Risk and resilience to mass atrocities in Africa: a comparison of Rwanda and Botswana

Genocidal risk and climate change: Africa in the twenty-first century

“…In this context, case study evidence is more reassuring: a qualitative comparative study of Rwanda and Botswana, for example, clearly supports the relevance of political inclusiveness (a democratic mediation of the political process) with respect to genocide occurrence. 19 While it is obvious that the discovery of diamonds in Botswana has supported wealth creation in comparison to Rwanda, it is not obvious from the onset that mining diamonds supports wealth dispersion (indeed, resources of this kind had the opposite effect in many other countries); instead, it was the political institutions of Botswana that ensured wealth dispersion.…”

Understanding Mass Atrocity Prevention during Periods of Democratic Transition

“…How and why some countries manage to navigate this phase while others do not is the question under investigation here. sition is to conduct in-depth analyses of both positive and negative cases-countries that have embarked on a period of transition, distinguished by the perpetration or avoidance of mass atrocities (see, for example, Mayersen & McLoughlin, 2011;Straus, 2012). 4 My aim in this paper is threefold: to investigate the impact that long-term risk factors associated with mass atrocities have on countries undergoing democratic transition; to better understand how and why such risk becomes more acute during such periods; and finally, to identify and trace the political, economic and social processes that are instrumental in the avoidance of atrocities on the one hand, and in their perpetration on the other.…”