Iraq, Afghanistan, 11 other states at risk of genocide: expert

STOCKHOLM: Thirteen countries in the world face the threat of genocide — Iraq, Afghanistan, eight nations in African and three in Asia —, a US researcher told an international conference on preventing genocide Tuesday.y.

Sudan, Myanmar, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are in greatest danger of mass bloodshed, Barbara Harff of the US Center for International Development and Conflict Management, told the conference in Stockholm.

The other eight countries on the danger list are Somalia, Uganda, Algeria, China, Iraq — despite the US-led regime change —, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia. Sudan, Myanmar, Burundi, Rwanda and the DRC all meet five of the six risk factors outlined by Harff who, at the Clinton administration’s request, designed in the 1990s a theoretical model for risk assessment and early warning of genocidal violence.

The factors are prior genocides or politicides; upheaval since 1988; existence of a minority elite; exclusionary ideology; the type of regime and trade openness.

Somalia, Uganda, Algeria and China meet four of the six factors, while Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Ethiopia meet three, Harff said in a presentation of her November 2003 report to representatives from 50 countries attending the Stockholm conference. Harff said that with her model “we can narrow the timeframe and identify warning flags that a genocide is in the making a few months prior to its onset”.

But Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who was in the Swedish capital, rejected the assertion that his country was again at risk of genocide, after the 1994 bloodshed that claimed the lives of up to one million Tutsis and moderate Hutus.

“There’s no such threat in my opinion,” he told reporters after bilateral talks with the host of the conference, Swedish Prime Minister Goeran Persson.

“Although not totally eliminated, the problem has been increasingly diminishing (and) what remains of the problem is much smaller than what used to be there,” he said. “I don’t see anything threatening our stability again.”

Harff’s remarks came during discussions on the early warning signs of genocide, on the second day of the three-day conference.

The secretary general of the International Committee of the Red Cross told delegates that speedy responses were crucial in preventing a repeat of the World War II Holocaust and the massacres in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the mid-1990s.

“It is difficult to anticipate the critical moment at which genocide will begin or the scope that the massacre will take. Greater efforts must therefore be made to interpret the warning signs and respond to them adequately,” Jakob Kellenberger said. “This should not be too difficult. Alarm bells ring for those who are listening.”

The problem, he said, was that there was a “lack of will to act” and he urged politicians, representatives of civil society and the business sector to work together to promote dialogue, mutual understanding and trust.

His comments echoed those of United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who told the conference Monday that the slaughter in Yugoslavia and Rwanda could have been prevented if the world had taken action.

“The events of the 1990s, in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, are especially shameful. The international community clearly had the capacity to prevent these events. But it lacked the will,” Annan said.

Annan recommended the creation of a “Committee on the Prevention of Genocide” and the introduction of a special rapporteur on preventing genocide, who would report directly to the UN Security Council, the UN’s top decision-making body.

As the world marked Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday, Sweden’s Jewish community was to host a remembrance ceremony at Stockholm’s synagogue, to which the heads of conference delegations were invited and at which the Swedish prime minister was to deliver an address.

The Preventing Genocide conference is the first major inter-governmental forum on genocide since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, according to organizers.

The meeting is scheduled to conclude Wednesday, when delegates are to adopt a declaration that should serve as a political basis for future discussions on preventing genocide.

The 50 countries at the conference were also due to approve a document committing themselves to providing shelter to people threatened by genocide. —AFP

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