Genocide Prevention Task Force
Chapter 1
Leadership:The Indispensable Ingredient
In periods where there is no leadership,
society stands still.
Progress occurs when
courageous, skilful leaders seize the
opportunity to change things for the better.
-President Harry S Truman
Nothing is more central to preventing genocide than leadership-from
the president, Congress, and the American people. In subsequent
chapters of this report we propose numerous specific ideas that we believe
will enhance U.S. government capacity to prevent genocide. But none
of these will be realized without the best kind of American leadership:
farsighted, energetic, and optimistic, eschewing partisanship to rally our
government and our people to a great calling.
Our focus on leadership emanates from three major themes that emerged
from the Genocide Prevention Task Force's research and consultations:
- Interest and attention from the highest ranks of the U.S. government
have been crucial to most past successful prevention efforts. But high-level attention is extremely difficult to mobilize and sustain because of
competing priorities and a pervasive, crisis-driven, reactive culture.
Attention from the president and his or her close group of senior advisors
is the most prized commodity in Washington policy circles. When high-level officials are actively engaged, progress is usually possible. Our research
and our personal experience have shown this to be true for genocide
prevention. The attention of individual officials and personal relationships
are major parts of virtually all reported success stories. This fact encourages
us about the prospects for progress, given a serious commitment from
the incoming president and national security advisor. At the same time,
however, it vexes us that our government has left preventing genocide to
the vagaries of personality and chance.
High-level attention has been most common when policymakers have been
sensitized by recent past atrocities and when threats have emerged in
regions of geopolitical importance. In early 2008, for example, the personal
intervention of the secretary of state reportedly was instrumental in tamping
down the post-electoral violence in Kenya, a linchpin country in East
Africa. In the late 1990s, high-level U.S. officials recognized Serbian leader
Slobodan Milosevic's escalating repression of Kosovar Albanians following
his war crimes in Bosnia and took resolute action with North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) partners when he proved recalcitrant.
Likewise, in the aftermath of the mass killing in Rwanda in 1994, U.S.
officials became deeply concerned about the possibility that mass killing
could be unleashed in neighboring Burundi. The national security advisor
worked with the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, the U.S.
ambassador, and others in the international community to bolster
peacemaking efforts in Burundi, with relative success.
The obvious problem is that one cannot rely on high-level attention, particularly
if one believes, as we do, that action before or at an early stage of
a crisis holds the greatest promise. The demands on senior U.S. national
security figures are enormously taxing and constantly expanding in scope
and complexity. We know firsthand, for example, that the attention of
senior policymakers was distracted from Rwanda in 1994 by other crises
unfolding at the same time in Somalia, Bosnia, and Haiti. Furthermore,
most cases of genocide or mass atrocities occur in places that have been in
a state of semi-permanent, low-level crisis over years. If it is difficult to get
one meeting with the national security advisor to discuss an escalating
genocidal crisis where our other interests are not implicated, what can be
done when a crisis bubbles near but just short of catastrophe for months
on end?
The answer must lie in a combination of creating systems to institutionalize
effective early responses at the working level and demonstrating presidential
priority to facilitate high-level attention when necessary.
- U.S. policy responses to perceived threats of genocide or mass atrocities
have typically been ad hoc, lacking an overarching policy framework, a
standing interagency process for devising and implementing preventive
strategies, and significant dedicated institutional capacity.
Simply put, the U.S. government does not have an established, coherent
policy for preventing and responding to genocide and mass atrocities. The
manner in which the United States has generally handled the emergence of
genocidal crises reflects the lack of priority placed on these issues. Admirable
individuals have at various times tried to cobble together effective
responses in the face of bureaucratic indifference (or resistance) and political
obstacles. Some of these efforts made temporary progress in
strengthening U.S. policy efforts, only to dissipate when attention turned
elsewhere. In addition, well-intentioned U.S. officials too often have repeated
the mistakes of the past because there have been neither reliable,
long-standing institutional structures nor systematic efforts to draw lessons
from both success and failure.
The lack of a policy framework is particularly problematic. The fact that
genocide has largely been an invisible issue in the U.S. government
bureaucracy has made it difficult to get critical information about grave
risks of genocide or mass atrocities to key decision makers before a crisis
has become full blown. Absent demonstrable high-level priority or a
strategic framework, it is too easy to dismiss warnings as alarmist and to
marginalize the few specialists in the government. The lack of over-arching policy gives the advantage to individuals or parts of the U.S.
government that prefer to avoid involvement in genocide prevention efforts,
for whatever reason. It takes little to disrupt a process, slow it down, or
place obstacles in its way if there is no policy framework to provide guidance
and promote accountability.
Preventing genocide appears to be a responsibility held simultaneously by
no one and everyone in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. It can be argued
that every U.S. diplomat, development professional, and military officer is
helping reduce the risk of mass atrocities by doing his or her normal work.
Yet virtually no one identifies preventing genocide as an explicit or mainstream
objective.
The task force does not measure effectiveness by looking to the size of an
office or the size of a budget. Cognizant of the marginalization of most
"functional" bureaus and the sidelining of "special initiatives," we support
integrating attention to prevention of genocide into broader foreign policymaking
functions and structures. Nevertheless, the lack of appreciable
dedicated capacity is, by any measure, problematic.
The State Department Office of War Crimes Issues (S/WCI) is the closest
the U.S. government has to a home for focused attention to atrocities prevention.
The office was created in 1997 to advise the secretary of state on
U.S. efforts to address serious violations of international humanitarian law
committed anywhere in the world. But only a small proportion of the
staff's time-perhaps as little as 10 percent-is dedicated to monitoring
risks, planning for contingencies, engaging in preventive diplomacy, or coordinating
preventive actions. Most of its resources go toward supporting
international criminal tribunals and managing legal issues related to U.S.-held detainees. These are important matters, but should not detract from
our government's efforts to prevent mass atrocities.
Like most current high-priority foreign policy concerns, preventing genocide
requires a whole-of-government approach that leverages all relevant
sources of national power and influence. One pattern that has limited the
effectiveness of U.S. responses to threats of genocide or mass atrocities has
been the strong tendency to think and act within bureaucratic silos. The
lack of regular attention in the interagency process has led to uncoordinated
efforts that have too often failed.
- U.S. officials recognize the importance of partnerships with other actors-including other governments, the United Nations, regional and
subregional bodies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), faith-based groups, and the private sector-but there is little understanding
of the capacities of these prospective partners and of the options for
concerted action.
From the outset, this task force was unanimous in its conviction that the
United States should seek to work with other actors in the international
community to prevent genocide. The United States will continue to have
great influence in the world, particularly relative to other individual states.
But the U.S. government may not always be the most influential actor and
may not always have enough influence by itself to prevent genocide and
mass atrocities. In many cases, the influence of neighboring states, regional
powers, and patron states will outweigh that of the United States. Building
anti-genocide partnerships is a practical necessity.
It is also a real possibility. There are few things that garner as much global
consensus as averting the horror of genocide and mass atrocities. In the six
decades since the adoption of the Genocide Convention by the UN General
Assembly, 140 states representing almost 90 percent of the world's population
have joined the treaty. At the World Summit in 2005, every government
in the world accepted "the responsibility to protect its populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" and
affirmed that the "international community, through the United Nations,
also has the responsibility ... to help protect populations" from these crimes.
World leaders also resolved "to take collective action, in a timely and decisive
manner, through the Security Council ... should peaceful means be inadequate
and national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their
populations" from these crimes. The breadth of global consensus is critical
because mass atrocities do not restrict themselves to any region of the world.
It represents a strong foundation for intergovernmental cooperation to prevent
genocide and mass atrocities. (We discuss international norms and institutions
further in Chapter 6.)
In addition to governments and intergovernmental organizations, civil society
is a key partner, the breadth of which extends from major international
NGOs working in human rights advocacy, humanitarian assistance, and
development to local groups in high-risk communities, such as religious organizations,
women's groups, and trade organizations. Civil society actors
worldwide have pushed their governments to build institutions to match
their stated commitments to the responsibility to protect, and to ensure accountability
for past atrocities.
The diversity of potential partners poses a challenge to match its opportunity:
How can the U.S. government most effectively work in partnership
with other actors to prevent genocide and mass atrocities? The structures
and processes that work well in cooperating with states are not likely to
work as well with grassroots NGOs. Meanwhile, existing multilateral
structures, such as the UN Security Council, have proven to be difficult if
indispensable vehicles for leveraging effective strategies to prevent genocide
and mass atrocities. We must look for ways to invigorate existing
mechanisms for working in partnership, and find new, flexible mechanisms
suited for this mission.
To the President
Recommendation 1-1: The president should demonstrate that preventing
genocide and mass atrocities is a national priority.
This could be accomplished through a strong statement in the president's
inaugural address, an early executive order, and continuing public statements,
such as emphasis in successive State of the Union addresses. There
are numerous examples of incoming presidents using these means to signal
increased priority to an issue. Perhaps most illustrative for our purposes
was President Jimmy Carter's emphasis on human rights. He spoke frequently
about human rights on the campaign trail, made it a major theme
of his inaugural address, and emphasized its centrality to U.S. foreign
policy in a speech that marked the 30th anniversary of the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights in December 1978.
Clear presidential priority is the single most reliable way of enhancing attention
to an issue throughout the U.S. government. We heard from current
officials, for example, that President George W. Bush's pledge of "not
on my watch," which he reportedly made on the margins of a memo recounting
U.S. inaction in 1994 Rwanda, made a difference in bureaucratic
debates about U.S. action in Darfur. As this case has shown, presidential
attention is no panacea. But it sets a tone that challenges those who
favor business as usual and can tilt the debate in positive ways.
We are keenly aware that the incoming president's agenda will be overfull
from day one. Preventing genocide and mass atrocities need not be seen as
an add-on to the core foreign policy domain. The means and ends of genocide
prevention dovetail with other U.S. priorities, providing a rare and
important opportunity for progress.
Recommendation 1-2: Under presidential leadership, the administration
should develop and promulgate a government-wide policy on preventing
genocide and mass atrocities.
The most recent official policy statement in this area comes from the 2006
National Security Strategy, which states:
We must refine United States Government efforts-economic, diplomatic,
and law-enforcement-so that they target those individuals
responsible for genocide and not the innocent citizens they rule.
Where perpetrators of mass killing defy all attempts at peaceful intervention,
armed intervention may be required, preferably by the forces
of several nations working together under appropriate regional or
international auspices.
This is a good foundation. We believe the next National Security Strategy
should go further, and should state explicitly that the prevention of genocide
is in U.S. interests and that all appropriate agencies of the U.S. government
should plan and be prepared to act to support this objective.
While the National Security Strategy sets the broad framework for U.S.
foreign policy, it stops short of articulating policy at the operational level.
The Department of State and United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) Strategic Plan and the National Defense Strategy translate
the National Security Strategy into high-level strategy for the key executive
agencies. But the best vehicle for developing and promulgating a
government-wide policy is a presidential directive-a national security
presidential directive (NSPD) in the George W. Bush administration's terminology,
a presidential decision directive in the Clinton administration's.
A presidential directive would be valuable, first, in requiring senior officials
from all relevant executive agencies to participate in a process of interagency
policy development. The end product should combine a clear,
agreed-upon statement of policy with operational guidance for specific
situations. It would also trigger follow-on work to fill out important details
of policy implementation. We believe a directive on preventing genocide
and mass atrocities should encompass many of the specific recommendations
offered in this report as a set of mutually reinforcing initiatives.
A recent example of how a presidential directive can serve as an instrument
for government-wide policy development is National Security Presidential
Directive-44, "Management of Interagency Efforts Concerning Reconstruction
and Stabilization." NSPD-44 starts with a clear statement of
policy, assigns responsibilities to the State Department and other executive
agencies, and establishes a new National Security Council (NSC) committee
for interagency policy coordination. This committee has since taken
action to implement specific aspects of the overarching policy.
Recommendation 1-3: The president should create a standing interagency
mechanism for analysis of threats of genocide and mass atrocities and
consideration of appropriate preventive action.
A central component of a government-wide policy should be a new institutional
mechanism that can effectively coordinate action across agencies,
directed from the White House and co-chaired by senior officials from the
NSC and State Department. Specifically, we propose creating an Atrocities
Prevention Committee (APC) with direct links to the national security advisor
and, by extension, to the president. The APC would comprise, at a
minimum, representatives from State-including regional bureaus; the Bureau
of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL); S/WCI; and the
Bureau of International Organization Affairs-Defense (including the Joint
Chiefs of Staff), the intelligence community, the Department of Justice, the
Department of the Treasury, and USAID, all at the level of assistant secretary.
It would convene every other month to discuss the latest risk assessment
and warning analysis, or at any other time one of its members requested
an emergency meeting. In the latter circumstance, a member would
have the option to seek the emergency meeting at the level of deputy national
security advisor or deputy secretary, making it, in effect, a meeting
of the NSC Deputies Committee.
As Chapter 4 describes in greater detail, the APC would review the status
of countries of concern according to the best available analysis and develop
prevention and response plans, facilitating decisions at the NSC Deputies
Committee and Principals Committee levels as necessary. The APC's work
would be supported and coordinated by a newly created NSC directorate
for crisis prevention and response. This directorate would be appropriately
staffed and resourced to direct and coordinate U.S. government action
across a broad range of instability and humanitarian emergencies, not solely
genocide and mass atrocities. Situating the APC in this context would
give the committee dedicated, specialized capacity while integrating its
work into mainstream priorities.
The temptation when addressing specific concerns is to create a specific set
of responses, such as a special coordinator with a single, stand-alone office.
However, as similar initiatives have demonstrated, the end result is typically
bureaucratic marginalization if not outright irrelevance. By embedding
genocide prevention initiatives into a larger functional imperative-namely, crisis prevention and response-the likelihood that the United
States would be prepared, able, and, moreover, willing to respond in the
future would be significantly enhanced.
While an effective NSC structure is critical for interagency coordination
and providing a link to the White House, effective organization within
the State Department is equally important, given how deeply State is involved
in virtually all U.S. efforts to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.
We recommend that the secretary designate the assistant secretary for
democracy, human rights, and labor as the single point of responsibility
for coordinating genocide prevention efforts with others in the department,
particularly the regional bureaus. Genocide is, fundamentally, a
human rights issue, and DRL's broad mandate should help the assistant
secretary mobilize preventive actions at an early stage, long before mass
atrocities are imminent. To be effective as a senior point person for State,
the assistant secretary must command respect throughout the department
and abroad, with demonstrable ability to take policy disputes directly
to the secretary. The staff and resources of DRL should be supplemented
to match the additional responsibilities of coordination within
State and outreach abroad to mobilize support for preventive action. Together
with the NSC director for crisis prevention and response-or an
equivalent senior NSC official, if that position is not created-the assistant
secretary should co-chair the APC.
Recommendation 1-4: The president should launch a major diplomatic
initiative to strengthen global efforts to prevent genocide and mass
atrocities.
Personal diplomacy by the president is especially influential with other
heads of state. The president should make genocide prevention a key theme
in U.S. diplomacy, with a major initiative designed to strengthen international
efforts in this area and willingness to engage personally in particular
crisis situations. This kind of presidential diplomacy would also serve
broader U.S. interests by providing a platform for U.S. global engagement
where there is a broad comity of interests.
The president should emphasize that the early and energetic engagement
of the international community is likely to be the most effective way to
defuse crises threatening to lead to genocide or mass atrocities. He should
deliver this message directly to the United Nations in his first speech to the
General Assembly. The president should call on other world leaders to join
him in similar declarations at the Group of Eight (G-8) summit, at regional
summits, and in bilateral meetings with other heads of state. These
statements should be accompanied by tangible actions, such as support for
an international network (see Recommendation 6-1) and other actions
described elsewhere in this report, to demonstrate U.S. commitment to
these principles. As an element of this expression of resolve, the United
States should also reaffirm its support for the principle of the "responsibility
to protect."
To the Leaders of Congress
The tenacity of members of Congress, individually as well as through the
committee structure and the Human Rights Caucus, has been a prime catalyst
for human rights and genocide awareness in the U.S. government and
beyond. Their role cannot be overstated. Working on a bipartisan basis,
members of Congress have helped expose acts of genocide and related
abuses and spurred the executive branch to more vigorous action. There
are dozens of legislators who have been active on these issues over the
years, frequently serving as the moral voices and most effective communicators
in these efforts. We encourage members to stay engaged and continue
to exercise their leadership role as a co-equal branch of government.
We offer recommendations to congressional leaders below, designed to leverage
their unique role in our government, enhance their own influence,
and promote productive executive-legislative interaction.
Recommendation 1-5: Congress should increase funding for crisis prevention
and response initiatives, and should make a portion of these funds
available for rapid allocation for urgent activities to prevent or halt
emerging genocidal crises.
Current U.S. government funding mechanisms work against the mounting
of robust, coherent, and timely preventive strategies in two ways. First, the
overall amount of money devoted to prevention-oriented activities is insufficient;
if increasing early investment leads to prevention of even one crisis,
it will have generated a healthy return in dollars and lives. Second, it is extremely
difficult for executive agencies to mobilize even small amounts of
money quickly to head off an emerging crisis. Mass atrocities do not follow
U.S. government budget cycles, and an executive agency's budget allocation
in any given month might have been planned almost two years prior. Responding
quickly and effectively to unforeseen crises requires a better way
to allocate a portion of U.S. government resources.
We propose that Congress appropriate an additional $250 million annually
to the international affairs budget to finance initiatives to prevent genocide
and mass atrocities in countries at risk. This additional investment-less
than a dollar for every American each year-would not only support valuable
individual projects, but also provide focus for foreign policy professionals
engaged in high-risk countries.
The bulk of the funds should be channeled into a new $200 million genocide
prevention initiative, to be funded through an expansion of resources
in existing foreign assistance accounts (see Chapter 3). These funds would
boost critical atrocities prevention efforts in high-risk environments identified
and prioritized through enhanced early warning and interagency coordination
mechanisms. The additional $50 million should be reserved for
rapid allocation to support urgent off-cycle projects. If Congress chooses to
provide the State Department with funds for rapid allocation through a
conflict response fund, as the George W. Bush administration has proposed,
it should ensure that the scope of the new account includes funding focused
on preventing genocide. Otherwise, this money could be a stand-alone fund
for urgent response to genocidal crises. Another option would be for authorizing
committees to amend Section 451 of the Foreign Assistance Act,
which enables the president to reprogram up to $25 million per year for
unforeseen contingencies, boosting the cap and explicitly authorizing use of
the money to respond to genocidal crises.
There is a variety of programs one could imagine such a fund being used
for. These include support for diplomatic initiatives by regional or nongovernmental
actors, targeted stabilization projects (for example, emergency
assistance to local security forces), urgent military assistance to multilateral
peace operations, direct nonmilitary intervention (jamming radios, cell
phones), and inducements to influential leaders.
Allocation of off-cycle funds should require a formal presidential certification
that strict criteria for emergency use have been satisfied, as well as
official congressional notification. Administration officials should consult
informally with leaders on Capitol Hill any time they are considering allocation
of resources from this fund. Strong congressional oversight is not
only crucial to garnering support for this proposal, but would also promote
constructive executive-legislative partnership in preventing genocide
and mass atrocities. We note that there are precedents for this type of fund
at the State Department, including the Emergency Refugee and Migration
Fund and the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Fund.
Fully half of this task force served as members of Congress. We know that
lawmakers tend to resist proposals that give the executive branch more
autonomy in allocating congressionally appropriated funds. We share these
instincts. We also recognize that there are similar proposals on the table for
broader purposes-for example, aiding states in transition. Yet we are
faced with a serious challenge and a potential solution. We believe adequate
procedural safeguards can be adopted to satisfy concerns on Capitol
Hill. No future U.S. official should be forced to watch escalating atrocities
knowing that our government could respond more effectively if only it
could free up a small amount of money.
Recommendation 1-6: The newly established Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission should make preventing genocide and mass atrocities a
central focus of its work.
The Congressional Human Rights Caucus has long been a mechanism for
raising awareness and promoting action on a broad range of human rights
issues. As a caucus, however, it did not have a steady stream of resources
and depended almost entirely on its leadership for direction and support.
We welcome recent action by the House of Representatives to convert the
caucus into a more permanent body, with more secure funding and stronger
connection to the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Fittingly, the House
named this new body the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, in honor
of the long-time leader of the Human Rights Caucus who passed away
in 2008.
The commission's mandate is to "promote and advocate ... internationally
recognized human rights norms as enshrined in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights and other relevant international human rights instruments."
Genocide and mass atrocities represent the most egregious of all
human rights violations. The Genocide Convention was, in fact, the first
modern human rights treaty, adopted a day before the Universal Declaration.
As a core human rights issue, responding to threats of genocide should
be an integral part of the Lantos Commission's work. The commission
should spotlight and monitor emerging threats of genocide and mass atrocities
and act as a vehicle for members of Congress to become informed
about these threats and raise awareness about situations that may not be
covered by the existing committee structure. While the commission is a
body of the House, we encourage members of the Senate to cooperate
closely with it. We also encourage the commission to cooperate with nongovernmental
groups and other partners engaged in documenting early
warning signs of genocide and mass atrocities.
The Lantos Commission can play an important role in coordinating efforts
by the committees and subcommittees that have oversight authority related
to preventing genocide and mass atrocities, but it cannot substitute for appropriate
committee action. Not surprisingly, numerous committees share
oversight responsibility for executive action related to preventing genocide
and mass atrocities (for example, foreign affairs/relations, armed services,
intelligence, judiciary). To ensure that this issue does not fall through the
cracks, all regional subcommittees of the House and Senate foreign affairs
and foreign relations committees should add the prevention of genocide
and mass atrocities to the terms of their jurisdictions, which are issued with
each new Congress.
Recommendation 1-7: Congressional leaders should request that the
director of national intelligence (DNI) include risk of genocide and mass
atrocities in his or her annual testimony to Congress on threats to U.S.
national security.
There are multiple benefits of this idea. First, it would raise the priority
given to genocide and mass atrocities in the intelligence community by
virtue of the need to prepare the DNI to brief and respond to questioning
by members of Congress. Second, it would promote stronger executive-legislative interaction on these issues, one of the task force's overarching
objectives. The DNI gives his or her annual testimony before the House
and Senate select committees on intelligence and the House and Senate
armed services committees. These and other committees, or their subcommittees,
are then in a position to call on administration policymakers to
discuss specific country situations in depth. Third, public testimony by the
most senior U.S. intelligence official is likely to be valuable to NGOs seeking
to raise public attention and mobilize support for more vigorous preventive
action in various venues. The intelligence related to genocide warning
is rarely highly classified; a public hearing would be appropriate.
To the American People
Recommendation 1-8: The American people should build a permanent
constituency for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities.
The striking level of public engagement in the Darfur crisis suggests enormous
untapped potential for genocide prevention in nongovernmental and
civil society organizations around the world. In the United States, the grassroots
activism mobilized in recent years represents a remarkably wide and
diverse alliance of citizen groups-left and right, religious and secular, urban
and rural, young and old, from all races and backgrounds-coming
together in the shared belief that we as Americans can do more to halt
needless massacres of innocents.
In today's age of electronic media communications, Americans are increasingly
confronted in their living rooms-and even on their cell phones-with information about and images of death and destruction virtually anywhere
they occur. This instantaneous media communication has already
been shown to sensitize Americans to the suffering of people in all corners
of the globe. The Internet has proven to be a powerful tool for organizing
broad-based responses to genocide and mass atrocities, as we have seen in
response to the crisis in Darfur.
We urge the American people to continue to support more assertive government
action in response to genocide and mass atrocities. We especially
urge a greater focus on prevention and on encouraging U.S. government
engagement at the earliest possible stage, before a crisis develops. The State
Department, White House, and congressional leaders should work to develop
outreach strategies and strong relationships with NGOs and citizen
groups. Such relations can positively reinforce efforts to raise attention to
and allocate resources for engagement in atrocities prevention.
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