Bearing witness: Introducing the Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433241249333

Led by Pardee's Associate Director of Geopolitical Analysis, Collin Meisel, and commissioned by the US State Department to support the Elie Weisel Act, this coding framework is a prime example of the Institute's goal to bridge the gap between academic work and policy-making communities. Congratulations to all of the hard-working Korbel students who contributed to this impressive research and all the co-authors on this outstanding accomplishment. 

Abstract: 

The risk factors and consequences of atrocities are deeply interconnected with questions of intra- and interstate stability and conflict, economic development, colonialism, and gender equality, as well as atrocity crime monitoring and prevention. However, there is no globally comparable measure of lethal and less-lethal atrocities. The Perceived Mass Atrocities Dataset (PMAD) is a country-year measure of atrocities with accompanying narratives. Built to support the US Congress’s Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, PMAD enables the systematic comparison of the occurrence and magnitude of seven atrocity types, in addition to group-perpetrated violence against women and LGBTQIA+ groups, with aggregate atrocities indices for 196 countries from 2018 to 2022. PMAD offers a foundation for quantitative studies of atrocities as well as more qualitative, process-focused research of lethal and less-lethal violence with its single, divisible framework. The PMAD data highlight several regions where analysis of atrocities using data on only lethal atrocities would be inadequate, especially Central and Eastern Asia. The data can also facilitate research into the relationships between mass atrocities and gender discrimination, neopatrimonialism, and political polarization.