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Among the contexts not covered elsewhere are understudied genocides (e.g. Bangladesh), near-genocides (e.g., Côte d’Ivoire), contested genocides (e.g.,  Argentina), and mass violence against civilians within the context of other conflicts (e.g., Iraq).

Please note that the selection of cases highlighted on the Genocide Studies Program’s web site is not meant to serve as an exhaustive or “official” list of genocides.  Rather, the topics addressed reflect the interests, linguistic capabilities, and research focuses of GSP personnel, which is necessarily limited.  Moreover, it is not necessarily the task of the scholar to make a determination regarding whether or not a given situation must meet a particular set of criteria to qualify as genocide (although some work is devoted to this approach); nor is it necessary for scholars of genocide to determine that a case qualifies as a genocide before engaging in research on it. In short, the cases covered here may implicate issues related to genocide without necessarily reaching the conclusion that genocide did or did not occur in a given case.

In the early 1980s, military dictatorships in Guatemala conducted a “scorched-earth” counter-insurgency that included the genocide of five indigenous Mayan groups, including the Maya Ixil. On January 28, 2013, a judge in Guatemala ordered the man who had been the country’s president in 1982-83, General José Efraín Ríos Montt, to face trial for genocide. He is the first former head of state to be tried for genocide in the Americas. His successor as president of Guatemala, General Oscar Mejía, had also been indicted for genocide, but then deemed unfit for trial. On March 19, 2013, the court began hearing the case against Ríos Montt, namely, that he committed genocide against Maya Ixil while he held office between March 1982 and August 1983.

In the left sidebar you will find readings, databases and maps and satellite images pertaining to the genocide in Guatemala.