Human rights reports, appeal letters and scholarly predictions of instability, conflict, war, genocide and ‘politicide’ are prevalently treated as ends in themselves. They often make the hottest hard-hitting news of the day, but the next day they are dumped as irrelevant garbage.
Trumping the entrenched culture of hypocrisy and promise-making by the international community, the most desirable practice is to turn information and knowledge into powerful tools of predicting risks and initiating preventative actions against regime elites and the internal forces that contend with them. How can it be ethical to know that human rights violations are being perpetrated against innocent victims, but remain inactive and silent? The knowledge and information we have need to serve life-saving purposes. While the West keeps abundant data on the genocidal behaviors of the Ethiopian government against Oromos, Ogadenis, Anuak, and southern peoples, one may wonder what the international community is waiting for in order to act. Why are principal donors and enablers to the Ethiopian regime such as the United States, England, and other European powers postponing actions of stopping genocide and instability in Oromia and other targeted regions of Ethiopia’s south?
Heeding Predictions and Strategizing to Act
The University of Maryland’s Center for International Development and Conflict Management (CIDCM) is an interdisciplinary research center that seeks to prevent and transform conflicts. CIDCM puts the Ethiopian state in the categories of highest risks of instability and genocide/politicide in 2012.[1] CIDCM researchers attempt to analyze large amounts of quantitative information in order to make fairly scientific predictions.
