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Have ideas? Find out how we are affecting change in our communities and how you can join one of our programs

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Art: How It Moves

How is art used as a medium for good, a method for inspiring change, or a symbol of protest? How can it evoke a strong emotional response in many and nothing in others? CIW interprets the impact and influences of art with an incredible and distinctive compilation of art enthusiasts, activists and artists.

Speakers: Petra Bachmeier, Carter Cleveland, Donna Cox, Phil Hansen, Naomi Natale, Carlos Javier Ortiz, Maida Swenson-Fortune, Tricia Van Eck

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What would your reaction be to seeing a field of bones? Hear Naomi Natale, who works at the intersection of art and activism, share the inspiration behind her One Million Bones project that's set to take over the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in spring 2013.

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The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful

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Join us & make art to help #EndChildDetention! I'm making origami butterflies w/ @EffectMigration & @PaloAltoArt. You can get supplies by end of Feb & join this #youthled #art #activism #craftivism project! #ButterflyEffect #FamiliesBelongTogether #MigrationIsBeautiful
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Share this video from @EffectMigration to help #EndChildDetention and let the kids in detention know, we are still fighting for you! http://bit.ly/BE-Still-Fighting-For-You #youthled #art #activism #craftivism #ButterflyEffect #FamiliesBelongTogether #MigrationIsBeautiful
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THANK YOU
for supporting our work!

Watch this video to learn more about the work we are doing in 2020 & 2021, and then please make a tax-deductible donation to help support our work!

Take Action!

Five ways you can stand up for kids in detention centers right now!
☐ Complete our COVID/Coronavirus Advocacy Challenge ☐ Learn how to make butterflies (learn how here) and then:
☐ Hang a kaleidoscope (a string of butterflies) on your front door!

☐ Share a picture of your butterflies w/ @effectmigration on Twitter and help spread the word about youth using #art and #activism to #EndChildDetention!
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☐ Take a picture of your butterflies and post them to FB and/or Instagram. Please tag us @butterflyeffectmigration

☐ Send butterflies to your local elected officials along with a note reminding them of the migrant children in detention and asking them what they are doing to #EndChildDetention.

What is the Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful Project?
The butterfly effect is the idea that a small change can lead to a much bigger change. Watch our KTVU News piece here!
The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful art project is led by youth activists in the Bay Area who are creating a visual representation of the migrant children in detention in order to raise awareness and inspire action to end child detention. The youth started with a goal of creating 15,000 butterflies. Butterflies symbolize that migration is beautiful, and they are all different and beautiful in their own way, just like people. The butterflies are a symbol of support and friendship to all of the migrant children affected by US immigration policies.

Butterflies are being created and displayed in public institutions like libraries, schools, city halls across the US. Last year, the youth led a rally with 1,000 people at Lake Merritt in Oakland in solidarity with migrant children, and then brought 15,000 butterflies to Capitol Hill in Washington DC. They delivered butterflies to every US Senator's offices with a request to end child detention.

The youth have led the creation of over 50,000 butterflies. Their goal is to create 76,020 butterflies to represent the 76,020 children who were detained at the border last year.

The Butterfly Effect youth leaders write: "this year, we are planning to take butterflies down the US/Mexico border and to detention centers to show the kids that we care about each one of them. We imagine a day when all kids are free and with their families."

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Join the movement by making butterflies!

Kids across the WORLD are making butterflies - from Zimbabwe to California, and from Brazil to Oregon!

We are asking communities to make butterflies and put up displays in your community. Check out our website for resources, tips on setting it up, and a sign that you can display with the wheel explaining the project.

Make sure to send us photos of your butterflies on display so we can add you to the map!

Please also post your photos to Instagram and tag us! #butterflyeffectmigration

We are also asking you to deliver your butterflies to local elected officials to let them know that you care about the kids in detention and to encourage them to act.
I want to help!
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Why are we doing this?

We are doing this art project because we are trying to get people to realize just how many children are being held in the detention centers. We chose butterflies because they symbolize that migration is beautiful, and because they are all different and beautiful in their own way, just like people. Every kid matters, and we kids in the Bay Area want the kids in detention centers to know that we care about each one of them. Butterflies also symbolize freedom, and we imagine a day when all kids are free and with their families.

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Public Displays

We are seeking more public spaces in which to display the butterfly wheels. If you would like to learn more, please email us at butterflyeffectmigration@gmail.com
Make your own display!
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Learn more, then do more...

"I don't think the question really is, 'What should we be doing to provide better care in detention?' It should be, 'Why are we detaining kids in the first place?"

-Dr. Julie Linton, Pediatrician

Learn more about what's happening with kids in detention centers, and find other ways you can help.

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Julie Gordon Shearer is a songwriter from Berkeley, Ca who was so inspired by The Butterfly Effect that she wrote this song. We are so glad to know that artists of all types are moved to use their talents to be activists and give even more voice to those who have none. Thank you Julie for your art and your support. You can listen here: Song performed by Bella Ellis -Voice Jackson Allen - Guitar Pictured here: Julie Shearer and Russ Ellis hosting a butterfly wheel on their front porch.

Get in Touch

The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful
butterflyeffectmigration@gmail.com

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Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful Project

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Project Spotlight: Join us! Help make origami butterflies for display at thePalo Alto Art Center. Pick up origami paper outside the front entrance of the Palo Alto Art Center at 1313 Newell Road and return your completed butterflies to the bin there by the end of Feb.

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The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful 2020

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The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful 2020

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Fundraising Event Promo Video - display in DC

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The Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful 2020 - [Fundraising Event Promo]

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This video introduces folks to the art activist project One Million Bones and provides brief explanations regarding how and why one would want to be involved in this effort to end genocide happening on our watch today.

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Every bone has a story....

For more information about the One Million Bones project, visit www.onemillionbones.org.

For more information about the filmmakers, visit www.elephantriderfilms.com

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Ashley Brown in Richmond, VA

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by Lily (OG BMP leader, San Francisco, CA)

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How to Make an Origami Butterfly - Butterfly Effect: Migration is Beautiful

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(Now known as Myanmar)

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in the African contient

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Thousands of children are serving as soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. These boys and girls, some as young as 8 years old, serve in government forces and armed opposition groups. They may fight on the front lines, participate in suicide missions, and act as spies, messengers, or lookouts.

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Maps & graphs about genocide.

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We are currently working on a historical dataset on conflict deaths and casualties. If you want to contribute to this research please get in touch.
This entry presents an empirical perspective on the history of war and peace. We also published a visual history of human violence which shows that we may now live in the most peaceful time in our species' existence.

Interactive charts on War and Peace

The absolute number of war deaths has been declining since 1946. In some years in the early post-war era, around half a million people died through direct violence in wars. In recent years, the annual death toll tends to be less than 100,000.

The decline of the absolute number of battle deaths can be seen in the visualization here that shows global battle deaths per year by world region. There are three marked peaks in war deaths since then: the Korean War (early 1950s), the Vietnam War (around 1970), and the Iran-Iraq and Afghanistan wars (1980s). There has been a recent increase in battle deaths driven by conflict in the Middle East, particularly in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The chart above refers only to battle deaths occurring in conflicts that involved at least one state on one of the opposing sides. For more recent years, we show these 'state-based' conflict deaths alongside battle deaths in 'non-state' conflicts (where two or more organisations are fighting but no state is involved), and also violent deaths in 'one-sided violence' (where there is only one organised aggressor, such as in genocidal violence).

We see that, in recent years, state-based conflicts form the majority of such deaths, though the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 stands out for its very high death-toll.

The previous two graphs showed absolute numbers, but as the world has seen rapid population growth (see our entry on global population growth), it is more appropriate to look at relative numbers. Here we show the battle death in state-based conflicts per 100,000 people per year. The figures are shown by type of conflict.

The stacked area chart here shows the number of ongoing conflicts each year has risen. This increase however only relates to civil conflicts within states. Conflicts related to the expansion or defence of colonial empires ended with decolonisation. Conflicts between states have almost ceased to exist.

But the number of war victims varies hugely between different wars: whereas 1,200,000 died during the the Korean War (1950-1953), other wars had 'just' 1,000 victims. For this reason, statistics on the number of wars need to be interpreted alongside data on the size of these conflicts.

The increase in the number of wars is predominantly an increase of smaller conflicts. This follows from the previously shown declining number of war victims while the number of conflicts increased. The decreasing deadliness of conflicts can be seen in the bar chart.

Deadliness of wars - average battle deaths per conflict by decade, 1950-2016

The past was not peaceful

It would be wrong to believe that the past was peaceful. One reason why some people might have this impression is that many of the past conflicts feature less prominently in our memories; they are simply forgotten.

Data Quality & Definition

To answer the question of how many people die in conflicts today, and how this has changed over time, we can turn to a number of different datasets.

Here we show the world conflict death rate since 1989 according to five sources.

The 'UCDP all' series is an aggregation of the deaths recorded in each of the three categories of conflict used by Uppsala Conflict Data Program: state-based conflict, non-state conflict and one-sided violence. (We show the data for these categories separately here).

We've summarised more information about the data sources and how we handled them to produce the chart above in a document, World conflict deaths since 1989: Notes on five sources.

You see in the chart that there are certainly similarities across the different sources. Overall they show a decline in conflict deaths into the 2000s, followed by an increase in the 2010s.¹

But there are also large differences. Most noticeably, there is a large jump in 1994 - marking the Rwandan genocide - which is present in some series, but absent from others.

If you look closely, you'll see that there are large relative differences between the series over the entire period as well, though they are understated by the 1994 peak. If you hover over the datapoints, you can see the exact figures: the highest figure for a given year is typically well more than double the lowest.

Discrepancies between different sources of conflict deaths data are partly to do with the differences in how the underlying source information - for instance newswires, death registers, government or NGO reports, or indeed other conflict databases - are selected and interpreted.

But they also reflect conceptual differences in terms of which deaths are and aren't included in the source's definition.

And the differences reflect that conflict and deaths are not equally well-documented across world regions. Conflicts and deaths in Europe are often documented well, while this sometimes is less the case for conflicts in other regions, especially in Africa and Asia.

Below we relate some of the differences visible in the chart above in terms of some key conceptual differences lying along three dimensions: Who, How and What.

Who: civillian vs military deaths How: direct vs indirect deaths
The Correlates of War series aims to include only deaths of military personnel, whereas the other sources capture - at least to some extent - civilian deaths too. As we would expect then, the Correlates of War figures are generally lower than the others.

In addition to those deaths caused directly by violence - for instance those from gunshot or explosions - a significant proportion of lives lost in conflict are indirect: due to disease, starvation or exposure. This is particularly true where conflicts lead to famine or outbreaks of disease among the civilian population. But historically, such indirect deaths were also a major cause of military fatalities.²

The UCDP and IHME data include only direct deaths. The Correlates of War series includes military personnel that died from diseases 'contracted in the war theatre'. The Conflict Catalog series (running to 2000 only) tries to include indirect deaths of both the military and civilian populations. Peter Brecke, the author of the dataset, however acknowledges that the degree to which this is in fact achieved varies considerably across conflicts.³

While indirect deaths represent a substantial proportion of the social costs of conflict, there is a conceptual difficulty in drawing a consistent boundary between indirect deaths attributable to the conflict and those due to other factors. For instance, whilst famines are often triggered by conflicts, many factors contribute to their onset and severity, such as the level of sanitation or the transportation infrastructure present.

Brecke does not attempt to provide a clear-cut definition, and this conceptual boundary has been largely dictated by the available primary sources he used in each estimate. Nevertheless, as we would expect, the death rates reported in the Conflict Catalog do come out the highest.

What: state involvement and one-sided violence

Across the various sources there three broad kinds of violent event distinguished: state-based conflict, non-state conflict and one-sided violence. The kind of event depends on the type of actors involved. State-based conflict is that involving at least one state-actor, and includes conflicts between states ("inter-state" conflicts) and those between a state and non-state actor ("extra-state" conflicts), such as civil wars or colonial wars.

Non-state actors are those that demonstrate a degree of coordinated military organisation but whose identity falls short of statehood. Non-state conflicts are those between two or more non-state actors, with no state involvement.

'One-sided violence' on the other hand is where one organized actor (either a state or non-state group) attacks people that do not have any organized military capability to defend themselves, as in the case of genocide or ' politicide '.

The UCDP state-based and Correlates of War series do not include such events. It is for this reason that they do not show the jump in 1994 that marks the Rwandan genocide.

Here we picture the definitions used in the various sources across these three dimensions.

There are also efforts to collect data specifically on the number of people dying from acts of terrorism - this is discussed in our entry on Terrorism.

How does the concept of terrorism relate to the concepts of conflict used in the data shown above? To what extent are terrorism deaths included in this data?

In general, definitions of terrorism include only violent episodes that are carried out by non-state actors, and definitions often emphasise events where civilians or to military personnel who are unarmed or not on duty are the target.⁴

As such, definitions of conflict deaths that include both civilian deaths and deaths caused by non-state actors will include a large fraction of the deaths normally attributed to terrorism. That is true for instance of the 'UCDP all' series in the charts shown above. This dataset, for example, includes direct deaths occurring in the September 11 attacks in the United States, and in the Taliban insurgency following the 2001 war in Afghanistan.

There are however some situations where deaths that would fall under typical definitions of terrorism might not get included even in the UCDP's broad definition of conflict. In particular, as mentioned above, the UCDP classification system has a requirement that non-state actors must have a certain degree of institutional organisation for an event to be included in its dataset. Deaths caused by attackers falling below this threshold of organisation - such as in 'lone wolf' attacks perpetrated by ideologically-motivated individuals - would not be included in the UCDP data but might fit under common definitions of terrorism.

Because deaths due to conflict and terrorism can be attributed and grouped into 'events' or 'episodes' in different ways in different datasets, it is difficult to make direct comparisons and know exactly the extent to which deaths included in one dataset are included or excluded in another. But because the larger events that would fall under typical definitions of terrorism - for instance those that are conducted by well-organised groups or are part of long-running insurgencies - will also be included in broad definitions of conflict like those used by UCDP, the latter are likely to include the majority of deaths commonly attributed to terrorism.

Data: Armed conflicts, non-state conflicts, one-sided violence, and battle-related deaths

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: since 1946 (armed conflicts, battle deaths), since 1989 (non-state conflicts, one-sided violence, battle-related deaths)

Available at: Online here and here

Data: Inter-state, intra-state, non-state, and extra-state wars

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: 1816-2007

Available at: Online here

Data: Conflicts

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: 1400-2000

Available at: Online here

Data: Deaths from conflict and terrorism

Geographical coverage: Global

Time span: since 1990

Available at: Online here

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We are currently working on a historical dataset on conflict deaths and casualties. If you want to contribute to this research please get in touch. This entry presents an empirical perspective on the history of war and peace.

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source: endocide.org

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war. politics. manipulation. threat elimination. wealth. terror. whatever the reason, genocide and mass atrocities are a part of human history. End Genocide is a part of the solution. Learn more ab...

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war. politics. manipulation. threat elimination. wealth. terror. whatever the reason, genocide and mass atrocities are a part of human history. End Genocide is a part of the solution. Learn more ab...

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Yale University's Genocide Studies Program

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Yale University's Genocide Studies Program

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Lots of scholarly resources, links

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Founded in January 1998 to expand the work begun in 1994 by Yale University's conducts research, seminars and conferences on comparative, interdisciplinary, and policy issues relating to the phenomenon of genocide, and has provided training to researchers from afflicted regions, including Cambodia, Rwanda, and East Timor. For more information about the program, please see the Cambodian Genocide Program, the Genocide Studies Program at Yale's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies"About " page.

The Program also maintains a Vimeo web site, which features 148 video interviews.

Browse by:

Translations

Yale University and the Genocide Studies Prgram acknowledge that indigenous peoples and nations, including Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Niantic, and the Quinnipiac and other Algonquian speaking peoples, have stewarded through generations the lands and waterways of what is now the state of Connecticut. We honor and respect the enduring relationship that exists between these peoples and nations and this land.

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Founded in January 1998 to expand the work begun in 1994 by Yale University's conducts research, seminars and conferences on comparative, interdisciplinary, and policy issues relating to the phenomenon of genocide, and has provided training to researchers from afflicted regions, including Cambodia, Rwanda, and East Timor.