As per the recent report by the US think tank Early Warning Project, India is ranked 8th among the countries that are at the highest risk for mass killing in 2022 and 2023. India has seen a drop in rank from second position in the earlier year. “India’s shift in rank from second to eighth can be most attributed to an improvement in the freedom of movement for men [which is one of the variables used for the analysis],” the report said.
Key points in the report:
- Pakistan is estimated to have about a one in six chance of experiencing a new mass killing in 2022 or 2023, it said.
- While Pakistan topped the list this year, Yemen ranked second, Myanmar third, Ethiopia fifth, Nigeria sixth and Afghanistan seventh, among all 162 countries, the 2022-23 report said.
- India has performed worse than Sudan (ninth), Somalia (10th), Syria (11th), Iraq (12th), and Zimbabwe (14th rank).
- According to the 2021-2022 report, India was ranked in the second position among the top 15 highest-risk countries for the last five years.
About the Project:
- The Project is a joint initiative of the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College.
- A mass killing, as per the report, is 1,000 or more civilians deliberately killed by armed forces (whether government or non-state), over a period of a year or less, because of their membership in a particular group. Virtually all cases of genocide include mass killings, if they match this definition, the report said.
- The other variables, or ‘risk factors’, used for the analysis include the countries’ basic characteristics (for example, geographic region, population); socioeconomic measures (changes in gross domestic product per capita); measures of governance (restrictions on political candidates and parties); levels of human rights (freedom of movement); and records of violent conflict (battle-related deaths, ongoing mass killings).