World Without Genocide works to raise awareness about current situations of mass violence and human rights offenses. By learning about these areas of conflict and acting early to resolve them, World hopes to stop them from becoming full-out genocides. In this manner, World works to prevent and eliminate genocide.

World identifies a potential genocide by closely examining the dynamics of human rights violations in each situation, and comparing them to the Eight Stages of Genocide, as identified by Gregory Stanton.

8 Stages of Genocide:

1. Classification – Categories of “us” versus “them” are identified based on ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality

2. Symbolization – Names or symbols are given to the classified categories. An example includes the yellow star for Jewish people during the Holocaust. Symbolization does not typically result in genocide unless it is accompanied by dehumanization.

3. Dehumanization – One group denies the humanity of the other group by equating them with animals, insects, or diseases. This eliminates the normal human revulsion against murder and makes killing someone of the other group as easy as stepping on a bug.

4. Organization – Governments, armies, or other groups of power unite and train militias to carry out the genocide.

5. Polarization - Extremists further drive the two groups apart by spreading propaganda, limiting contact between them, or creating laws to ostracize one of the groups.

6. Preparation – Victims are identified and separated. Death lists are drawn up. Weapons are distributed.

7. Extermination – Mass killing of the identified victims begins. At this point, killing is easy and the extermination is quick.

8. Denial – Perpetrators of the genocide try to cover up mass killings and intimidate witnesses.They deny that they committed any crimes, and try to blame what happened on the victims.

Please click on each country to the right to learn more about each current mass conflict situation.