Mass Violence and Atrocities | Other Publication

Assessing Our Strategic Priorities for Mass Violence and Atrocity Prevention

March 2021

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Every few years, the center assesses our strategic approaches to programming, scopes future opportunities, and makes adjustments to our strategic direction with the goal of increasing our impact. We invite external experts and stakeholders to come together with us to consider what will effectively drive policy progress and collective action in the mass violence and atrocities and related fields. Recently, the center concluded such an assessment and we are pleased to share both the starting point and highlights of those conversations.

Discussion Paper: Strategy Consultation on Mass Violence and Atrocity Prevention
A discussion paper served as the starting point for the center’s strategy consultation, specifically designed to focus on structural or upstream prevention and building societal resilience. The paper’s content is divided into two parts:

  • Background, which includes a brief overview of the state of the field from the center’s vantage point, the evolution of the center’s work on mass violence and atrocity prevention, and the center’s working definitions.
  • Nine headline assumptions that the center has extracted as themes in mappings and analyses from experts in the field, and as observed in our own work and surveys.

Discussion Takeaways: Strategy Consultation on Mass Violence and Atrocity Prevention
Challenges, gaps, and opportunities from the field of mass violence and atrocities prevention have been captured in a discussion takeaways report–key insights learned from the more than 60 participants in the strategy consultation, who came from 23 countries and a diverse cross-section of fields including mass violence, identity-based violence, atrocity crimes, violent/armed conflict, human rights, political violence, interpersonal violence, and psychosocial support. The report also offers an overview of the center’s methodology and design for the consultation, and participant-recommended priorities for the field in the next two to three years.

Based on the outcome of this introspective exercise, the center’s programming on mass violence and atrocities going forward will commit to sustained and collective action and inclusive policy processes that prioritize structural prevention of identity-based mass violence and atrocities. Our mass violence and atrocities page reflects this new strategic direction and we invite you to review and share it along with the discussion paper and discussion takeaways noted above.

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