Data and Genocide Acts

By Renata Avila

Berlin, 10th March 2015.

Some context

Diversity: 24 linguistic groups

Armed Conflict

Genocide Acts: how to prove those

Efraín Rios Montt in power

Efrain Rios Montt in trial

How to prove it?

• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide(CPPCG)

• ...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring

about its physical destruction in whole or in part;• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.• — Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide, Article 2[2]

In short…

Genocide is a specific crime it does not meankilling a lot of people. Genocide specificallymeans that you picked out a particular group.

Truth Commission

Testimonies

Exhumations *

The story told by the remains

But how can you prove it was systematic and against x ethnic group?

Meet Patrick Ball

What Data + Statistics did

• The analysis of Patrick Ball using data from different sources and statistics to fill the missing information gaps, showed that the homicide rate for non-indigenous peoples in the Ixil region was 0.7 percent, while the homicide rate for the Maya was 5.5 percent: the probability of being killed by the Army was 8 times greater for the Maya Ixil than for their non-indigenous neighbors.

Justice achieved

For a week…

The curious case of Metadata to determine command responsibility

Random discovery

National Police Historical Archive

Some ideas

• How could we potentially use the discoveries of truth commissions and the work done in the last 2.5 decades to find patterns of violence?

• Will a data powered analysis help us to prevent a genocide from happening?