Charles J. Brown

January 1–June 30, 2015 Charles J. Brown served as senior advisor on atrocity prevention and response in the Office of the Undersecretary for Policy in the US Department of Defense (DoD) from 2012 to 2014. In that role, he was responsible for implementing the DoD components of President Obama’s initiative to integrate atrocity prevention and response into US policy. Previously he served as the DoD’s senior director for rule of law and international humanitarian policy, overseeing policy development and implementation on a range of issues, including atrocity prevention and response; women, peace, and security; international human rights and humanitarian law; and security cooperation.

Prior to his work at the DoD, Mr. Brown served as the Washington director of the Institute for International Law and Human Rights and held leadership positions at Citizens for Global Solutions, Amnesty International USA, and Freedom House. During the Clinton administration, he served as chief of staff in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor and as the US delegation’s spokesman at the Rome Conference on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court. He is co-author of The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba (1991) and co-editor of Judges and Journalists in Transitional Democracies (1997).

Mr. Brown authored the Museum’s assessment of US Government training programs on atrocity prevention (PDF), published in January 2016.

Fellowship Project

Mr. Brown conducted a lessons-learned study (PDF) on the mass atrocity crisis in the Central African Republic from 2012 to the end of 2014, focusing particularly on the US government’s analysis of and response to early warning signs and its role in international efforts to resolve the conflict.