This book examines the relationship between risk and resilience in the prevention of mass atrocities. It challenges approaches to prevention which prioritise the role of external actors by investigating how local and national actors mitigate risk over time.

This book offers a different approach to the structural prevention of mass atrocities. It investigates the conditions that enable vulnerable countries to prevent the perpetration of such violence. Structural prevention is commonly framed as the identifying and ameliorating of the ‘root causes’ of violent conflict, a process which typically involves international actors determining what these root causes are, and what the best courses of action are to deal with them. This overlooks why mass atrocities do not occur in countries that contain the presence of root causes. In fact, very little research has been conducted on what the causes of peace and stability are, particularly in relatively countries located in regions marred by civil war and mass atrocities. To better understand how such vulnerable countries prevent the commission of mass atrocities, this book proposes an analytical framework which enables not only an understanding of risk which arises from the presence of root causes, but also of the factors that build resilience in countries, and consequently mitigate and manage such risk. Using this framework, three countries – Botswana, Zambia and Tanzania, are analysed to account for their long term stability despite their location in neighbourhoods characterised by decades of civil war, ethnic repression and mass atrocities. This work is a significant contribution to the field of genocide studies and crimes against humanity and will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

This interdisciplinary volume aims to understand the linkages between the origins and aftermaths of genocide. Exploring social dynamics and human behaviour, this collection considers the interplay of various psychological, political, anthropological and historical factors at work in genocidal processes.

This book brings together a diverse range of international voices from academia, policymaking and civil society to address the failure to connect historical dialogue with atrocity prevention discourse and provide insight into how conflict histories and historical memory act as dynamic forces, actively facilitating or deterring current and future conflict. Established on a variety of international case studies combining theoretical and practical points of view, the book envisions an integrated understanding of how historical dialogue can inform policy, education, and the practice of atrocity prevention. In doing so, it provides a vital basis for the development of preventive policies sensitive to the importance of conflict histories and for further academic study on the topic. It will be of interest to all scholars and students of history, psychology, peace studies, international relations and political science.

This proposes a new framework for atrocity prevention, featuring scholars from around the globe including three former UN special advisers.

Historical dialogue and mass atrocities / Elazar Barkan -- Preventing mass atrocities : the role of conflict history in risk, response, and resilience / James E. Waller -- Historical commissions in Germany since the 1990s : potential for social and political conflict solving / Christoph Cornelissen -- Attempted transitional justice and historical dialogue : the case of Israel's Or Commission / Sigall Horovitz -- Historical dialogue in post-conflict Kosovo / Anna De Lellio -- The foundation "remembrance, responsibility and future" and the ambivalence of reconciliation and conflict prevention / Constantin Goschler -- Common history textbooks as a tool of preventing mass atrocities / Karina Korostelina -- Dialogue in the trenches : confronting political narratives in Ugandan secondary schools / Ashley L. Greene -- Is the memory of war in contemporary Europe enhancing historical dialogue / Stefan Berger -- Museums and memorials as sites of dialogue : historical narratives, mass violence, and atrocity prevention / Alexander Karn -- Exhibiting war to understand peace : how do military museums adjust to the need to foster international understanding and peaceful conflict resolution? / Falk Pingel -- Witnessing the past and the present : photography and Guatemala's fight for historical dialogue / Kaitlin Murphy -- "Daisy in the dirt" : visualizing women's historical injustices of war and violence / Olivera Simic -- Memory encroachments and re-plotting the past : cartographies of violence and memory in post-atrocity Argentina, Germany, and the United States / Kerry Whigham.