at least 1,000 noncombatant civilians targeted as part of a specific group over a period of one year or less.»

New onset/new episode: «a new episode with a different target group and/or different perpetrator»