Mr William Nyarko, the Executive Director of the Africa Center for International Law and Accountability (ACILA), has called for sophisticated early warning systems to be matched by timely political action in Africa.
He warned that the failure to act on credible warnings continues to cost countless lives across the continent. The ACILA boss was speaking during a high-level panel discussion at the Convening in Commemoration of Atrocities Watch Africa’s (AWA’s) 10-Year Anniversary in Accra recently.
The anniversary conference commemorated ten years of Atrocities Watch Africa’s work in monitoring, documenting, and advocating for the prevention of atrocity crimes across Africa. It also provided an important platform for reflection on strengthening Africa’s atrocity prevention architecture and building more effective, coordinated responses to emerging threats in the decade ahead.
Mr. Nyarko said that while significant progress has been made over the past decade in detecting and documenting risks of mass atrocities, preventive action has too often lagged behind early warning.
The two-day (July 22–23)conference, held under the theme “The Future of Mass Atrocity Prevention and Response in Africa,” brought together international human rights lawyers, leading policymakers, civil society leaders, human rights advocates, and international partners to assess a decade of progress, challenges, and lessons in preventing mass atrocities across the continent.
Participating in a panel on “Atrocity Prevention and Response: Evaluating the Successes, Failures, and Hard-Earned Lessons of the Past Decade,” Mr. Nyarko presented a sobering assessment of atrocity crimes across Africa over the period 2016–2026, arguing that while early warning mechanisms have improved, they have too often failed to trigger the decisive political action needed to prevent mass atrocities.
“Early warning without early action costs lives,” Nyarko emphasized, arguing that repeated failures to act on credible warnings have allowed conflicts to escalate into humanitarian catastrophes.
Drawing on ACILA’s research, the Executive Director outlined the major atrocity situations that have defined the continent over the past decade, including conflicts in Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, Mozambique, and Cameroon.
He highlighted allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, conflict-related sexual violence, and genocide, while documenting the immense human toll.
Mr. Nyarko noted that these conflicts have resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of displaced persons, with Sudan’s current conflict estimated to have claimed more than 150,000 lives since April 2023, while Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict resulted in an estimated 400,000 deaths between 2020 and 2022.
Beyond documenting atrocities, Mr. Nyarko examined the mixed record of accountability during the past decade pointing to ongoing investigations by the International Criminal Court (ICC), domestic prosecutions, hybrid courts, and regional accountability initiatives.
He, however, cautioned that justice has often been undermined by political divisions, weak national institutions, the failure to execute arrest warrants, and inadequate support for accountability mechanisms.
Reflecting on the guiding questions of the panel, Nyarko stressed that the past decade has reinforced the importance of political leadership, regional ownership, victim-centered justice, and stronger cooperation between governments, regional organizations, and civil society. He also underscored the need to adapt advocacy strategies to an era increasingly shaped by propaganda, misinformation, artificial intelligence, and deepfakes, while safeguarding the integrity of digital evidence used in accountability processes.
Mr. Japhet Biegon, Deputy Regional Director at Amnesty International, shared how technology has helped to reshape the strategic timeline for documenting and verifying atrocities and establishing chain of custody evidence.
Mr. Janah Ncube, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Crisis Action also emphasized the important role civil society plays when it has agency and is activated, highlighting that where agency has happened, success occurs in atrocity prevention.
The panel also explored how the policy and practice of atrocity prevention have evolved over the past decade, examining the factors that have enabled or hindered preventive action, lessons learned from recent crises, the role of emerging technologies in documenting atrocity crimes and preserving evidence.
