Holocaust museum unveils tool to predict countries most likely to kill their own people

Pakistan make it to top 10 list for the project, which aims to help prevent mass state-led killings

US Holocaust Memorial Museum has unveiled an online tool that forecasts which countries are at the greatest risk of state-led mass killings, with Pakistan featuring in the top ten list.

The tool considers factors, including instability and potential threats to a regime's hold on power that might lead to a reaction in the form of a mass killing. While the tool's predictions put Pakistan at number 9, Myanmar topped the list at number 1.

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The Early Warning Project was created by the Simon-Skjodt Center and the Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College and although officially unveiled on 21 September, developers had been testing the tool for two years.

The project, according to the museum website, aims to help prevent civilian mass carnage, by efficiently cautioning governments, advocacy groups and societies at risk on an ongoing basis, making use of statistical analysis and expert feedback available publicly. Live expert feedback is also part of the project, which describes mass killings as killings of more than 1,000 civilians.

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"While our system highlights and analyses those cases where mass atrocities are currently ongoing in Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, North Korea, Central African Republic, Libya, Nigeria, and Congo, the important gap we seek to fill is to shine a light and spark discussion on those cases where mass atrocities have not started but where risks are detected," the project website says.

Cameron Hudson, the director of the museum's Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide said that the data collected by the Early Warning Project can help prevent mass atrocities rather than responding to them after they ensue.

"From past genocides in Darfur, Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Holocaust, we have learned what the clear early warning signs are that precede mass violence.

"Tracking those indicators in at-risk countries around the world will, for the first time, allow us to look over the horizon to implement smarter, cheaper, and more effective policies that prevent mass violence."

This article originally appeared on ALJAZEERA