Minorities at Risk

The Minorities at Risk Data Generation and Management Project (MAR) is a University of Maryland, College Park based research project that monitors and analyzes the status and conflicts of politically active minority ethnicities and religious sects in all countries with a current population of at least 500,000. The project is designed to provide information in a standardized format while retaining a neutral point of view in order to aid comparative research and contribute to the understanding of conflicts involving relevant groups.

While MAR is comparable to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO), it differs both in purpose and scope. Whereas the UNPO advocates change to benefit the minorities at risk and is quite small in terms of information for the public to view, MAR provides accurate information on more than 284 groups, (the MAR database and codebook as well as detailed historical chronologies) available to educate researchers, public officials, journalists, students, activists, and anyone interested. MAR tracks groups on political, economic, and cultural dimensions thereby going into much greater depth than the average UNPO report. The project also maintains analytic summaries of group histories, risk assessments, and group chronologies for each group.