Mass Violence Index

Jacques Semelin, a historian at the French Center for International Studies and Research, said the lack of an easily accessible forum to publish objective research information concerning mass violence was the reason behind creating massviolence.org.

An online encyclopedia that will collect historical information on incidents of mass violence and expose what areas would benefit from further research, Semelin hopes to launch the site this autumn.

"My dream is that young people will discover their countries' history, which they do not know at all or only partly, on our Internet site," Semelin said, explaining why information would be available in English as well as the native language of the country where the crimes took place.

Maintaining neutrality

The project's 40-member research team is trying to distance itself from other online encyclopedias -- which have been plagued by political meddling -- by subjecting all the data published there to a high set of academic standards.

The research team will be responsible for parsing findings for objectivity before they reach the public eye, but will not play a role in creating the published research.

Semelin, however, did admit that he realizes the project deals with a highly political issue that will be difficult to keep neutral when even the terms are a cause of controversy.

"I'm handling explosives every day," Semelin said about his decision to use the term "mass violence" instead of "genocide" or "mass murder" for the Internet site's in order to avoid placing victims in a hierarchy of violence.

Loaded expressions

Since the term "genocide" was given a specific definition by the United Nations in 1948 to include "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group" and UN members committed to punishing such acts wherever they occur, diplomats have been careful to avoid classifying every type of mass violence as genocide.

To keep the encyclopedia from becoming overly politicized, Semelin said researchers decided the online site would attempt to avoid the discussion by using "mass violence" as their expression of choice.

What may seem like a semantic decision, can have serious results, according to Gerd Hankel of the Hamburg Institute for Social Research. He said he saw the word "genocide" as being too narrowly defined.

Political implication cannot be avoided

As a lawyer, Hankel has worked in Rwanda for four years and remembers massacres in Congo and said he disagreed with a UN investigatory commission that said "genocidal intent" could not be proved, making intervention impossible and leading to lower aid payments.

The decide to use "mass violence" instead of "genocide," however, has not met with complete acceptance, according to Mihran Dabag of the Bochum Institute for Diaspora and Genocide Research, who said the online encyclopedia's directors have to accept the political nature of their research.

"We cannot simply suppress this existing expression," he said. "We have to negotiate politically."

Hankel also said he wanted to push for more political engagement by including current events in the online encyclopedia, a step Semelin opposes.

"We cannot just sit back, mimic historians and forget about what's happening now," he said. "It has to be possible to derive ways to prevent crimes."