Genocide and Politicide Project Dataset

Genocides and political mass murders are recurrent phenomena. Since WWII some 50 such events have happened and have cost the lives of at least 12 million and as many as 25 million noncombatants. Genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents--or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities--that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group. In genocides the victimized groups are defined by their perpetrators primarily in terms of their communal characteristics. In politicides, in contrast, groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant groups. In genocides and politicides killings are never accidental, nor are they the acts of individuals. The key is that they are carried out at the explicit or tacit direction of state authorities, or those who claim state authority. For purposes of comparative research these five guidelines were used to help distinguish cases of genocide and politicide from other kinds of killings that occur during civil conflicts.

• Is there complicity by the state (or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities) in actions undertaken that endanger human life?
• Is there evidence, even if circumstantial, of intent on the part of authorities to isolate or single out group members for mistreatment?
• Are victims members of an identifiable group?
• Are there policies and practices that cause prolonged mass suffering?
• Do the actions committed pose a threat to the survival of the group?^{[ref 1]}

Variables and Subcategories

This dataset includes indicators in the Grievance Variables, Identity Variables, Geography Variables, Conflict Variables, and Foreign Support Variables categories. The subcategories represented include:

• Topography
• Ethnicity Ideology and Culture
• Human Rights and Discrimination Indicators
• International Organizations and Diplomacy
• Onset Indicators

This data can answer questions like:

• What is the ethnic character of the ruling elites?
• To what extent is there religious homogeneity in the country?
• Has there been a prior genocide in this country?
• To what extent has there been political upheaval, including revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, and regime crises, in this country in the past?
• What is the ideological character of the ruling elite?

Data Quality

Operational Criteria:

• Authorities' complicity in mass murder must be established. Any persistent, coherent pattern of action by the state and its agents, or by a dominant social group, that brings about the destruction of a people's existence, in whole or in part, within the effective territorial control of a ruling authority is prima facie evidence of that state, or other, authority's responsibility. In situations of civil war (i.e., contested territorial control) either of the contending authorities may be deemed responsible for carrying out, or allowing, such actions.
• The physical destruction of a people requires time to accomplish: it implies a persistent, coherent pattern of action. Thus, only sustained episodes that last six months or more are included in the final dataset. This six month requirement is to a degree arbitrary. At the other end of the time spectrum are episodic attacks on a group that recur periodically, such as Iraqi government attacks on Kurds from 1960 to 1975. Annual codings are especially important for these kinds of episodes to permit tracking of peaks and lulls.
• The victims to be counted are unarmed civilians, not combatants. It rarely is possible to distinguish precisely between the two categories in the source materials. Certain kinds of tactics nonetheless are indicative of authorities' systematic targetting of noncombatants: massacres, unrestrained bombing and shelling of civilian inhabited areas, declaration of free fire zones, starvation by prolonged interdiction of food supplies, forced expulsion ("ethnic cleansing") accompanied by extreme privation and killings, etc.
• In principle, numbers provided in "body counts" do not enter the definition of what constitutes an episode. A "few hundred" killed constitutes as much a genocide or politicide as the deaths of thousands if the victim group is small in number to begin with.

Note: Definitions and operational guidelines are adapted from Barbara Harff and T. R. Gurr, "Victims of the State: Genocides, Politicides, and Group Repression from 1945 to 1995," pp. 33 58 in Albert J. Jongman (ed.), Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences (Leiden: University of Leiden, PIOOM Interdisciplinary Research Program on Root Causes of Human Rights Violations, 1996).

When Episode Begins: Records the month in which systematic killings are reported to have started. If the month could not be determined reliably from sources, the quarter--winter, spring, summer, fall--in which the killings began is estimated and converted to months: January for winter, April for spring, July for summer, October for fall.

When Episode Ends: The end of systematic killing often is difficult to determine. The overthrow of a genocidal regime usually is decisive, e.g. the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea. In other instances the end can be dated from the occurrence of the last serious atrocities, the end of a military campaign that targets civilian areas, or simply the absence of any further reports (e.g., from news sources, US State Department, or Amnesty International) of deliberate killings. The ending month is coded only if it can be inferred from the above kinds of information.

Several alternative magnitude scales were tried but could not be coded reliably because of inadequate data. Cumulative and annual estimates of civilian deaths were identified from multiple sources and used to code the following scale. In a few cases no annual variations in intensity of killing could be assessed, therefore total estimated deaths were pro-rated over the entire period. Substantially more research could be done on this issue, with some improvement in the reliability of the codings.^{[ref 2]}

References

1. ↑ Barbara Harff, "Genocide/Politicide" George Mason University, http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/genocide/.
2. ↑ "IV: Genocide and Politicide" PITF, http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/pitfcode.htm.

Definitions and operational guidelines are adapted from Barbara Harff and T. R. Gurr, "Victims of the State: Genocides, Politicides, and Group Repression from 1945 to 1995," pp. 33 58 in Albert J. Jongman (ed.), Contemporary Genocides: Causes, Cases, Consequences (Leiden: University of Leiden, PIOOM Interdisciplinary Research Program on Root Causes of Human Rights Violations, 1996). < http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/pitf/pitfcode.htm#40>