While STAND began as a Darfur group, recent years have seen our mission expand to concern all areas of genocide and mass atrocities world-wide. Fulfilling such an expansive mission is no easy task. As strong of an organization as STAND is, it is unrealistic to think that we could educate and advocate on any and every spot in the world where civilians are targeted for systematic violence. To be most effective, we must prioritize and focus on a few, most urgent, crises around the world. How do we decide?
Annually, the Genocide Intervention Network and the STAND E-team re-evaluate current conflicts of concern and other spots of violence around the world to determine which should remain or be instated as priorities. We read the annual Conflict Barometer report published by the Heidelberg Institute for International Conflict Research. We then code conflicts according to type and scale of violence, and assess whether they ought to be on our list of areas of concern. Those that don’t make the list but are still conflict hot spots will be monitored regularly though less in depth. Currently, GI-Net is finalizing this process, and will soon release the list of areas of concern for 2010. Keep an eye out for these developments!
Trivia: What were STAND’s Areas of Concern for 2009?
Discussion: When and under what conditions do we decide to remove a conflict from the list?
Conflict Selection criteria:
- Systematic, deliberate targeting of civilians for killing, severe torture, or rape on a massive scale
- Degrees of Harm and capability:
- Harm to combatants/political leadership
- Some impact on civilians, political opponents, but largely minimizes civilian casualties
- Indifference to impact on large civilian population
- Tactical killing of civilians
- Tactically mobilizing essentialist motives of some
- Essentialist motives of primary killers
- Scale:
- Very Small
- under 100 civilian fatalities, under 1,000 displaced
- Small
- 100-500 civilian fatalities, 1,000-10,000 displaced
- Moderate
- 150-250 civilian fatalities, 10,000-50,000 displaced
- Large
- 250-1,000 civilian fatalities, 50,000-100,000 displaced
- Very Large
- 1,000+ civilian fatalities, 100,000+ displaced
- Very Small
- Learn more here.
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