Marking a full year of violent suppression of anti-government protests in Syria, the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide, Francis Deng, and on the Responsibility to Protect, Edward Luck, released the following statement on March 15:
Yesterday, March 14, the International Criminal Court (ICC) found Thomas Lubanga Dyilo guilty of recruiting and using child soldiers between 2002 and 2003 during the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lubanga was convicted of “conscripting and enlisting children under the age of 15 and using them to participate actively in hostilities.” This landmark decision is the ICC’s first verdict since its creation a decade ago.
Three months after presidential and parliamentary elections and despite new members of the National Assembly having assumed their posts, the Democratic Republic of Congo still faces its most significant political crisis since the 2002 end of its international and civil wars. Opposition leader and head of the UDPS party Etienne Tshisekedi and his supporters firmly believe that he won the disputed November 28 elections, in which victory was claimed by incumbent President Joseph Kabila despite widespread reports of electoral fraud and intimidation. Leaders of the country’s powerful Catholic Church are also backing Tshisekedi’s challenge to Kabila’s legitimacy.
In a recent paper, Scott Straus, a 2011 Museum Fellow with the Committee on Conscience, explains why it is important for those concerned about preventing genocide to understand what genocide is and what it is not, how we can recognize it in its early stages, and what distinguishes genocide from other forms of mass atrocity. This conceptual analysis, he argues, will provide a framework for decision making about when and how to engage in specific cases.
We know from history that genocide and related crimes against humanity do not just arise spontaneously. They often take place in the context of civil war, when leaders commit such crimes to advance their goals of eliminating opposition or perceived enemies. In the civil conflict now raging in Syria, reporting by independent journalists and the United Nations leaves little doubt that conditions are being laid for a dramatic escalation of violence against civilians, possibly based on their membership in religious sects. Right now the majority Sunni population, perceived by the Alawite-dominated regime to be leading the opposition, are the primary victims, but if conditions deteriorate, other groups—including Druze, Christians, and Alawites themselves—could also be targeted.
New York Times op-ed columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, on his latest reporting mission to Sudan this week, presents a stark reminder of an overlooked conflict where thousands of lives have already been lost and hundreds of thousands more remain at risk.
Today, the President's Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence his annual threat assessment (PDF; external link). As has been the case since 2009, today's briefing included a section specifically devoted to mass atrocities, whose prevention the President has determined is in the national security interest of the United States.
Mary Creagh, British Member of Parliament for Wakefield, reflects upon International Holocaust Memorial Day by noting President Obama’s August 2011 Presidential Directive on Mass Atrocities (external link), as a “bold step to allow the US government to respond quickly to instances of potential mass atrocities and genocide.”
Disturbing news emerged from South Sudan this past week as reports surfaced of some of the worst inter-ethnic violence there in months. While the battle among tribes over scarce water and grazing resources is not new in South Sudan, the scale and brutality of the violence and what it portends for broader national unity is cause for alarm. Perhaps of even greater concern is the UN's inability to prevent the violence.
On January 10, 2012, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum hosted the Washington, DC, premiere of In the Land of Blood and Honey, written and directed by Angelina Jolie.
Find information on historical cases of genocide and other atrocities.
