Gen*cides You Should Care About

Aug 15

A Friday, in a neighborhood on the outskirts of El Geneina, begins, like any other. Ful medames (fava beans with bread) and kisra (sorghum flatbread) around the breakfast table. 14-year-old Fatima (فاطمة ) raises her eyebrows as Osman (عثمان), her Dad, makes a joke that can only be described as “incredibly lame.” Hiba (هبة), her mother, laughs. She still remembers the day she met her husband, at El-Neelain University. He was clumsy, disorganized, and wildly overconfident. Never, in her wildest dreams, could she have imagined the love she would one day feel, for him and her daughter. After breakfast, Fatima goes to school, Osman goes to work at the Ministry of Agriculture, and Hiba sells vegetables at the local market. Around midday, the family gather for Salat al-Jumu’ah (a midday prayer), the weekly communal event. Fatima giggles with her best friend Muna (منى) at the seriousness of the adults. Halfway through, Fatima exchanges glances with Elhadi (الهادي), the mysterious boy in her class, and her heart palpitates. In the evening, Fatima and her family attend their friend’s wedding. Dalooka (drum rhythms) and bukhoor (incense) permeate the air. Fatima watches her parents dance, and although she would never admit it, it fills her heart with a certain sense of comfort.

But this was months ago.

The recent escalation between the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) and SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) has led to a civil war in Sudan (which started in April 2023). Formal schooling, government offices, and local markets have collapsed since the outbreak of the war.

A Wednesday, in a neighborhood on the outskirts of El Geneina, begins, in the shadow of fear. Simple portions of kisra for breakfast. Osman teaches Fatima, inside their house, while Hiba sells vegetables throughout the neighborhood. Around midday, the family ventures cautiously to the outskirts of the village, searching for edible greens and grain left behind in abandoned fields. They would have escaped, months ago, but Hiba’s hospital stay in February depleted their savings. They were stuck. In the evening, Muna and her parents, Bakri (بكري) and Amal (أمل), gather at Fatima’s house for dinner. Any social gathering is a calculated risk. But, life goes on, even in the face of war. Prior to their arrival, Fatima’s mother wanders frantically around the house, giving plausibly incoherent orders, causing Fatima and Osman to laugh. For dinner, they have aseeda (a thick porridge made from wheat flour) and mullah (seasoned meat sauce). Since the war began, it’s a luxury they can now afford only once a month. The food is fantastic — no, brilliant — the culmination of recipes that have been passed down through multiple generations. One day, it will be passed down to Fatima. During dinner, the parents lecture Muna and Fatima on the importance of education. Their eyes roll, simultaneously, causing Amal to giggle. Her laugh is insatiable, and soon, everybody is laughing. Toward the end of dinner, there’s a knock on the door. Osman opens it, and the blood drains from his face. It’s the RSF.

Eight soldiers, armed with AK-47s, stand at the door. Abdallah (عبدالله), the youngest, is only 15. Before joining the RSF, he herded goats, and had a particular proclivity for zajal (tribal chants). In another life, he may have even become a poet. Certainly, he would’ve gone to college. However, after his brother joined the RSF, he was coerced into joining too. Yahya (يحيى), the second youngest, is 19. Prior to the war, Yahya apprenticed under his uncle, a mechanic in Nyala, fixing battered pickup trucks and motorbikes. He dreamed of opening his own workshop one day, and marrying Aisha (عائشة), a girl from his neighborhood who sold tea outside the bus station. He was madly in love with her. But, after Aisha was accidentally killed by the SAF, he became engulfed with an unquenchable rage that drove him into the hands of the RSF. The oldest, Hassan (حسن), is 36. In his squad, he’s the only true believer in the RSF propaganda. To him, this is “the war to end all wars”— and in war, the “ends justify the means.”

The soldiers barge in the house, without hesitation. Amal protests and is shot, immediately, her blood spattering the mud brick walls. Her husband, Bakri, is mortified; decades of a relationship, eradicated, unjustly, in an instant. It’s incomprehensible. Abdallah, who recited shiʿr al-ḥubb (love poetry) to his younger sister just months ago, is now a stone-cold killer. The adults — Osman, Bakria, and Hiba — are separated from Fatima and Muna. They’re interrogated by the soldiers; the goal is to determine if they speak Masalit, a proxy for belonging to a non-Arab, African-identifying group. Unfortunately, the adults are ethnically and culturally Masalit, and the soldiers pick up on this almost immediately. Hassan, the leader of the squad, orders the adults to lie down with their heads facing the floor. Osman, who knows what’s coming, mouths an emphatic “I love you” to his daughter. There’s nothing he can do now. One by one, Hassan executes the adults, each bullet serving, in his mind, as retribution for the cause. Fatima and Muna watch from the corner and sob with unrestrained terror. Amidst the chaos, Yahya turns his attention to Muna, who vaguely reminds him of a younger Aisha. He begins to undress her — and when she protests — he lights her on fire, her body literally disintegrating over the course of a minute. With a precedent established, the soldiers take turns raping 15-year-old Fatima, an uncontested process which lasts for hours. As the soldiers leave, reality sets in, and Fatima cries, uncontrollably, her tears soaking the blood-stained floor. Nothing will ever be the same.

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The story is based on this report and this book. Aspects are fictionalized, for dramatic purposes, but the core elements are, unfortunately, true and parallel the recent Ardamata massacre. A 15-year-old and her friend were repeatedly raped after watching their parents' execution. Burning victims alive, in their home, is a recorded tactic being used. The RSF does recruit individuals as young as 15. A genocide is being committed by the RSF, and language detection is being used by the RSF as a proxy for differentiating between ethnic types. The people affected are not just arbitrary numbers on a paper – they are real people, with preferences and desires and whimsical, complex notions of philosophy. And millions of these people exist.

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What is a “Genocide?”

This section is a bit technical. Skip ahead to the next section for country-specific atrocities.

Legally, the term “genocide” pertains to “certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.” The key legal element, in genocide, is specific intent (dolus specialis) to destroy a protected group.

For intra-country conflict, the International Criminal Court (ICC) or other criminal tribunals (created by the United Nations Security Council [UNSC]) can bring genocidal charges against specific individuals. The ICC has brought charges in a few cases (e.g., Darfur), but has never secured a conviction. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) convicted several individuals for the Srebrenica Genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted more than a dozen individuals for the Rwandan Genocide, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) convicted Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan for the Cambodian Genocide. No other conflict has been judicially recognized as genocide by an international or hybrid criminal tribunal.

Formally, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) – the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN) – is the only entity that can “declare” (the ICJ either finds that a state has committed genocide or issues provisional measures if a genocide risk plausibly exists) a state’s actions as amounting to genocide, and they can only do this in conflicts between multiple countries. However, since 1948 (the ICJ was established following WWII, in 1945, but can only declare a genocide by the Genocide Convention), they’ve only declared one event as a genocide: the Srebrenica Genocide, in Bosnia, in 1995. Like most things, legally proving something is a taxing process, and adding an international element complicates this process even further.

Part of the issue, with formally declaring a genocide, is that current events are inexplicably tied to the genocidal threshold of the Holocaust. The severity and magnitude – as well as the specific diction – of the Holocaust is unparalleled. However, the threshold, for declaring a genocide, should not be the threshold imposed by the Holocaust; it should be significantly lower. There are two reasons for this. First, as a society, we have grown. Immensely. Most things that were acceptable, in 1945 – like segregation – are no longer acceptable, 80 years later, in 2025. Second – and arguably more importantly (in a legal sense) – perpetrators have simultaneously become more intelligent, in the aggregate. In movies, the villain often lays out his plans in excruciating precise detail; the casual chain is evident, and the evidence is inexplicable. In real life, however, the causal chain is much more difficult to ascertain. Genocides, in the modern age, are not always black and white – they’re often a sea of gray. To evaluate the “gray,” we need to inspect its various gradations.

Historically, there’s a recurring academic discussion regarding the delineating line between genocide and crimes against humanity or war crimes. Rather than expatiate on these theories, here’s my take: does this delineation really matter? In the Gaza conflict, for instance, the debate has been: (1) whether Israel’s actions can be formally quantified as genocide, and (2) whether incorrectly classifying the conflict as genocide diminishes past genocides — like the Holocaust — or future genocides. More generally, if the ICJ declares an active genocide, then by the Genocide Convention (ratified by 153 countries), participating states must take action to prevent the genocide, within the limits (the UNSC is the “enforcement arm”) of their capacity and influence, including exercising diplomatic pressure, sanctions, supporting investigations, and in extreme cases, military intervention (under the R2P doctrine). Now, if the ICJ declares a genocide in Gaza, and it turns out to have actually just been crimes against humanity, the worst case scenario is that participating states are forced to take action against mass atrocities, and the best case scenario is that, collectively, we may prevent a genocide from occurring. Once again, does this delineation really matter? To some extent, yes. There’s danger, diplomatically, of being “the boy who cried genocide.” And, legally, we need to differentiate between different types of conflict. The conflict in Burkina Faso, for instance, is clearly in a different category than the conflict in Sudan. However, for the most part, this disparity can be attributed to the difference between war crimes and crimes against humanity. So this delineation does matter? To another extent, no. Morally, the delineation, between crimes against humanity and genocide, is essentially nonexistent. For instance, the evidence that Israel is committing crimes against humanity in Gaza, is overwhelming. These are not isolated instances of war crimes, committed by rouge militias, but systematic attempts to remove Palestinians from Gaza. And, whether dolus specialis can be explicitly determined, in a legal sense, is irrelevant to what’s actually occurring, in a practical sense.

Formality is a luxury that perpetrators relish in. If it looks like a genocide, smells like a genocide, and tastes like a genocide — it’s probably a genocide.

If this logic upsets you, do your own research. Come to your own conclusions. Acknowledge your own biases. Chances are, things are much, much worse than you ever could have anticipated.

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***DISCLAIMER: The goal of this analysis is to provide a comprehensive overview of genocides, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are being systematically perpetrated, at this very moment. My intent is not to be academically rigorous, but I do attempt to stratify the conflicts into distinct categories, based on legal definitions. Mostly, this distinction is pedantic. For instance, by all available evidence, the conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine are distinguishable only by political affiliation. In my analysis, I integrate academic journals, official reports from intergovernmental organizations, testimonials from NGOs, and other reliable news sources. Determining the exact number of people killed or displaced in war-torn areas is impossible; all reported figures are estimates, and different sources give different numbers. Additionally, many reports fail to distinguish between civilian deaths or combatant deaths, and between internally displaced individuals and the total number of displaced persons. I sometimes use these definitions interchangeably. These numbers should be understood as illustrating the magnitude of the crisis, rather than as precise counts. If your goal is to be technical, there are numerous 50-page papers you can sift through, many of them linked below. Finally, although I attempted to be rigourous in my examination, I am certain there are minor discrepancies or inaccuracies, somewhere. All mistakes are mine and mine alone.

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Current Genocides:

Here are a list of genocides that have been formally declared by a government or international organization, either since 2020 or ending after 2020:

Sudan

Since 2023, there has been an ongoing civil war in Sudan, resulting in the genocide of non-Arab groups. In 2019, following the fall of dictator Omar al-Bashir, the RSF (Rapid Support Forces) and SAF (Sudanese Armed Forces) shared power during a transitional government. Then, in April 2023, following ideological clashes, a full-scale war broke out between the RSF and SAF. During this time period, the RSF have reignited the same racialized ideology perpetrated by the Janjaweed militants in the Darfur genocide of the early 2000s (which killed over 300,000). Currently (as in, right now, at this very moment), the RSF paramilitary group and Arab-identifying militias (specifically those descending from Arab Bedouins) are committing an ethnic cleansing – including burning villages, sexual violence, murdering civilians attempting to flee, blocking essential supplies, and deliberate starvation – of non-Arab Darfuris, including the Masalit, Fur, and Zaghawa. Arbab, a 24-year-old Mom, proclaimed, “if you’re not black, you’re finished.” The situation is so appalling that men with darker skin are attempting to pass off as women, to avoid execution. Yagob, a 40-year-old trader who survived the ethnic cleansing by Janjawid paramilitary forces in 2004, stated, “my dark skin is a death sentence…to me and my family.” The total casualty toll, including soldiers and civilians — and factoring in indirect causes — is around 150,000, with more than 14,000,000 displaced. And the conflict is only beginning. More than 30,000,000 people are in need of aid, and approximately $6 billion is needed to close this gap — all of which is being disrupted by the Trump administration’s USAID cuts. The devastating impact of this reduction, for all recipient countries, cannot be overstated. One study estimates that the USAID cuts may lead to more than 14,000,000 deaths globally by 2030. The amount of money saved? $12.4 billion (allegedly, although based on actual disbursements, it’s more like $6.7 billion — a common criticism of DOGE savings), per year, which amounts to $99.2 billion by the end of 2030. Meanwhile, the tariffs implemented under the Trump administration will likely result in a loss of $1 trillion by 2030 and a $22,000 reduction in lifetime household earnings for the median household. The irony is palpable.

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Myanmar

Since 2017, there has been systematic, state-led violence by the Myanmar government against the Rohingya Muslims. The conflict began in 1982, when Myanmar passed a Citizenship Law that stripped Rohingya Muslims (a minority in the country, who, at that point in time, had been established inside Myanmar for generations) of legal status, making them one of the largest stateless populations in the world. In 2012, large-scale riots erupted between ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims, forcing approximately 140,000 people out of their homes. In 2017, the Tatmadaw (the Myanmar military, largely consisting of Bamar Buddhists) launched “clearance operations” that escalated into mass executions, rape, torture, arson, and scorched-earth campaigns across northern Rakhine. Testimonial from survivors found that, during the village raids, soldiers were murdering infants and toddlers using machetes, spades, and wooden sticks. One report indicates: “A five-year-old girl ran screaming to try to protect her mother as she was being gang raped, when one of the rapists pulled out a long knife and slit the child's throat.” In total, over 6,700 were killed, in this event alone, including 730 children below the age of 5; another 700,000 people were displaced into Bangladesh. The collection of these acts, committed by the Tatmadaw against the Rohingya Muslims, have widely been classified as genocide. In February 2021, the Tatmadaw launched a coup d’état, claiming that the November 2020 elections (in which the National League for Democracy [NLD] party won) were fraudulent, despite no evidence to support this claim. As of September 2024 – and as a consequence of the military takeover – 5,300 people had been murdered, 3,300,000 had been displaced, and 27,400 had been arrested. The situation does not appear to be getting better. In May 2025, a UN report stated that extreme desperation had led to 427 Rohingya deaths at sea. To this day, there has been no justice for the 2017 massacre and 2021 military takeover.

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Ukraine

Since 2022, Russia has launched an all-out-war against Ukraine. The conflict began in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and armed separatist movements in the Donbas region, leading to the Donbas War, in which war crimes were committed by both countries. In 2022, after eight years of conflict – and following accusations by Russia that Ukraine had committed genocide in the Donbas region (claims which were disproven by UN Courts) – Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukrainian territory. In almost all conflicts, there is a recurring theme: the ends justify the means, and previous transgressions justify the ends. Since then, numerous atrocities have been committed by Russia – including indiscriminate shelling and bombing of civilian areas, extrajudicial executions, torture, sexual violence, and the forcible transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russian territory – acts which constitute as war crimes and are quickly encroaching on genocide. Many countries have formally acknowledged that a genocide is already being perpetrated by Russia against Ukraine. Since the start of the Ukrainian War, 370,000 lives have been lost, 10,600,000 have been displaced, and $300 billion has been spent.

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China

Starting around 2017, the Chinese government detained over 1,000,000 Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Hui Muslims into “re-education” camps, which has since been classified as genocide, due to its “intent to destroy a group in whole or in part.” Today, the number of people detained may be as high as 2,000,000. These camps have involved mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, torture and indoctrination, suppression of religious practice, destruction of mosques and cemeteries, forced sterilizations and abortions, and family separations. Leaked files to the NYT indicate that the government’s goal is to “cure religious extremism.” One witness testimony said they were forced to wear “a metal chain with 11 links. The two ends were on my feet with bolts. [It weighed about] 3kg. We could barely step 20cm or more. I could barely walk. It was on 24/7.” Reading these testimonies, I felt as if I was watching Orwell’s 1984 come to life. It was a stark reminder of two things: first, while this genocide has a markedly different “flavor,” that doesn’t mean it’s any less impactful. Sometimes, the worse genocides are the ones that force you to live, a remnant of who you once were. And, second, this conflict could get much, much worse. In Germany, prior to the war, the “concentration camps” were not death camps, but labor camps, eerily similar to the “re-education” camps in Xinjiang. The concentration camps we think of today were not actualized until the start of the war in 1941, following Hitler’s Final Solution. If, tomorrow, Xi Jinping implemented an official government policy to exterminate all Uyghur Muslims, who would stop him? Could anybody stop him?

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“Adjacent” Genocides:

Here are a list of genocides that have not been formally declared by a government or international organization, since 2020, but either have past genocides that are unresolved (DRC and Syria), pending genocide cases (Gaza), or are North Korea:

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Since 1996, waves of armed conflict in the Eastern provinces of the DRC — particularly North Kivu, South Kivu, and Ituri — have resulted in one of the world’s deadliest and longest-running humanitarian crises, leading to approximately 6,000,000 deaths (including indirect deaths). The conflict started in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which the Hutu-led Rwandan government was defeated by the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), leading to 2,000,000 Hutu refugees in Zaire (which is now the DRC). A subset of these refugees were Hutu extremist forces (including the Interahamwe militia and Ex-Far [the former Rwandan government army]) who militarized the camps, destabilizing the region, leading to the First Congo War, the Second Congo War (“Africa’s World War”), and twenty years of persistent violence. Most of those killed have been Congolese civilians, often targeted by a mix of Hutu militias (primarily the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [FDLR])), Congolese rebel factions (including the M23 rebel group and various Mai-Mai militias), and the Congolese national army (FARDC). Since 2020, the UN has documented numerous human rights violations, including torture, arbitrary executions, widespread sexual violence, and ethnic-based massacres. Additionally, numerous reports indicate that cobalt mining (the DRC produces nearly 70% of the world’s cobalt) – which is used in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, electronics, and renewable energy storage – within the country is inextricably linked to forced labor and child labor. Slavery still exists in the Congo, and the Western world is culpable. The situation, in the DRC, is still not under control. As of 2021, a report indicated that, on any given day in the Congo, 407,000 were living in modern slavery. As of January 2024, 76% of the world’s cobalt supply was mined in the DRC (in the southeastern provinces), a market which the U.S. is currently attempting to ingratiate. As of November 2024, there were more than 6,700,000 internally-displaced individuals across the DRC, as well as 1,100,000 refugees and asylum-seekers in neighboring countries. As of 2025, a child is raped every half hour in the eastern DRC. And, as of right now, at this very moment, USAID cuts threatens to dissolve decades of humanitarian work. What chance do you have, if you are born in the Congo?

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Gaza

Since 2023, there has been an ongoing war between Israel and Palestine, specifically over the area of land known as the Gaza region. This conflict has been culminating since 1948, following the end of British rule over Palestine, in which tensions spiraled between the Jews and Arabs. In 1967, after the Six-Day-War, Israel took control of Gaza from Egypt. After 20 years of Israel occupation, Hamas was formed, a militarist group which is currently designated as a jihadist (see Burkina Faso section for more information) organization by most governments. The next 30 years were marked by intermittent turmoil and economic deterioration. In 2006, Hamas narrowly won the Palestinian election, and in 2007, following the Battle of Gaza, a portion of the West Bank (now controlled by the Fatah Party, a rival of Hamas) split from the Gaza Region (now controlled by Hamas). There hasn’t been an election in Gaza since. In 2014, after Hamas launched rockets into the heart of Israel, Israel responded with artillery and air strikes that devastated Gaza infrastructure. 2,100 Palestinians were killed, most of which were civilians, and 73 Israelis were killed, only six of which were civilians. Notice a pattern emerging. On October 7th, 2023, following tensions over the West Bank and an impending Israel-Saudi Arabia agreement, Hamas attacked Israel, resulting in 1,200 deaths; another 251 hostages were taken. Most of these actions are classified as war crimes. However, many experts classify Israel’s response as genocide, with 58,000 deaths so far – approximately 28,000 of which are women and girls – and over 1,000,000 displaced. Israel’s genocidal acts have included the indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, deliberate starvation and blockade, the dehumanization of the Palestinian people, and the systematic destruction of medical facilities, ambulances, and water infrastructure. As the poet Mohab proclaims, “Every night is a new life for us. You sleep, and you are sure, ‘Maybe this time it’s my time to die with my family’. So you die several times, because you count yourself amongst the dead every night.” While researching the Gaza conflict, I noticed an eerily similar parallel to the Afghanistan War. Following 9/11, in which 2,976 Americans were killed, the U.S. launched Operation Enduring Freedom, on October 7, 2001 (the official start of the Afghanistan War). During the war (which ended on August 30, 2021), there were 46,319 civilian deaths. To be conservative, let’s postulate that the U.S. coalition forces were responsible for 23,000 of these deaths (or approximately half of civilian deaths, a drastic overestimate). Even in this case, the total number of civilian deaths in Gaza – of which Israel is the main instigator – is still higher than the entirety of the Afghanistan War.

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North Korea

Since 1948, political dissidents, religious practitioners, and defectors of North Korea (formerly known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) are considered “enemies of the state” and subsequently forced into gulags, or “reeducation” camps. The treatment within these camps has been regarded as grotesque human rights violations, at the best, and genocide, at the worst. The gulags were established in 1959, around the same time in which the songbun Caste System was established. Prisoners include “deviants” who are suspected (key word) of wrong-doing (e.g., skipping too many compulsory ideological educational classes), wrong-thinking (e.g., having Christian or Protestant beliefs, or orthodox Marxist beliefs), wrong-knowledge (e.g., those studying in Europe in the late 1980s during the collapse of socialism), wrong-association (e.g., having a husband, father, or grandfather who was a Presbyterian elder or deacon), or wrong-class (e.g., those who were part of the privilege bourgeoisie during Japanese colonial rule). In 2012, it was reported that around 175,000 people were currently incarcerated, and the conditions inside these camps were so severe that Forbes published an article stating: “the North Korean state is a much more sophisticated genocidaire than the Hutu militias armed with machetes…[and] this mass killer has nuclear arms.” In 2019, a HOR resolution in the U.S. estimated that, from 1981 to 2017, an estimated 400,000 out of the 500,000 imprisoned were killed in the gulags. One witness testimony indicates that the “rape of teenage girls and their subsequent attempts to commit suicide by jumping in the Daedonggang River were so common that prison guards were deployed to the river to thwart them.” It has been widely accepted that the torture inside these camps are the “worst in the world.” Every year, China repatriates over 5,000 North Korean refugees, on the basis of a 1961 treaty; their treatment is so bad, upon reentry to the DRPK, that North Koreans living in China always have a razor blade or arsenic on them, “just in case.” Women who are suspected of being pregnant from a Chinese man are systematically and brutally exterminated, as “half-blood” children are thought to be ethnically inferior. As Bruce Cumings predicted, in Korea’s Place in the Sun, “... if and when the [North Korean] regime falls, we will probably learn of larger numbers [of people held in prisons] and various unimaginable atrocities…” Until that point, the question is: what can we do to ameliorate this situation? This is not rhetorical.

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Syria

Since 2011, one of the most complex civil wars in modern history has plagued Syria. The core conflict (i.e., those actively fighting for control of Syrian territory and governance) exists, in no particular order, among the Syrian government (Assad regime, and, after its fall, in 2024, the Syrian transitional government), Syrian opposition (Free Syrian Army and other rebels which, in 2019, collapsed into the Syrian National Army [SNA]), jihadist groups (including ISIS [Daesh] and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham), and Kurdish forces (led by the YPG [people’s protection unit] and SDF [Syrian democratic forces], and backed by the U.S. and an anti-ISIS international coalition). Many countries have declared the actions of ISIS, from 2014 to 2016, against the Yazidis, as genocide. In August 2014 – in what is known as the Sinjar massacre – ISIS executed 5,000 Yazidi men and elderly Yazidi women, in an attempt to systematically eradicate the Yazidis and erase their ideological views. Another 6,800 Yazidi women and children were taken captive and subjected to what civil rights groups classify as sexual slavery: “Girls as young as nine were raped [daily], as were pregnant women.” Nadia Murad, a twenty-one-year-old at the time, was held as a sex slave and threatened with execution unless she converted to the ISIS interpretation of Islam. In 2015, she escaped and gave a testimony that helped elucidate the horrors occurring within Syria, and in 2018, she received the Nobel Prize for her actions. In the same time period, within the same country, ISIS has also committed several war crimes against the Shia Muslims, Kurds, and Christians. Shia Muslims were treated as apostates and executed outright; Kurds were targeted as an ethnic group; and Christians were offered an ultimatum: “convert, pay the jizya tax, leave, or die.” But wait, there’s more. Since 2011, the Assad regime and its allies (Russia and Iran) – who are in conflict with the Syrian opposition – have committed crimes against humanity against Sunni Arab civilians, using barrel bombs, aerial bombardments, chemical weapons, starvation, sieges, and torture. Additionally, since 2016, Turkey (working with the SNA) — who is in conflict with Kurdish forces – has been accused of committing war crimes against the Kurds in Northern Syria, including torture, kidnappings, sexual violence, property confiscation, and religious and ethnic persecution. In total, the conflicts have resulted in approximately 528,500 deaths, and 14,000,000 displacements. Recently, rising tensions between SNA factions and disagreements over Kurdish integration have strained the Syrian transitional administration. 16,500,000 people are still in need of aid, today.

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Other Bad Sh*T Happening:

Here are a list of crimes against humanity or war crimes that have been formally declared by a government or international organization, either since 2020, or before 2020 but whose conflict is still categorized as ongoing:

Burkina Faso

Since 2015, Burkina Faso has been engulfed in escalating violence amid a jihadist insurgency, which has resulted in ethnic-based massacres of the Fulani (Peul) population. The insurgency, which began in 2015 (and which spread from Mali), is perpetrated by the jihadists (including JNIM, ISIS-GS, and Ansar ul-Islam) and the Burkina Faso government forces (including the National Army, VDP, and Dozo hunters) against the Fulani, an ethnic and religious minority within the country; the Fulani are Sunni Muslims, but the jihadists are extremists, with views often categorized by radical, violent ideology. The jihadists and Burkina Faso’s government forces are in direct conflict with one another. A small subset of the Fulani are jihadists, which has led to collective punishment from Burkina Faso’s government forces, which the jihadists have strategically capitalized on to recruit more Fulani, punishing non-cooperators and deviators. It’s cyclical violence, in which the Fulani are being attacked from both sides. On April 20, 2023, following a jihadist attack, Burkina Faso’s government forces executed a village of 147 citizens (not insurgents), including 45 children, a massacre which Embaló, president of Guinea-Bissau and then-chair of ECOWAS, declared as genocide. Since 2015, over 26,000 citizens and combatants have been murdered, and more than 2,000,000 have been displaced. Once again, this ethnic-slaughtering has a distinct “flavor,” but does that make it any less impactful? Does a mother care about the methods or motives by which her child is slaughtered?

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Cameroon

Since 2016, the Anglophone crisis has claimed the lives of more than 6,000 citizens in Cameroon. The conflict started in 2016 when the Anglophone region’s lawyers and teachers (who follow the English common law system) protested the appointment of Francophone judges in their courts and schools, claiming that it violated Cameroon’s bilingual foundation (English and French are both official languages of Cameroon). Consequently, in 2017, the government banned Anglophone civil society groups (Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium [CACSC] and Southern Cameroons National Council [SCNC]), shut down the internet in the Anglophone region, and intensified security crackdowns. As a response, the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF) declared the Anglophone regions as a new independent state, “Ambazonia.” Over the next few months, several separatist groups emerged (including the Ambazonia Defense Forces [ADF], Southern Cameroons Defense Forces [SOCADEF], and guerilla bands like the Red Dragons, Tigers of Ambazonia, and Seven Karta, most coordinating under the umbrella of the Ambazonia Self-defense Council (ASDC), shifting the conflict from protest to armed conflict. Since then, both sides — the Francophone-dominated government of Cameroon and separatist groups in the Anglophone region — have committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extrajudicial killings, village raids, massacres, arson, and the deliberate targeting of the education system. Both have also been accused of sexual violence, including rape. According to the UN Population fund, in 2020, over 4,300 cases of gender-based violence were documented in the Anglophone regions, nearly half of which involved sexual violence, with over 30% of victims being children. Revolution, of any kind, always has a cost. The question is: who bears the cost? As of January 2025, more than 2,100,000 people had been forcibly displaced, including 426,000 asylum-seekers. The Cameroon Government’s denial of the crisis – as well as the complexity of the situation – has deterred donor engagement, exacerbating the crisis. Kumbo, a clergyman in the North-West region, constructs a more eloquent generalization: “I don't like the idea that the international community only waits for bloodshed and open war to come with aid.” The conflict does not appear to be stopping anytime soon. Bloodshed will be coming.

Support survivors in Cameroon by donating here.

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Ethiopia

From 2020 to 2022, a “forgotten war” between the Ethiopian Federal Government and Tigray People’s Liberation Front plagued the population, leading to the deaths of over 400,000 soldiers and 518,000 civilians. During the war, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), Eritrean allies, and Amhara militias systematically targeted ethnic Tigrayans – as well as Kunama and Irob minorities – with many declaring their acts as genocidal. Over 120,000 women were sexually abused during the war, which encompassed gang rape, forced pregnancy, and sexual torture (including inserting rusted screws, metal spikes, sand, gravel, and letters into female’s reproductive organs). A note recovered from the uterus of a 26-year-old survivor reads, “we must make sure that the women of Tigray will not be able to bear children,” indicating genocidal intent. Among the women raped, over 15% of them have contracted HIV, a problem exacerbated by the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts. As of July, more than 3,000,000 people have been displaced, and the conflict-related sexual violence is, unfortunately, still occurring today. The lack of attention this conflict has received is shocking. Why are lives in Ethiopia less valuable than lives in other war-torn areas?

Support survivors in Mali by donating here.

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Mali

Since 2012, there have been numerous ethnic massacres in Mali, including the Ogossagou massacre, the Gangafani and Yoro massacres, the Koulogon massacre, the Moura massacre, and the Diafarabé massacre. These ethnic massacres were predominately committed against Fulani villagers by the Malian Armed Forces (FAMA) and associated militias (with the exception of the Gangafani and Yoro massacres, which were instigated by Fulani militants against Dogon civilians). In 2023, over 1,300 civilians were murdered by FAMA and allied militias; in 2024 – and working directly in conjunction with Russia’s Wagner mercenaries – around 1,000 civilians were slaughtered; and, in 2025, the situation appears to be escalating. Between 2012 and 2024, an estimated 1,800,000 people were displaced. The high levels of displacement within the Sahel region – which includes Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger – are often tied to regional instability. Nearly half of all global terrorism deaths occur in the Sahel region, making it the top global hotspot for jihadist violence. Unfortunately, the victims of this violence are often not the conflicting actors, but rather, the civilians themselves.

Support survivors in Mali by donating here.

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Nigeria

Since 2009, there has been recurring, ethnically-motivated violence perpetrated by Fulani herders (predominately Muslim), affiliated militias, Boko Haram (independent jihadist group), and ISWAP (ISIS-affiliated) against Christian farming communities in the Middle Belt, leading to extreme religious polarization throughout Nigeria. The conflict primarily began because of Boko Haram’s core belief that Western-style education (“boko”) is sinful (“haram”). In July 2009, following the previous month’s attack by Nigerian police (in which 4 Boko Haram members were killed for refusing to wear motorcycle helmets), Boko Haram responded with coordinated attacks across Nigeria, leading to harsh retaliation by the Nigerian police. On July 30, 2009, Mohammed Yusuf, Boko Haram’s founder and spiritual leader, was captured alive, executed extrajudicially in custody, and paraded on state television. Rather than ending the Boko Haram movement, it radicalized the surviving members. Since then, it’s been a cycle of unending violence. Between 2009 and 2021, the conflict directly resulted in the deaths of 35,000 people (nearly half of which were civilians) and indirectly resulted in the deaths of 314,000 people; and between October 2019 and September 2023, 16,969 Christians and 6,235 Muslims (both reflecting civilian casualties) were murdered, sparking outrage in the U.S. There is certainly a political threshold by which certain atrocities are reported to the general public. As of January 2025, there were 2,100,000 internally displaced individuals, and a 5.8% chance of a mass killing by the end of the year. Due to the Trump administration’s USAID cuts, an estimated 300,000 malnourished children in Nigeria will lose access to lifesaving treatment by the end of 2025, resulting in 163,500 additional deaths per year.

Support survivors in Nigeria by donating here.

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South Sudan

From 2013 to 2020, a civil war devastated South Sudan, and its ramifications are still being felt today. The conflict’s roots trace back to unresolved ethnic, political, and ecological fractures following South Sudan’s split from Sudan in 2011, and exists primarily between government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir (predominately Dinka) and opposition forces aligned with former Vice President Riek Machar (predominately Nuer). Throughout the war, Civilians were deliberately targeted along ethnic lines, with massacres of Nuer civilians in Juba during the war’s outbreak and retaliatory massacres of Dinka civilians thereafter. In a 2014 UN report, investigators (UNMISS and OHCHR) concluded that war crimes and crimes against humanity had been committed by both sides, including murder, rape, forced disappearance, torture, imprisonment, and extrajudicial executions. One testimony, from an 85-year-old woman in Wau, indicates that she was gang raped and forced to watch her husband and son killed. From 2013 to 2018, the conflict caused nearly 400,000 deaths, 2,000,000 displacements within South Sudan, and 2,500,000 refugees. In 2020, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar formed a Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity, ending national-level fighting. However, since then, South Sudan has entered a phase of persistent subnational violence. Even after the 2014 summit to end rape as a weapon of war, wartime sexual violence has deepened. And, as of 2025, South Sudan is, once again, on the brink of a civil war. Currently, 1,900,000 are displaced within South Sudan, an issue exacerbated by the influx of refugees from Sudan.

Support survivors in South Sudan by donating here.

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Yemen

Since 2014 – and following the Houthis’ (Ansar Allah) overthrow of the Hadi Government (the internationally recognized Yemen Government) – a civil war between the Saudi-led Coalition (backed by the U.S., UK, France) and Houthi Rebels (backed by Iran), has crippled Yemen’s infrastructure, leading to mass starvation. The Houthi have strategically attacked food, medicine, and water, and have repeatedly kidnapped humanitarian workers, leading to a reduction in humanitarian aid. One survivor in Taizz, a Houthi-controlled area, proclaimed: “death is more merciful than this life.” However, the Saudi-led Coalition is not innocent either, with many pointing blame at Saudi Arabia for their role in past infrastructure deterioration, as well as the U.K. and U.S. for their role in bombing Houthi mililitary targets. As long as we win the “war on terror.” Admittedly, the situation is so complex that there are multiple papers attempting to decipher the string of legal culpability in these starvation crimes. Since 2015, there have been 51,000 deaths from war, and 24,100,000 are in need of humanitarian aid. On July 10, 2025, the AP reported that 17,000,000 (more than 2x the population of New York) people are going hungry, 1,000,000 of whom are children suffering from “life-threatening acute malnutrition.” There will be no winners in this war, even in its conclusion.

Support survivors in Yemen by donating here.

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Noah Dixon

Gen*cides You Should Care About

What is a “Genocide?”

Current Genocides:

Sudan

Myanmar

Ukraine

China

“Adjacent” Genocides:

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

Gaza

North Korea

Syria

Other Bad Sh*T Happening:

Burkina Faso

Cameroon

Ethiopia

Mali

Nigeria

South Sudan

Yemen

To BoJack or not to BoJack — that is not the question