Lara Kajs is the Founder and Executive Director of The Genocide Report, an NGO nonprofit (501c3) in Washington, DC. She is an expert on atrocity crimes, forced displacement, conflict and violence, diplomacy, and international humanitarian law. She consults with the UN and the ICC.
Kajs founded The Genocide Report in 2011, to bring awareness to the Syrian crisis. However, soon after launching the organization, she began receiving emails and sources from other countries reporting human rights abuses, expanding TGR’s focus.
Her recent release, Stories from Yemen: A Diary from the Field, recounts the lives of more than a hundred survivors of the conflict, discusses the causes of the crisis, and considers possible outcomes for peace. She shares her own story of survival when the coalition airstrikes forced her team and twenty-seven Yemeni civilians, into a building that collapsed on them and trapped the group for three days.
Her forthcoming work, Syria’s Disappeared: Torture and Mass Executions in Bashar Al-Assad’s Prison (2023), investigates the disappearances of more than one hundred thousand Syrian men, and the mass executions that have occurred during the decade-long conflict at the hands of the Bashar al-Assad regime. Also forthcoming, State Terrorism in MENA (2024), collectively discusses the failed states of Egypt, Libya, and Lebanon, and the breakdown of society when the government terrorizes its citizens.
She received a B.A. in Spanish from the University of Hawaii Manoa, a Teaching Credential from the University of Tennessee Knoxville, an M.Ed. from Lincoln Memorial University, and an M.A. in History with an emphasis in Genocide, the Middle East, and Latin America from the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She is a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the International Network of Genocide Scholars, and the American Historical Association.
Kajs was born in Birmingham, Alabama, has traveled to more than 140 countries, and has lived in seven countries. She resides in Washington, DC.
For speaking and interview inquiries please contact Stephanie Marcum at smarcum@thegenocidereport.org