Rebel human rights abuses during civil wars: Introducing the rebel human rights violations dataset

Abstract

Contemporary studies of civil conflict focus heavily on combatant treatment of civilians. Research on human rights (HR) abuses committed by states has benefitted from several widely available datasets on state violations. By comparison, researchers and policymakers have been limited by a dearth of data on violations committed by rebel groups. We introduce a new resource, the Rebel Human Rights Violations (RHRV) dataset, which measures the frequency with which rebel groups engage in eight HR abuses. The data include information for all rebel groups around the world between 1990 and 2018, and capture a wide range of violations, including arbitrary killing, detention, forced recruitment, property damage, torture, sexual violence, forced displacement and movement restriction. The RHRV provides new opportunities for researchers and policymakers to analyze an important aspect of civil conflict: the abuse of civilian populations by rebel groups.