Sudan, Myanmar, Burundi head list of states at risk of genocide: expert

By Pia Ohlin

STOCKHOLM, Jan 27 (AFP) — Thirteen countries face the threat of genocide, with Sudan, Myanmar and Burundi heading a list that also includes Iraq and Afghanistan, a US researcher told an international conference on preventing mass killings Tuesday.

Sudan, Myanmar, Burundi, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are in greatest danger of genocide, 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 there – and 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 request of the administration of US president Bill Clinton in the 1990s, designed a theoretical model for risk assessment and early warning of genocidal violence.

The factors are prior genocides or politicides – in which victims are identified by their political affiliation or opposition to a regime in power; 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.

According to the report, Kurds and supporters of the US-led occupation could be possible target groups for genocide in Iraq, while supporters of the Hamid Karzai regime would be the most likely targets in Afghanistan.

Harff said that with her model “we can narrow the time frame and identify warning flags that a genocide is in the making a few months prior to its onset”.

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 their moderate Hutu sympathisers.

“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,” he added.

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, Jakob Kellenberger, 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,” he said. “Alarm bells ring for those who are listening.”

The problem, he said, 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 UN 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 who would report directly to the UN Security Council, the UN’s top decision-making body.

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 end Wednesday, when delegates are to adopt a declaration that should serve as a political basis for future discussions on preventing genocide.

They were also due to approve a document committing themselves to providing shelter to people threatened by genocide.