From Network Analysis to Creative Leverage: Mapping new horizons of modern atrocity prevention

Mapping and tracking networks provide new opportunities for the atrocity prevention practice

By  Kate Ferguson

Gaps in prevailing state and non-state approaches to the prevention of mass atrocity crimes and proposes new opportunities for the practice of atrocity prevention through making better use of network analysis and stakeholder mapping. An improved understanding of who is doing what, when, and how will reveal a far wider spectrum of potential policy options for how states, intergovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders can help to prevent mass atrocity crimes. Mapping and tracking networks help analysts to identify behavioral, cultural, and transactional relationships and would be beneficial to policymakers who cannot afford to misread perpetrating command structures when deploying international policy response. This paper argues that such analysis can and should be used in atrocity prevention as a tool to expose potential points of influence or leverage. Such an approach facilitates a ‘higher altitude’ view of where contemporary atrocity crimes come from and can encourage policymakers and other key actors to focus on preventative actions that can be taken outside of the immediate field of violence or – ideally – before the violence begins. This paper thus makes a case for expanding the traditionally narrow playbook that states and other prevention actors continue to rely upon in responding to mass atrocity situations or their warning signs. It argues that there is an opportunity, as well as a growing urgency, to reorient dominant approaches to atrocity prevention policy away from the reactive and performative and towards a more preventative, tailored, and cost-effective implementation.

Executive Summary

There is growing public and private appetite for greater understanding of, and more creative policy options to respond to, the networks of modern mass atrocity. Complex political, military, financial, criminal, communication, and social networks enable mass atrocities, yet the logical and networked dynamics of mass atrocity violence do not yet properly inform atrocity prevention policy or strategy.

This paper addresses gaps in prevailing state and non-state approaches to the prevention of mass atrocity crimes and proposes new opportunities for the practice of atrocity prevention through making better use of network analysis and stakeholder mapping. It makes a simple argument that an improved understanding of who is doing what, when, and how will reveal a far wider spectrum of potential policy options for how states, intergovernmental organizations, and other stakeholders can help to prevent mass atrocity crimes. Mapping and tracking networks help analysts to identify behavioral, cultural, and transactional relationships and would be beneficial to policymakers who cannot afford to misread perpetrating command structures when deploying international policy response. This paper argues that such analysis can and should be used in atrocity prevention as a tool to expose potential points of influence or leverage. Such an approach facilitates a ‘higher altitude’ view of where contemporary atrocity crimes come from and can encourage policymakers and other key actors to focus on preventative actions that can be taken outside of the immediate field of violence or – ideally – before the violence begins. Network analysis should therefore also contribute to advancing non-violent atrocity prevention.1  Note: I use non-violent here to describe policy that does not involve using physical force.      

This paper thus makes a case for expanding the traditionally narrow playbook that states and other prevention actors continue to rely upon in responding to mass atrocity situations or their warning signs. It argues that there is an opportunity, as well as a growing urgency, to reorient dominant approaches to atrocity prevention policy away from the reactive and performative and towards a more preventative, tailored, and cost-effective implementation. Finally, it sets out some policy implications of centering attention on the networked dynamics of modern atrocity crimes and makes recommendations to state and non-state prevention actors.

Introduction 

The actors who commission, perpetrate, incite, fund, arm, legitimize or otherwise enable mass atrocity crimes have always existed within and outside of state structures, even in the most state-led cases.2   Note: This literature is vast and varied. The texts that have influenced me the most include but are certainly not limited to Alvarez, Alex. ‘Militias and Genocide.’ War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity 2 (2006): 1–33.; Ferguson, Neil, Mark Burgess, and Ian Hollywood. ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Deciding to Become a Paramilitary in Northern Ireland.’ International Journal of Conflict and Violence 2, no. 1 (2008): 130– 37.; Uğur Ümit Üngör, Shabbiha: Paramilitary groups, mass violence and social polarization in Homs, 2020; Glenny, Misha. McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime. United Kingdom: Vintage, 2009    Innovation in the spheres of communication and technology, and the consequences of globalization, have altered the balance of power in many of these architectures of violence, meaning that sustained campaigns of mass atrocity now rely on the tacit and direct support of a vast infrastructure of non-state collaborators, from organized crime groups to social media platforms, private businesses and mercenaries. At the same time, in our increasingly connected world, those who are concerned with the prevention of human rights violations and mass atrocities should also be far better able to map these networks and track these malign actors.

This paper will make the case for our atrocity prevention community of practice – and its related policy systems – to take the time to untangle the human and transactional relationships that perpetuate atrocities. It is an exercise that can be adjusted in scope and scale but should always encourage more creative and evidenced focus on how these networks can be disrupted or dismantled. It is a way of thinking that is rooted in viewing mass atrocities, and the bonds or agreements that enable them, from the perspective of perpetrators or would-be-perpetrators.3  Note: Many now look at mass atrocities from the perspectives of perpetrators but is it Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, itself a kind of group analysis of the 101 reserve police battalion, that was my entry point some fifteen plus years ago. Ordinary Men; Reserve police battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland, Harper Colins (UAS), 1992 – the book was first published in the UK in 2001.     The goal of atrocity prevention is to change harmful behaviors, or constrict and disrupt malign actions, yet state response to atrocity threats – particularly by powers such as the US, UK or the European Union – continue to be both reactive and punitive, and are not necessarily designed to address the behaviors, transactions and motives that enable the perpetration of atrocity crimes. The response to Russia’s campaign of atrocities in Ukraine has so far overwhelmingly, but not totally, followed this tradition indicating there is political commitment to move beyond what has been done before.4  Note: While rhetoric and public policy from the US, UK, and EU towards Russia continues to be framed almost completely in punitive and reactive terms, the extraordinary and relatively rapid leveraging of sanctions against individuals and businesses by states and private businesses does represent a new juncture for international response to atrocity crimes. Their impacts are being felt in Russia but also globally, contributing to increased risks of atrocity risks and instability elsewhere. On impact in Russia, see https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/22/russia-economy-sanctions-myths-ruble-business/. On global impact, for example, see https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/impact-russias-invasion-ukraine-middle-east-and-north-africa. On 22 July 2022, the US and EU implemented further sanctions targeting Russia’s banking system and access to technology, suggested a more conscious strategy is emerging. https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-us-ukraine-sanctions.html   

This traditional atrocity prevention policy practice is reinforced by narrow interpretations of the responsibility to protect principle (R2P).5  Note: This is discussed, together with a call the devolution and opening up of R2P, in Fred Caver and Kate Ferguson, Being the Difference: A primer for states wishing to prevent mass atrocities in the mid-twenty-first century, Protection Approaches, 2021    Implicit in paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcomes is, rightly, the recognition that mass atrocities can be committed by actors within state borders operating outside of state structures.6  Note: 2005 World Summit Outcome A/60/L.1     However, seventeen years since its formal adoption, R2P remains almost wholly conceived as a state-centric initiative. 7Note: UN A/RES/60/1https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_60_1.pdf     

In 2018, former UN Special Advisor to the Secretary General on the Responsibility to Protect, Jennifer Welsh, wrote that R2P’s “initially state-centric focus might be expanded to address the challenge of non-state armed groups (NSAGs) as threats to civilians.”8  Note:  Jennifer Welsh, ‘Non-state armed groups and the responsibility to protect’ in The grey zone : civilian protection between human rights and the laws of war, Oxford ; New York : Hart Publishing, 2018, pp. 357–376    However, as Çaglar Açikyildiz in his recent assessment of R2P and the case of Boko Haram in Nigeria concludes, “[t]he fact that the main perpetrator of the mass atrocity crimes is an NSAG that operates on different territories complicates the process of devising an appropriate response.”9  Note: Çaglar Açikyildiz, ‘Boko Haram in Nigeria: R2P and Non-State Armed Groups,’ in Pinar Gözen, The Responsibility to Protect Twenty Years On: Rhetoric and Implementation, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022     There have been few references to the role of non-state armed groups in the annual reports of the UN Secretary General on R2P and, with some important exceptions, similar gaps can be found in state-led atrocity prevention policy.10  Note: Some sanctions policy has been informed by this kind of work, particularly by the United States. In the UK, this has been done well with respect to South Sudan, thanks to international and CSO support; this best practice is not yet well applied in other contexts where sanctions remain primarily punitive rather than a tool of influence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought new focus and is discussed below.     In fact, a false dichotomy is commonly established when responsibility for perpetration is presented as being either state or non-state when the networks of violence are  far more blurred.  

In addition, elite perpetrators commonly and intentionally project narratives to domestic and international publics that encourage a false understanding of where atrocity violence or its drivers are coming from, which in turn can play into the inflexibility of state-level atrocity prevention thinking and capabilities.11  Note: Kate Ferguson, Architectures of Violence: The command structures of modern mass atrocities, Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2020    In previous research, I suggest that a state-centric conceptual and policy framing of R2P and atrocity prevention can be seen to encourage malign states to deny their command and/or control over perpetrators and so escape, postpone or dilute international censure.12  Note: Ibid.    Malign states know that they only need to secure sufficient plausible deniability at home and on the international stage in order to stymie those in the global state-centric system who wish to engage in the mitigation and prevention of mass atrocities.

The absence of sophistication within atrocity prevention policy regarding the hybrid nature of the actors of atrocities is mirrored by a lack of sophistication regarding the hybrid nature of their actions. R2P is rarely invoked with respect to issues such as illicit financial flows and arms proliferation and has only recently started to be invoked with respect to social media and supply chains, even though these are integral elements of the networks that enable perpetrators to act.13  Note: Hamza, K. (2015). Social Media and the Responsibility to Protect. In: Fiott, D., Koops, J. (eds) The Responsibility to Protect and the Third Pillar. Palgrave Macmillan, London; https://www.massatrocityresponses.com/blog/the-responsibility-to-protect-in-a-digital-age  ; https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7818/documents/81312/default/ ; https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/china/     Atrocities committed by China in Xinjiang and Russia in Ukraine are forcing the atrocity prevention community of policy and practice to rethink how these levers might be more effectively used for prevention. Overall, if and when international reaction to atrocity crimes comes, it is from such a narrow and predictable playbook that elite perpetrators know to ‘price these costs in’, ultimately resulting in a lack of meaningful prevention or accountability.14  Note: This playbook usually moves through condemnation, investigation, sanctions, and sometimes a question of military action such as airstrikes or the provision of adjunct support.     

The practice and policy of mass atrocity prevention has long been informed by the pursuit of better understanding the processes that make atrocity crimes more likely, such as hate speech, divisive ideology, or corruption.15   Note: Greg Stanton’s stages of genocide is a foundation stone of genocide and atrocity prevention; In the 15 publicly available frameworks of atrocity risks I’ve studied, all address processes and indicators of risk. The best known is the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Prevention.     However, the people and networks whose behaviors, decisions and transactions drive such processes are less commonly the target in atrocity prevention policy, diplomacy, or strategy. The result has perhaps led to a more theoretical conceptualization particularly of genocide and crimes against humanity, rather than a strategic one.

This paper suggests that network analysis, a tool borrowed from intelligence and security, will help confront and mitigate such shortfalls in atrocity prevention policy and practice. It includes discussion of whether understanding of – including law enforcement responses to – serious and organization crime networks hold lessons for the prevention of mass atrocity crimes. It is written in part as a response to conversations with state officials in the UK and elsewhere who are frustrated by the limited and familiar policy options that their own systems and civil society offer up. It is therefore intended to provoke practical discussion primarily, but not only, at the state level regarding the current limitations and new horizons of atrocity prevention.

Methods

For this paper, I spoke off-the-record to state officials that work in and around atrocity prevention and representatives of for-profit organizations that engage in network analysis security activities for governments, but my conclusions are also informed by a decade of such conversations with researchers, security actors, policymakers, and colleagues. A desk review of literature included contributions from atrocity prevention, genocide studies, serious and organized crime, terrorism, criminology, technology, financial legislation, and media studies. I explored the theoretical understanding of network analysis in the political sciences and public policy documents, where available, that include evidence of the tools in practice, particularly in the fields of serious and organized crime, terrorism, money laundering, and sanctions. This is a rich and varied literature that this paper only begins to explore; a full review of the lessons and best practice that could apply to the field of atrocity prevention is beyond the scope of these pages.

The ideas and proposals set out here build on and respond to the work and contributions of many in our sector. This paper also builds upon recommendations that Fred Carver and I made in a recent paper calling for states to prioritize network analysis capabilities in their national atrocity prevention systems.16  Note: Carver and Ferguson, Being the Difference, 2021    It represents a pulling together of my own thinking and past research on the architectures of mass atrocity crimes and what is required to disrupt or dismantle them.17  Note: This paper follows the conclusions of Architectures of violence and draws on other pieces of policy analysis previously published or shared only with government actors.      

This paper is written from London, UK and takes the position that the prevention of identity-based violence and mass atrocities is a priority matter for all states in both their domestic and international policy. This is because legacies, risks and impacts of mass atrocity crimes can be found in every society and state. As such, atrocity prevention always requires whole-of-government and whole-of-society strategies. Moreover, there is no binary line that divides perpetrator and protector states. Without drawing any sense of equanimity, all states are both – and therefore all states can do better. The tools and principles of analysis proposed in this paper can be adapted and applied across institutions, government departments, states or sectors. However, the perspective I know best is that of the global north’s international policy and national security and therefore, this paper is situated in that knowledge. I welcome further discussion, engagement and challenge, particularly from colleagues working on domestic prevention outside of the UK and/or from the global south.

Architectures of Mass Atrocities

Genocide, crimes against humanity, and frequently war crimes, have their roots in a particular pathology of violence.18   Note: Carver and Ferguson, Being the difference. We suggest that because “war crimes are defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as serious violations of the laws and customs applicable to armed conflict…war crimes can constitute atrocity crimes, and can constitute crimes short of, but enabling of or contributing to, atrocity crimes of the risk of atrocity crimes. But as war crimes are a broad category of violation of international humanitarian law, we do not attempt to claim that all war crimes are best understood in atrocity prevention terms” or regularly share the features of genocide and crimes against humanity.    Fred Carver and I suggest that this pathology has the following features:

  • It is commonly motivated by – or legitimized through – a politics of identity-based grievance, discrimination and/or human rights deficits. (Motivation)
  • It is perpetrated by an organized criminal conspiracy. Many parts of this conspiracy might be acting legally, or have been legitimized by state authorities, but nevertheless are participating in a conspiracy to commit an international crime. The architecture of the conspiracy will resemble other forms of organized crime, encompassing political, financial, military, communications, and other resources and means of enablement. (Means)
  • It takes advantage of unchecked power, even if such power is enjoyed in a limited environment. (Opportunity)
  • Unchecked, its outcome is widespread and systematic human rights violation, frequently reaching the threshold of international atrocity crimes such as genocide or crimes against humanity. (Outcome)

This paper, and the practice of network analysis, focuses attention on the means and on the architectures – or formations – of individuals, groups, and transactions that perpetrate, enable or profit from mass atrocity crimes. I use the term ‘architectures of violence’ to help visualize the structures, networks, and relationships of command, control, communication, transaction and influence that connect the state, localities, organized crime, and society with the armed actors.19  Note: Ferguson, Architectures of Violence, p21    This paper suggests that better understanding – or mapping out – these architectures of violence encourage a way of looking for what happens ‘behind the scenes’ of the mass atrocities themselves; the violence, understandably, so often consumes our attention but is, ultimately, the appalling end product of a chain reaction of decisions and actions that can be  interrupted earlier.

All architectures of violence are unique, evolved and networked over years – usually decades. However, there are two observations that should be far more evident in atrocity prevention policy. First, governments benefit from using armed actors outside of the regular military hierarchy when implementing strategies of mass atrocity. Irregular structures of violence are more difficult to confront when applying political pressure, economic sanctions or military action.20  Note: Bart Shurman, ‘Clausewitz and the “New Wars” scholars’ Parameters, 2010, pp 89-100    As I have argued before, “direct responsibility for committing deliberate acts of atrocity is now, and perhaps always has been, frequently devolved, away from the central bodies of the state to different forms of armed groups that were not always officially under state command; formations are often intentionally created, funded, trained and directed by state bodies, while others can emerge spontaneously. These various nonlinear command structures are commonly replicated on the local level, where local enterprises of violence and corruption are formed between local state elites and paramilitaries.”21  Note: Architectures of Violence, p7  

The second observation is that not only are devolved structures of violence effective in implementing strategies of mass atrocity violence, but they also cause policymakers to hesitate. In the cases of Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, Sri Lanka, Syria, Myanmar and Burundi, “unclear chains of military command, or what were claimed to be non-state armed groups, were cited by policy makers and member states at the UN as reasons not to pursue more assertive protective policy.”22  Note: Architectures of Violence, p.8    Misreading the perpetrating command structures  – and networks of spontaneous civilian protection – in Bosnia and in Syria led directly to poor international policy responses by both the US and the UK in each instance, twenty years apart. Why then, do we not invest in better understanding these networks, relationships and command structures in atrocity prevention policy? 

This gap is not so much one of scholarship. Multiple studies have explored the organization of mass violence, from its bureaucratization to local participation, exposed the varied roles played by businesses, the media, and organized crime. Experts and practitioners of mass atrocity prevention know that mass atrocities do not happen spontaneously, and that they require significant degrees of cross-cutting collaboration and complicity. Yet the practice of mapping out the actors in the perpetrating political and military hierarchies, sources of funding, where commodities such as oil and arms are smuggled, what communication companies or platforms are producing or pushing misinformation, and so on – are not yet informing atrocity prevention policy, whether in response to crises once violence has begun or in pre-emptive upstream interventions.

Understanding architectures of violence brings focus to the conspiracy among individuals, groups, and networks to commit or enable a crime. Deconstructing the enabling networks as a means of determining entry points for the practice of prevention, is borrowed from efforts to map and dismantle other malign networks. It is also a suggestion of what network analysis tools could contribute to the practice of atrocity prevention.

Defining Network Analysis

Social network analysis as a theory provides an understanding that a “social environment can be expressed as patterns of regularities in relationships among interacting units.”23  Note: Stanley Wasserman, Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, University of Illinois 1994    Linton Freeman, for example, describes the social network approach as being “grounded in the intuitive notion that the patterning of social ties in which actors are embedded has important consequences for those actors. Network analysts, then, seek to uncover various kinds of patterns. And they try to determine the conditions under which those patterns arise and to discover their consequences.”24  Note: Linton Freeman, The development of social network analysis, A Study in the Sociology of Science, 2004, page xxiii     From a policy or programming perspective network analysis can be used in a more practical way to identify, map and track individuals and relationships – and develop strategy and interventions based on that data analysis.

These methods and tools have already been used to inform responses to global challenges adjacent to atrocity prevention, including serious and organized crime, corruption, terrorism, and violent extremism. The threat posed by covert or decentralized networks have led military, police, intelligence and security structures to develop the systems and capabilities to map and track people, money, goods and communications.25  Note: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2022.2059352?tab=permissions&scroll=top     Studies of networks as a tool of prevention can be found in relation to human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, illicit financial flows, and the arms trade.26  Note: For example, see Eleanor Cockbain, Helen Brayley, Gloria Laycock, Exploring Internal Child Sex Trafficking Networks Using Social Network Analysis, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 5, Issue 2, June 2011; https://unidir.org/projects/mapping-illicit-small-arms-trafficking-2;  https://baselgovernance.org/sites/default/files/2020-08/qg4_sna.pdf#:~:text=Social%20network%20analysis%20%28SNA%29%20can%20help%20us%20to,that%20sustain%20corruption%2C%20money%20laundering%20and%20illicit%20trafficking.     USAID recently published its guide to dekleptification, making the case for ‘mapping kleptocratic networks’ as well as reform networks: “assessments must avoid the temptation to personify corruption in the form of a scapegoat. They should instead map out deeply entrenched networks of public and private sector perpetrators, enablers, revenue streams, and other kleptocratic structures, practices, and actors who could spoil reform efforts and recapture the levers of power in the future.”27  Note: USAID, Dekleptification guide: Seizing Windows of Opportunity to Dismantle Kleptocracy, September 2022, https://www.usaid.gov/anti-corruption/dekleptification  

Used in these spheres, network analysis can help to answer questions such as who the individuals involved in the network are; what the shape of the network is (for example, is it highly centralized or devolved and what is its geographic reach?); which actors are supplying what information or service; how the network is evolving; and finally, which actors must be targeted to disrupt the network and break it down permanently.28  Note: Jacopo Costa, Social network analysis in combating organised crime and trafficking, Basel Institute for Governance, 2019, p2    

The tools, theories, and language of network analysis have emerged from research and practice in response to varied intellectual questions and practical challenges, and so exist in many forms across discipline and policy areas. Following the attacks on the World Trade Centre, people like Valdis E. Krebs set out to “map this network of terrorist cells that had so affected all of our lives”29  Note: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/ACLURM002810.pdf see also work on mapping far right extremist groups https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/after-christchurch-mapping-online-right-wing-extremists  ; https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/An-Online-Environmental-Scan-of-Right-wing-Extremism-in-Canada-ISD.pdf     using news coverage, online forums, and other open sources of information. Similar approaches are employed by government officials, intelligence agents, and military actors to identify, track, and at times target individuals and groups involved in domestic or international violent extremist or terrorist activity, except these efforts are more likely to draw on security intelligence. The rise of online hate-based communications and conspiracy has also further led to an increase by state, corporate and NGO actors to map discourse, track trajectories, identify individuals and groups, and – sometimes – use this knowledge to inform interventions, policy change or introduce new legislation.30  Note: For example, https://demos.co.uk/project/anti-islamic-content-on-twitter/ ;     Mapping criminal networks, whether domestic gangs, mafia groups or transnational organized crime, is an older practice traditionally undertaken by police and intelligence agencies as well as researchers.31  Note: https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mapping-colombia-drug-trafficking-diaspora/     Even in popular culture, the history of La Casa Nostra in the US is told and understood through relationships between the five families of Italian-American organized crime, and the hierarchical structure of the boss or don, the capos and made men, to the associates – real and fictionalized efforts to bring down the mafia are likewise rooted in the need to uncover, map, track and disrupt the criminal architecture.32  Note: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/mafia-family-tree.pdf/view     

Policies informed by these varied mapping efforts, however, have rarely been accompanied by prominent human rights thinking or commitments.33  Note: The UK’s cross-government strategy of serious and organized crime, for example, mentions human rights only once and only as a technical point relating to UK sanctions legislation. Serious and Organised Crime Strategy, November 2018. Meanwhile the UK’s strategy on human trafficking does not mention human rights once. Human Trafficking, the UK Government’s Strategy, 2011.     This might go some way to explain why the tools of network analysis have not yet become more prominent in the atrocity prevention toolbox. The impacts of this failure can be most explicitly and detrimentally seen in the spheres of countering and preventing violent extremism and terrorism.  Likewise, failure to integrate a human rights lens to the ‘war on drugs’ severely curtails the efficacy of prevention policies and do more harm, even when authorities have a sophisticated understanding of the networks, individuals, and dynamics in play.34  Note: https://www.justsecurity.org/69899/why-preventing-and-countering-violent-extremism-law-and-practice-is-failing-a-human-rights-audit/ ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/end-war-drugs-and-promote-policies-rooted-human-rights-un-experts      Thus, network analysis, like any tool, is no silver bullet. It is, rather, an analytical way of thinking that – together with the existing tools, methods and knowledge of atrocity prevention research and practice – might bolster our current prevention efforts.

The Relationship Between Mass Atrocity Violence and Organized Crime

Before turning to how network analysis might strengthen atrocity prevention policy, it is worth considering what relationships and similarities exist between the structures that enable mass atrocity violence and those that drive organized crime. The value here is not so much of returning to conversations regarding legal frameworks  but what can be learnt or borrowed from sociological study, criminological practice, and law enforcement.35  Note: For legal discussion of join criminal enterprise and command responsibility in the international criminal tribunals see Danner, Allison Marston Martinez, Jenny S. UC Berkeley International Law Workshop, Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility and the Development of International Criminal Law Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/78b1d8cq 2004-09-15    Such an exercise could in itself help encourage a more strategic conceptualization of atrocity prevention in state policy but also, more practically, identify points of convergence within state, regional, and multilateral policy, law enforcement, security and intelligence that could yet be leveraged towards the goal distinct goal of preventing mass atrocities.

While there are many definitions of organized crime, it is generally described as a group of people involved in serious criminal activities for substantial profit.36  Note: https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/topics/policing-and-community-safety/organised-crime     And mass atrocities – particularly genocide, ethnic cleansing and other forms of crimes against humanity – are profitable.37  Note: https://thesentinelproject.org/2013/12/17/the-business-of-extermination-making-a-killing-from-genocide-in-burma/ ; Üngor and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Siezure of Armenian Property, Continuum International, 2011    Mark Galeotti, in his work on the Russian vory, says that organized crime can be described as “a continuing enterprise, apart from traditional and legal social structures, within which a number of persons work together under their own hierarchy to gain power and profit for their private gain, through illegal activities”38  Note: Mark Galiotti, The Vory; Russia’s super Mafia, 2018 p.3    . This is not a perfect analogy for the perpetration of mass atrocity crimes but focusing on the gains that are made through campaigns of identity-based mass atrocities – whether political, financial or other means of power – are often still excluded from popular understandings of motivation, including by state officials tasked with developing atrocity prevention strategy, training and policy. Both organized crime and the perpetration of mass atrocity crimes require a structure, whether a centralized hierarchy or a looser set of relationships, that connect chief architects of mass violence with various formal branches and informal networks that participate in the varied activities that support the joint criminal enterprise; policy and tools that seek to confront organized crime are rooted in this understanding, whereas the relationships and transactions that drive atrocity crimes are commonly absent from both policy and practical efforts in our own field.39  Note: Donald Bloxham, Organized Mass Murder: Structure, Participation, and Motivation in Comparative Perspective, 22 Holocaust & Genocide Stud. 203 (2008).  See also Architectures of Violence, from p.111    It is also worth highlighting the use and abuse of identity, and particularly of membership to a group where there are gains to be made, are common to the culture of mafia, kleptocratic as well as mass atrocity regimes.

Beyond certain similarities in group structure or motivations, there is also significant overlap in personnel across those involved in organized crime and modern atrocities40  Note: This overlap ranges from the organized crime networks that smuggle out cultural artefacts (https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2017/September/remarks-of-unodc-executive-director–yury-fedotov–at-the-high-level-meeting-on-protecting-cultural-heritage-from-terrorism-and-mass-atrocities.html) to the black markets which sustain access to arms and energy during embargoes, for example Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, Cornell University Press, 2008. Groups such as Hezbollah or the IRA have operated both as perpetrators of atrocity crimes and as organized crime networks, assisting in the moving of products – whether weapons or drugs – directly supporting other situations where mass atrocity crimes have been ongoing or are a risk. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, Criminal Structures, in Architectures of Violence.    ; the role of international organized crime in the smuggling of goods or people in and out of violent contexts is integral to maintaining many situations of mass atrocity; the dual roles played by non-state/semi-state armed groups and the perpetrators of organized crime, from localized black markets to the organized seizing of economic assets, is well recorded, for example, in the Armenian and Bosnian genocides.  In contexts where organized crime is already high prior to atrocity violence, such as in the cases of former Yugoslavia, Colombia, Syria, or Russia, the relationship becomes more integral and complex. As Deputy Director of the Wayamo Foundation and Assistant Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice  Mark Kersten has said, “it is hard, if not impossible, to think of a conflict since the end of World War II where mass atrocities were perpetrated but in which transnational organized crimes played no role.”41  Note: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/7/17/to-stop-mass-atrocities-follow-the-money     Just as paramilitaries (whether state, state-adjacent, or non-state) have been present in virtually every genocide, so too have criminal networks.42  Note: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol6/iss1/4/     

While this paper recommends the integration of the tools and methods of network analysis into the policy and practice of mass atrocity prevention, perhaps the policy and practice communities of transnational organized crime prevention might also consider integrating atrocity prevention thinking and commitments into their endeavors. The relationships between the irregular dynamics of modern mass atrocities and organized crime are crucial to contemporary architectures of violence. While there are many contexts where organized crime thrives, but mass atrocities do not occur, there are fewer instances of modern mass atrocity where irregular armed actors, criminal networks, and illicit supply chains of some sort are not in place. Certainly, more study is needed to understand the extent to which the relationships and parallels between organized crime and mass atrocity violence can improve prevention but as state level atrocity prevention policy evolves it must consider, perhaps even take advantage of, the intersections.

These dynamics are, for example, pronounced in Russian domestic and international policy, including in atrocity contexts where it is engaged. As Galeotti has long argued, ‘one of Russia’s tactics for waging [its] war [against the west] is using organized crime as an instrument of statecraft abroad.’43  Note: Mark Galeotti, Crimintern: How the Kremlin uses Russia’s criminal networks in Europe, European Council on Foreign Relations, 2017    The regional risks in Europe for growth of serious and organized crime, and their consequences, are now considerable. Organized crime networks fill vacuums and will be already thriving across Ukraine. These arteries into and out of the field of conflict will shape the direction of the violence, possibly contributing to its duration. Yet the trajectory of these dynamics has largely only been assessed through a prism of regional security, and not as a means of informing sanctions and wider policy that can be leveraged towards behavior change, interrupting critical transactions or other means of violence prevention.

Network Analysis as a Tool of Atrocity Prevention?

The tools and methods of network analysis should enable states (and others) to untangle the complex criminal architectures that perpetuate atrocities and  “encourage a more creative and evidenced focus upon how these networks can be disrupted or dismantled.”44  Note: https://conservativehome.com/2022/02/25/kate-ferguson-the-government-must-urgently-improve-the-uks-capacity-to-crack-down-on-atrocities/     It is a process that should help expose “a fuller spectrum of actors that enable the perpetration of violence, including supply chains, human trafficking networks, the arms trade (legal and illicit), media outlets, armed groups, and communities themselves.”45  Note: Ibid    This is important for prevention because even when political elites remain disproportionately responsible for the commission of mass atrocity crimes, they are rarely the weak spots in the atrocity perpetration architecture. Network analysis allows prevention actors to target those weak spots – be they financial flows, communication systems, or other forms of enablement.

So far, however, not much of this work has yet been done in atrocity prevention. Charles Anderton and Jurgen Brauer wrote in 2019 that “[m]ass atrocity case studies routinely refer to networks of perpetrators (and of victims and bystanders) but little formal work is available to pinpoint characteristics of atrocity-committing networks and how they operate.”46  Note: The Onset, Spread, and Prevention of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Formal Network Models, Journal of Genocide Research, 2019     More has been done by civil society, researchers and some donors in the field, on prevention networks and on better networking prevention as a means of connecting local, national and international actors, of establishing transnational networks of solidarity, to share knowledge and to improve early warning systems.47  Note: See Ashad Sentongo, ‘The Practical Use of Early Warning and Response in Preventing Mass Atrocities and Genocide: Experiences from the Great Lakes’ in Rosenberg et al, Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention, University of Cambridge, 2016; Mennecke https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09240519211017669?journalCode=nqha, Buskie and Ferguson, Linked Up and Linked In https://protectionapproaches.org/linked-up-and-linked-in     In her blueprint for atrocity prevention and response, shortly before taking up the position of Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice, Beth Van Schaack argued that the United States should “capacitate, and encourage cooperation around, the preventive and accountability work of civil society actors and survivors groups.”48  Note: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/human_rights/atrocity-crimes-initiative/van-schaack-atrocities-prevention-blueprint-white-paper-2021.pdf p.25    This growing attention to collaborative and networked prevention is welcome, but makes the lack of focus in policy on perpetrating structures all the more surprising, both because improved understanding of malign networks is so clearly needed, and because a better networked prevention architecture should be informed by a corresponding strategy of targets, leverage and influence.

The work of the Sentry, in tracking the profits and profiteers of mass atrocities, hints at what integrating these tools into atrocity prevention policy could look like. “The financial dimension of the world’s worst ongoing crimes remains crucial to their relentless perpetration” says the Sentry, arguing that “with widespread impunity, many of the most powerful co-conspirators and facilitators of atrocities—banks, refiners, offshore trusts, natural resource buyers and traders—continue operating, often quite profitably.”49  Note: https://thesentry.org/reports/prosecute-the-profiteers/     The financial investigations that the organization undertakes and supports are then used to encourage governments, the private sector, and the courts to “take aim at the financial infrastructure fueling these atrocities.”50  Note: ibid    Open source investigations by the Syrian Archive, the Technology and Human Rights Program at the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, Bellingcat and the BBC’s Africa Eye have applied similar processes to break down the available evidence to determine individual and networked culpability for atrocity crimes.51  Note: https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1174074?ln=en ; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0707w39  ; https://www.bellingcat.com/ ; see also https://lieber.westpoint.edu/strengthening-atrocity-cases-digital-open-source-investigations/     The degree to which these practices are informing and shaping state analysis of atrocity risks and policy response in this area, however, is less clear; the analysis of open source material is considered useful by officials but there is less appetite to explore what such methods could mean beyond accountability in a narrow sense. The tools that are emerging to use often online information to establish individual, networked, or organizational, culpability in atrocity crimes or their antecedents would inform unilateral and collaborative policy, bringing focus, for example, to targets where leverage might deliver more than a punitive response.

Still less evident is the sense of strategy: the recently published US national strategy to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocities presents a cross-cutting approach to implementation but is not strategic in the traditional sense that it explains the political reasoning or context.52  Note: https://www.state.gov/2022-united-states-strategy-to-anticipate-prevent-and-respond-to-atrocities/     Knowing what to look for, how to analyze the information and how to ‘raise the alarm’ are the fundamental principles of warning and effective preventative action but are not activities that automatically produce strategic thinking or identify new policy options. Atrocity prevention analysis has tended to focus on indicators of risk frequently missed by conflict and instability assessments, but perhaps less on the network dynamics that drive those risks or where opportunities for interruption or prevention might lie.53  Note: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/about-us/Doc.3_Framework%20of%20Analysis%20for%20Atrocity%20Crimes_EN.pdf      This has been the case, even within the approach of the United States, where political, legislative and financial commitments to atrocity prevention have been the most pronounced. This may be because the agenda of atrocity prevention can be seen to have emerged around a general theory of change but has not crystalized as a distinct objective that can be realized through ‘grand strategy’ in the traditional foreign policy understanding. Atrocity prevention commonly endeavors to monitor the evidence of hate speech, divisive ideology, corruption, or arms proliferations, for example, but does the community of practice adequately seek, from a policy perspective, to map, track and interrupt the networks that enable those risk factors? Bringing these two methods together would allow for a far more strategic starting point, whatever the scope and scale of resource at hand. Growing focus on sanctions, supply chains, and social media platforms indicates greater political interest and civil society expertise but has yet to be leveraged strategically. Could an early and effective mapping of President Assad’s financial backers, paramilitary structures, organized crime partners, misinformation producers, and Instagram cheerleaders have helped develop a wider set of proactive policy options to prevent mass atrocities in Syria?

The apparent reluctance by states to map and track malign networks that contribute to the enablement of mass atrocities is particularly surprising because, as discussed above, many states already employ the tools of network analysis or stakeholder mapping to inform policy related to other and adjacent transnational challenges. These gaps have been coldly exposed in recent months as states such as the UK and the US have scrambled to respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The following exchange from an oral evidence hearing on the pro-Russian but technically independent Wagner Group and other paramilitary proxies held by the UK’s Parliamentary Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, sets out bluntly but fairly these past failures – and their consequences in policy, and for Ukraine. The Wagner Group have been heavily implicated in committing and otherwise enabling mass atrocity crimes in Syria, Mali, Ukraine and elsewhere.54  Note: In Mali, https://www.csis.org/analysis/massacres-executions-and-falsified-graves-wagner-groups-mounting-humanitarian-cost-mali; in Central African Republic, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/world/asia/russia-mercenaries-central-african-republic.html; in Syria, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/11/russia-wagner-group-methods-bouta-killing-report/; in Ukraine, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/25/wagner-group-fighters-accused-murdering-civilians-ukraine-war-crimes-belarus    Alicia Kearns is a Conservative MP who sits on the Committee, Christo Grozev is the lead Russia investigator at Bellingcat and Dr Sean McFate is Professor of Strategy at Georgetown and National Defense University. The exchange took place on 19 April 2022.

Alicia Kearns: My instinct is that Governments are particularly bad at mapping the architecture of these sorts of organizations, and I would not be easily convinced that Governments would have specific strategies for dealing with such paramilitary groups and the work they do. It would be really interesting to know from all three of you whether there are any Governments who you think are particularly effective at this sort of mapping and [understanding] the command-and-control functions. Obviously, we cannot have accountability and we cannot have genocide prevention and atrocity prevention strategies if we do not do the work at the start on the architecture. Who can we learn from as the UK? Is anyone doing it well, in the assessment of the UK?

Christo Grozev: Yes, I will kick off with the assumption of Government incompetence, which in this case I have to agree with. I will give you an example: when we started trying to find the identity of one of the most fearsome representatives of the Wagner Group, operating in several African countries, primarily the Central African Republic but also Mozambique, he was a known persona—a very feared colonel, as he was referred to by the locals—both interfering in the local political process and supervising some cruelties performed on the local population, and nobody seemed to know who he was. It took our team about two weeks to identify him. Not only did we identify him, but we found out that he had been travelling through European airspace and stopping at airports in western Europe for years on behalf of Wagner, and nobody ever bothered him. He had been issued visas multiple times by European Governments. That is an example of how nobody has really mapped out the whole structure and kept tabs on it.

To answer your question about which countries would be running against this trend, Ukraine is the only country that actually tried to have a holistic view, mapping the whole organization, but Ukraine has been fighting its own war for eight years now and obviously does not have the resources. Any other country that wished to have a complete mapping might be able to do it at a much better rate. That would be my answer to your first question.

Dr Sean McFate: I would agree with that. The Five Eyes have not taken this issue seriously until maybe very recently—as in, this year. If you went to an intelligence agency in the United States of America, they are tracking China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and terrorists, but no mercenaries and no Wagner Group, which is one reason why it has become the Kremlin’s weapon of choice. If you are looking to expand in the Middle East and Africa, as they have in recent years, you want to do it in the shadows using plausible deniability. It is very convenient for them to have an entity that the US and, I assume, the UK choose not to track, and this has emboldened them to use this as a stratagem for national expansion and national interests.55  Note: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/10105/pdf/    

If this exchange is accurate, it is damning that the only state that was apparently investing in this mapping of the Wagner Group was Ukraine, despite it being a well-known transnational perpetrating group present in numerous atrocity contexts prior to Russia’s invasion in February. My own interactions with state officials before and after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine indicate that while some intelligence resources might be undertaking relevant analysis, it is not informing atrocity prevention policy. An exception might perhaps be the United States, where the intelligence services form part of its multi-agency approach to mass atrocities.    

The tools of stakeholder mapping and network analysis should encourage a more creative, evidenced, and holistic focus on how malign coalitions and relationships can be disrupted or dismantled – they should be informing not only global responses to the paramilitary component of Russian atrocities being committed in Ukraine, but to the entire networked architecture of perpetration and enablement. “The Russian architecture of violence in Ukraine is transnational, enabled by global and regional illicit financial flows, underpinned by organized crime and kleptocratic networks, supported by a spectrum of non-state and pseudo-non-state armed actors, and promoted by coordinated disinformation structures.”56  Note: https://conservativehome.com/2022/02/25/kate-ferguson-the-government-must-urgently-improve-the-uks-capacity-to-crack-down-on-atrocities     Global response to Russia should therefore include strategic targeting of supply chains, human trafficking networks, the arms trade, media outlets, as well as the armed groups, financial flows, communication systems, and other processes that make the perpetration of atrocity crimes possible. Ukraine now has the attention of the world and is already instigating different responses to mass atrocities to those we have seen in response to similar crimes by similar actors in Syria and elsewhere. If a new, more holistic, and strategic approach to mass atrocities can be found in Ukraine, perhaps a wider reorientation will follow.

Social network analysis is used to combat organized crime because it “focuses on fluid interactions among individuals and determines social structures empirically, rather than relying on theoretical classifications”- which “offers major advantage of avoiding some of the pitfalls in traditional thinking about organized crime, i.e. of the theoretical distinctions between state and non-state, licit and illicit, etc.”57  Note: Anine Kriegler, Using social network analysis to profile organised crime, POLICY BRIEF 57 | SEPTEMBER 2014, Institute for Security Studies, p1    This paper suggests a more strategic approach to the networks, relationships and transactions that enable modern mass atrocity crimes.  Centering this understanding in the design of related policy, programs, and diplomacy could well help the atrocity prevention policy community avoid common pitfalls in thinking and practice, including but not limited to false dichotomies between state and non-state perpetration that continue to hinder effective prevention and response.

Policy Implications and Recommendations

There are four key implications of this analysis for atrocity prevention policy. The first is the stasis that has characterized international state level atrocity prevention for at least the past decade can indeed be undone. There is a whole spectrum of tools, opportunities, and interventions that can be unlocked if policymakers take a more strategic approach to preventing mass atrocities – one that is rooted in a deep and nuanced understanding of the multidimensional architectures of violence. This could involve considering where existing policy infrastructure aimed at organized crime, illicit financial flows, and other adjacent challenges can inform atrocity prevention or even integrate atrocity prevention commitments. The second implication is that states must take the lead in driving this forward, recognizing that the prevention of mass atrocities requires a creative and more consistent effort to weaken, disrupt and ultimately help dismantle the networks that enable the perpetration of atrocity crimes. This necessitates truly whole-of-government strategies that can leverage joined-up or targeted actions. Such a shift might require quite a significant change in how mass atrocity prevention is conceptualized within governments but would likely not necessitate greater resource beyond prioritizing the right expertise and the development of new analysis systems. Neither of these are easy augmentations to make in bureaucracies but in contrast to the rising, and already enormous, costs of mass atrocity response, it is surely a cost-effective objective to work towards. The third key implication relates to the opportunity to better network prevention actors and consider how a more informed understanding to the malign networks could provide both a clearer strategy and renewed sense of collective movement to the wider atrocity prevention field. Donors are already becoming more interested in the power of transnational prevention networks, hopefully signaling a move beyond earlier iterations of coalition-building to more iterative and symbiotic relationships across our sector, which is having to face the gravest projections of rising atrocity crimes with far fewer resources than ever.58  Note: Beingthe difference, p.4    Finally, a focus on the wider architectures of violence could move state policy attention away from conventional armed means of response once mass atrocities are committed, and can help address the binary question of ‘air strikes or faltering’ which has constricted policy and political thinking about mass atrocities since the US-UK invasion of Iraq.

That China and Russia are both carrying out systematic campaigns of mass atrocity, has forced the search for new tools and responses, already leading to innovative efforts primarily (but not only) in the global north in order to hit supply chains, illicit financial flows, and to build private sector and consumer action.59  Note: https://www.ft.com/content/97c07bd5-4d57-44bf-8ac1-09f1879b97c7 ; https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2022-06/russia-sanctions-will-transform-global-economy; https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-1000-companies-have-curtailed-operations-russia-some-remain ; https://www.state.gov/xinjiang-supply-chain-business-advisory/ ; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61183965      It also means that states can no longer simply pass up their responsibility to protect onto the UN Security Council. States and civil society should be investing in the tools, mechanisms and expertise to monitor and evaluate “the propellants that cause atrocities, maps motivations and interrelations of both potential perpetrators and the coalitions that can help prevent atrocities and identifies the points where leverage can be effectively applied and which actors can apply it.”60  Note: https://ecr2p.leeds.ac.uk/preventing-atrocities-in-the-mid-21st-century-what-states-can-do/  This work should connect across government departments, informing all tools that can contribute to weakening architectures of violence, including but not limited to diplomacy, development, sanctions policy, procurement, financial regulation, domestic prosecutions and international justice, and international trade.

Fundamental to this approach of course, is networking national contributions to mass atrocity crimes across government. And thanks to the new US strategy, there are indications that is already beginning. The UK, too, is making positive – if not yet consistent – noises in the same direction. Such an effort is in any state’s interest as it guards against unintended complicity and maximizes opportunities for consistent policymaking. Ultimately, network analysis should encourage more coordinated and foresight-led policy that improves the harmonization in domestic and international atrocity prevention policy, in a practical way.

At the same time, atrocity prevention actors should reach out to others working in network analysis in other fields or from different perspectives, including intelligence agencies, military, open-source investigators, local networks who are the eyes and ears, researchers and practitioners working on organized crime, violent extremism, and terrorism. Finally, donors should invest in these activities and explore what network analysis could mean for advocacy, bringing in the principles of networking prevention and the actors that undertake it.

Conclusions

As modern conflicts and atrocity crimes continue to rely increasingly on nonlinear devolved military structures and transnational networks of enablement, finding strategies to circumvent or confront these relationships becomes more urgent. Perpetrating coalitions already contain a far larger cast of actors than current state-centric strategies seek to confront. As global norms regarding human rights and the responsibility to protect civilians at risk have advanced, state powers wishing to commit atrocity crimes will increasingly seek to mask their strategies by employing covert and devolved structures of atrocity violence.61  Note: Architectures of Violence, p211    The prevention community remains ill-prepared to meet these increasingly devolved architectures of violence. Responses to atrocity situations and contexts continue to overwhelmingly rely upon reactive strategies that center state authorities, whether as the key to prevention (in democratization or stabilization projects), as the primary target to influence, or as the central malign actor. At the same time, inconsistency in state-led international approaches to atrocity prevention, whether as a result of poor internal coordination or of contradictions in policy, undermines these strategies from the start. 

We are beginning to see some welcome variation from the traditional atrocity prevention playbook in how some states are responding to Russia, and in the innovative ways in which some civil society actors are making use of open-source data. The development of a more diverse approach to prevention and protection will encourage more flexible and creative responses to the broadest possible spectrum of drivers and processes that precede atrocities – it will also demand more from states who are committed to, or express commitment towards, a world where fewer of these crimes occur. My argument is that governments need these analytical capabilities because identity-based mass violence is a rising global threat that will, without serious shifts from many different places, likely characterize the next few decades; this is an issue of national security, global stability, and human safety. State capabilities to influence the trajectories of identity-based violence should become far more central in state decision-making, not only because it is the ‘right thing to do’ but because the consequences of not getting a handle on current and emerging threats will reverberate for generations to come.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the nature of the atrocity violence being committed, has forced a juncture for atrocity prevention, the United Nations, and for the global balance-sheet of rights and authoritarianism. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its deliberate perpetration of the gravest international crimes is first and foremost an assault upon Ukraine, bringing devastation to millions of Ukrainians but the Kremlin’s actions are also a deliberate attack on the international system and the universal values that underpin it. The atrocities in Ukraine today are a consequence of the collective failure over the past twenty years to confront widespread, systematic, and deliberate attacks on rights, life, and freedoms in other parts of the world, particularly but not only in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Myanmar, the United States, and parts of Europe. A global reset is well overdue.

The proposal set out in this paper proposes nothing grand, but it is made in full acknowledgement of the critical moment our community has reached. My core call is neither radical nor costly: I am suggesting that we broaden the horizons of our practice and policy and consider the potential benefit of integrating a more strategic intelligence-based approach to decision making, and in so doing, raise our collective expectations of what states and those of us committed to the prevention of mass atrocities, can feasibly and practically do.

About the Author

Dr Kate Ferguson is Co-Executive Director at Protection Approaches. She is an experienced researcher and policy analyst of identity-based violence and mass atrocity prevention, working closely with governments to support the development of policy and strategy on these issues. She is Chair of Policy at the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Grand Strategy and Kings College London.

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank all who spoke to me for this project. In addition, I’ve benefitted from sharing this proposal for atrocity prevention with many colleagues, from the discussions that have followed, and from constructive feedback; thank you to everyone who has been so generous with their time. Particular thanks to Fred Carver, Andy Fearn, David Frey, Cecilia Jacob, Adam Lupel, Farida Mostafa, Maeve Ryan, and Ernesto Verdeja. A big thank you to the Stimson Center, particularly Jim Finkel, Ilhan Dahir, Lisa Sharland, Shakiba Mashayekhi and to all anonymous reviewers, in supporting this publication.

Notes

  • 1
      Note: I use non-violent here to describe policy that does not involve using physical force.      
  • 2
      Note: This literature is vast and varied. The texts that have influenced me the most include but are certainly not limited to Alvarez, Alex. ‘Militias and Genocide.’ War Crimes, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity 2 (2006): 1–33.; Ferguson, Neil, Mark Burgess, and Ian Hollywood. ‘Crossing the Rubicon: Deciding to Become a Paramilitary in Northern Ireland.’ International Journal of Conflict and Violence 2, no. 1 (2008): 130– 37.; Uğur Ümit Üngör, Shabbiha: Paramilitary groups, mass violence and social polarization in Homs, 2020; Glenny, Misha. McMafia: Seriously Organised Crime. United Kingdom: Vintage, 2009  
  • 3
      Note: Many now look at mass atrocities from the perspectives of perpetrators but is it Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, itself a kind of group analysis of the 101 reserve police battalion, that was my entry point some fifteen plus years ago. Ordinary Men; Reserve police battalion 101 and the final solution in Poland, Harper Colins (UAS), 1992 – the book was first published in the UK in 2001.   
  • 4
      Note: While rhetoric and public policy from the US, UK, and EU towards Russia continues to be framed almost completely in punitive and reactive terms, the extraordinary and relatively rapid leveraging of sanctions against individuals and businesses by states and private businesses does represent a new juncture for international response to atrocity crimes. Their impacts are being felt in Russia but also globally, contributing to increased risks of atrocity risks and instability elsewhere. On impact in Russia, see https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/22/russia-economy-sanctions-myths-ruble-business/. On global impact, for example, see https://www.crisisgroup.org/middle-east-north-africa/impact-russias-invasion-ukraine-middle-east-and-north-africa. On 22 July 2022, the US and EU implemented further sanctions targeting Russia’s banking system and access to technology, suggested a more conscious strategy is emerging. https://www.nytimes.com/article/russia-us-ukraine-sanctions.html   
  • 5
      Note: This is discussed, together with a call the devolution and opening up of R2P, in Fred Caver and Kate Ferguson, Being the Difference: A primer for states wishing to prevent mass atrocities in the mid-twenty-first century, Protection Approaches, 2021  
  • 6
      Note: 2005 World Summit Outcome A/60/L.1   
  • 7
    Note: UN A/RES/60/1https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/migration/generalassembly/docs/globalcompact/A_RES_60_1.pdf
  • 8
      Note:  Jennifer Welsh, ‘Non-state armed groups and the responsibility to protect’ in The grey zone : civilian protection between human rights and the laws of war, Oxford ; New York : Hart Publishing, 2018, pp. 357–376  
  • 9
      Note: Çaglar Açikyildiz, ‘Boko Haram in Nigeria: R2P and Non-State Armed Groups,’ in Pinar Gözen, The Responsibility to Protect Twenty Years On: Rhetoric and Implementation, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022    
  • 10
      Note: Some sanctions policy has been informed by this kind of work, particularly by the United States. In the UK, this has been done well with respect to South Sudan, thanks to international and CSO support; this best practice is not yet well applied in other contexts where sanctions remain primarily punitive rather than a tool of influence. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought new focus and is discussed below.   
  • 11
      Note: Kate Ferguson, Architectures of Violence: The command structures of modern mass atrocities, Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2020  
  • 12
      Note: Ibid.  
  • 13
      Note: Hamza, K. (2015). Social Media and the Responsibility to Protect. In: Fiott, D., Koops, J. (eds) The Responsibility to Protect and the Third Pillar. Palgrave Macmillan, London; https://www.massatrocityresponses.com/blog/the-responsibility-to-protect-in-a-digital-age  ; https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7818/documents/81312/default/ ; https://www.globalr2p.org/countries/china/   
  • 14
      Note: This playbook usually moves through condemnation, investigation, sanctions, and sometimes a question of military action such as airstrikes or the provision of adjunct support.     
  • 15
      Note: Greg Stanton’s stages of genocide is a foundation stone of genocide and atrocity prevention; In the 15 publicly available frameworks of atrocity risks I’ve studied, all address processes and indicators of risk. The best known is the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Prevention.    
  • 16
      Note: Carver and Ferguson, Being the Difference, 2021  
  • 17
      Note: This paper follows the conclusions of Architectures of violence and draws on other pieces of policy analysis previously published or shared only with government actors.      
  • 18
      Note: Carver and Ferguson, Being the difference. We suggest that because “war crimes are defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as serious violations of the laws and customs applicable to armed conflict…war crimes can constitute atrocity crimes, and can constitute crimes short of, but enabling of or contributing to, atrocity crimes of the risk of atrocity crimes. But as war crimes are a broad category of violation of international humanitarian law, we do not attempt to claim that all war crimes are best understood in atrocity prevention terms” or regularly share the features of genocide and crimes against humanity.  
  • 19
      Note: Ferguson, Architectures of Violence, p21  
  • 20
      Note: Bart Shurman, ‘Clausewitz and the “New Wars” scholars’ Parameters, 2010, pp 89-100  
  • 21
      Note: Architectures of Violence, p7  
  • 22
      Note: Architectures of Violence, p.8  
  • 23
      Note: Stanley Wasserman, Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications, University of Illinois 1994  
  • 24
      Note: Linton Freeman, The development of social network analysis, A Study in the Sociology of Science, 2004, page xxiii   
  • 25
      Note: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09546553.2022.2059352?tab=permissions&scroll=top   
  • 26
      Note: For example, see Eleanor Cockbain, Helen Brayley, Gloria Laycock, Exploring Internal Child Sex Trafficking Networks Using Social Network Analysis, Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, Volume 5, Issue 2, June 2011; https://unidir.org/projects/mapping-illicit-small-arms-trafficking-2;  https://baselgovernance.org/sites/default/files/2020-08/qg4_sna.pdf#:~:text=Social%20network%20analysis%20%28SNA%29%20can%20help%20us%20to,that%20sustain%20corruption%2C%20money%20laundering%20and%20illicit%20trafficking.   
  • 27
      Note: USAID, Dekleptification guide: Seizing Windows of Opportunity to Dismantle Kleptocracy, September 2022, https://www.usaid.gov/anti-corruption/dekleptification  
  • 28
      Note: Jacopo Costa, Social network analysis in combating organised crime and trafficking, Basel Institute for Governance, 2019, p2    
  • 29
      Note: https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/ACLURM002810.pdf see also work on mapping far right extremist groups https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/after-christchurch-mapping-online-right-wing-extremists  ; https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/An-Online-Environmental-Scan-of-Right-wing-Extremism-in-Canada-ISD.pdf   
  • 30
      Note: For example, https://demos.co.uk/project/anti-islamic-content-on-twitter/ ;   
  • 31
      Note: https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/mapping-colombia-drug-trafficking-diaspora/   
  • 32
      Note: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/mafia-family-tree.pdf/view     
  • 33
      Note: The UK’s cross-government strategy of serious and organized crime, for example, mentions human rights only once and only as a technical point relating to UK sanctions legislation. Serious and Organised Crime Strategy, November 2018. Meanwhile the UK’s strategy on human trafficking does not mention human rights once. Human Trafficking, the UK Government’s Strategy, 2011.   
  • 34
      Note: https://www.justsecurity.org/69899/why-preventing-and-countering-violent-extremism-law-and-practice-is-failing-a-human-rights-audit/ ; https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements/2022/06/end-war-drugs-and-promote-policies-rooted-human-rights-un-experts     
  • 35
      Note: For legal discussion of join criminal enterprise and command responsibility in the international criminal tribunals see Danner, Allison Marston Martinez, Jenny S. UC Berkeley International Law Workshop, Guilty Associations: Joint Criminal Enterprise, Command Responsibility and the Development of International Criminal Law Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/78b1d8cq 2004-09-15  
  • 36
      Note: https://www.justice-ni.gov.uk/topics/policing-and-community-safety/organised-crime   
  • 37
      Note: https://thesentinelproject.org/2013/12/17/the-business-of-extermination-making-a-killing-from-genocide-in-burma/ ; Üngor and Mehmet Polatel, Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Siezure of Armenian Property, Continuum International, 2011  
  • 38
      Note: Mark Galiotti, The Vory; Russia’s super Mafia, 2018 p.3   
  • 39
      Note: Donald Bloxham, Organized Mass Murder: Structure, Participation, and Motivation in Comparative Perspective, 22 Holocaust & Genocide Stud. 203 (2008).  See also Architectures of Violence, from p.111  
  • 40
      Note: This overlap ranges from the organized crime networks that smuggle out cultural artefacts (https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2017/September/remarks-of-unodc-executive-director–yury-fedotov–at-the-high-level-meeting-on-protecting-cultural-heritage-from-terrorism-and-mass-atrocities.html) to the black markets which sustain access to arms and energy during embargoes, for example Peter Andreas, Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo, Cornell University Press, 2008. Groups such as Hezbollah or the IRA have operated both as perpetrators of atrocity crimes and as organized crime networks, assisting in the moving of products – whether weapons or drugs – directly supporting other situations where mass atrocity crimes have been ongoing or are a risk. This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5, Criminal Structures, in Architectures of Violence.   
  • 41
      Note: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/7/17/to-stop-mass-atrocities-follow-the-money   
  • 42
      Note: https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol6/iss1/4/     
  • 43
      Note: Mark Galeotti, Crimintern: How the Kremlin uses Russia’s criminal networks in Europe, European Council on Foreign Relations, 2017  
  • 44
      Note: https://conservativehome.com/2022/02/25/kate-ferguson-the-government-must-urgently-improve-the-uks-capacity-to-crack-down-on-atrocities/   
  • 45
      Note: Ibid  
  • 46
      Note: The Onset, Spread, and Prevention of Mass Atrocities: Perspectives From Formal Network Models, Journal of Genocide Research, 2019   
  • 47
      Note: See Ashad Sentongo, ‘The Practical Use of Early Warning and Response in Preventing Mass Atrocities and Genocide: Experiences from the Great Lakes’ in Rosenberg et al, Reconstructing Atrocity Prevention, University of Cambridge, 2016; Mennecke https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/09240519211017669?journalCode=nqha, Buskie and Ferguson, Linked Up and Linked In https://protectionapproaches.org/linked-up-and-linked-in   
  • 48
      Note: https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/administrative/human_rights/atrocity-crimes-initiative/van-schaack-atrocities-prevention-blueprint-white-paper-2021.pdf p.25  
  • 49
      Note: https://thesentry.org/reports/prosecute-the-profiteers/   
  • 50
      Note: ibid  
  • 51
      Note: https://lawcat.berkeley.edu/record/1174074?ln=en ; https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0707w39  ; https://www.bellingcat.com/ ; see also https://lieber.westpoint.edu/strengthening-atrocity-cases-digital-open-source-investigations/   
  • 52
      Note: https://www.state.gov/2022-united-states-strategy-to-anticipate-prevent-and-respond-to-atrocities/   
  • 53
      Note: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/about-us/Doc.3_Framework%20of%20Analysis%20for%20Atrocity%20Crimes_EN.pdf    
  • 54
      Note: In Mali, https://www.csis.org/analysis/massacres-executions-and-falsified-graves-wagner-groups-mounting-humanitarian-cost-mali; in Central African Republic, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/27/world/asia/russia-mercenaries-central-african-republic.html; in Syria, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/11/russia-wagner-group-methods-bouta-killing-report/; in Ukraine, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/25/wagner-group-fighters-accused-murdering-civilians-ukraine-war-crimes-belarus  
  • 55
      Note: https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/10105/pdf/    
  • 56
      Note: https://conservativehome.com/2022/02/25/kate-ferguson-the-government-must-urgently-improve-the-uks-capacity-to-crack-down-on-atrocities   
  • 57
      Note: Anine Kriegler, Using social network analysis to profile organised crime, POLICY BRIEF 57 | SEPTEMBER 2014, Institute for Security Studies, p1  
  • 58
      Note: Beingthe difference, p.4  
  • 59
      Note: https://www.ft.com/content/97c07bd5-4d57-44bf-8ac1-09f1879b97c7 ; https://www.chathamhouse.org/publications/the-world-today/2022-06/russia-sanctions-will-transform-global-economy; https://som.yale.edu/story/2022/over-1000-companies-have-curtailed-operations-russia-some-remain ; https://www.state.gov/xinjiang-supply-chain-business-advisory/ ; https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61183965     
  • 60
      Note: https://ecr2p.leeds.ac.uk/preventing-atrocities-in-the-mid-21st-century-what-states-can-do/
  • 61
      Note: Architectures of Violence, p211  

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