The Dark Side of Numbers: The Role of Population Data Systems in Human Rights Abuses

Social Research, Summer, 2001 by William Seltzer, Margo Anderson

Soviet Union

The study by Blum (2000) of the former Soviet Union during Stalin's dominance reconfirmed several instances when census microdata were used to target minority population groups for forced migration and other human rights violations. It also found that by the time of the 1937 Census, Stalin apparently was relying on other data systems for microdata and that the census was primarily used as a source of macrodata to evaluate policies, including those related to forced migration and other programs with human rights consequences.

Rwanda

A comprehensive population registration system had been a tool of colonial administration in Rwanda over most of the twentieth century. In the 1930s this registration system was used to help fix the identity of the population in terms of the hitherto somewhat amorphous categories "Hutu" and "Tutsi," primarily to assist a pro-Tutsi policy by the Belgian colonial administration based on pseudoscientific racial grounds. The registration system continued, along with related identity cards, when the Belgians switched their support from the Tutsis to the Hutus in 1959, and after Rwanda gained its independence in 1962 (Des Forges, 1999). This same registration system was operating throughout Rwanda up to the start of genocide in April 1994. The system was based in local government offices in each Commune and generated, inter alia, monthly statistical reports providing the number and basic demographic characteristics of the population--classified by ethnicity--living in each local administrative area. These monthly statistical reports, along with monthly lists of individual births, deaths, marriages, and those moving into and out of the area, as well as annual lists of the population, all classified by ethnicity, were transmitted up to the Prefecture and to the capital, Kigali. Information from this registration system was used to plan and assist in the implementation of the killing operations.

Possible Factors Leading to Misuses or Attempted Misuses

It is possible to hypothesize a number of motivations leading to the misuse or attempted misuse of a population data system that might contribute to a major human rights abuse. Such a list of motivations might include ideology, including racism; patriotism; obedience or fear; bureaucratic opportunism; or professional zeal. From the twentieth-century cases studied so far (which are not necessarily representative of all cases), ideology, patriotism, and fear seemed less decisive in determining complicity than bureaucratic opportunism and professional zeal. This finding is similar to the observation by David, Fleischhacker, and Hohn (1988: 89) that the willingness of German medical scientists, "even if they did not fully embrace Nazi racism," to teach anti-Semitic racial hygiene could be attributed to the fact that they "welcomed the opportunity of translating their theoretical research into government policy."

Bureaucratic opportunism and professional zeal certainly seemed paramount in the proposals of Buhle and Carmille in France (Remond, 1996) and Jahn in occupied Norway (Sobye, 1998) during World War II, the actions of Lentz in the Netherlands and Richard Korherr (Himmler's statistical specialist) in Germany in furthering the Holocaust (Seltzer, 1998), and the efforts of Capt and Dedrick in their proactive assistance in 1941 and 1942 in the internment of Japanese Americans (Seltzer and Anderson, 2000). (By contrast, ideology was certainly involved in Walker's decisions about the coverage of Indians.) Capt, Carmille, and Jahn were well-regarded heads of national statistical agencies, each making many positive contributions to the development of their country's statistical services over their careers. Similarly, Dedrick (in statistical methods and organization), Korherr (in demographic statistics), and Lentz (in population registration) were each highly regarded senior technicians with extensive experience and responsibilities in their respective fields. While the grouping of Capt, Carmille, Dedrick,Jahn, Korherr, and Lentz for the purposes of studying motivation is analytically justified, there are important differences among them in terms of the level of human rights abuse with which their actions or proposals may be linked.