There isn't an obvious "right answer" in the simulation;
seemingly-correct choices can have unforeseen (yet utterly
plausible) results, as the text in the image here shows. The
goal isn't necessarily to stop the genocide (although that
would obviously be an ideal outcome), it's to educate
players about the complexity of managing humanitarian
situations. A
Canadian
team began working on the project in 2002 in
coordination with

academic and activist specialists on human rights and
genocide, and a
beta
version of the software is now available.

As with all simulations, cause-and-effect are driven by
the insights and biases of the programmers. While the
response to Pax Warrior from those in the

humanitarian aid community has been generally positive,
it's important to remember that the choices offered to
players are limited. Players may come up with novel
solutions to problems which the software has no way to
handle. There's little room for innovation in computer
simulations; cause-and-effect are hardwired, and the
behavior of other actors in the scenario are scripted. This
doesn't mean the simulation will be bad, just that it
will be limited. I've asked to participate in the beta
program, and hope to be able to give a more fully-fleshed
out evaluation soon.

James Gillespie High School in Edinburgh, Scotland,
recently ran a lengthy exercise with Pax Warrior, as a way
of teaching the students about what happened in Rwanda, and
about the complexity of peacekeeping. The student responses,
as
quoted in the BBC, are telling:

An informant tells the students, who
play the role of UN officers, that hidden arms caches
are about to be distributed to Rwandan government
militiamen who may commit genocide.The students have
several choices. Do they risk confrontation and raid the
arms caches? Or should they ask for advice from UN
headquarters in New York?[...] Every choice that's made
has consequences for the rest of the simulation.I asked
one student, Niall Dolan, why he chose to fax New York
to ask for advice."Our mission is not to promote
violence," he says."And does this simulation relate to
your ordinary lives?" I ask."The decisions we have to
make here are much more extreme than any we'd have to
make as teenagers," says Astrid Brown."But this makes
you aware that your decisions can have many more effects
than you realised.""And no matter what your good
intentions are," says Jude Purcell, "certain decisions
you have to take are going to have bad consequences."

This is a difficult but important realization --
sometimes, there are no good options. But that doesn't mean
some choices aren't less-bad than others. If counter-factual
scenarios are well-constructed, they can show us how we can
make better choices in the future, and allow us to look anew
at whether and how we could work to change the results of
decisions already taken. At the same time, we should
recognize the limitations of counter-factual scenarios. Our
real-world choices are not limited to an established set of
A through E options; sometimes solutions emerge when we
approach the situation in innovative ways, whether we're
talking about

humanitarian emergencies,

political struggles, or

responses to climate disruption. Pax Warrior, like all
counter-factuals, is best thought of as a trigger for
discussion, as a way of prompting the "what haven't we
thought of here?" questions. It's a catalyst for thoughtful
conversation about humanitarian problems, and we can
certainly use more of those.