Today, in a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Obama made clear that the United States is taking concrete steps to prevent mass atrocities, protect civilians, and ensure that we hold the perpetrators of atrocities accountable. Presidential Study Directive-10, released last August, stated that “preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” And as the President outlined, that is why this administration has led the international effort to bring pressure to bear on the Qhadafi and Asad regimes, supported diplomacy to end the crisis in Sudan, and is supporting efforts to track down Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. But we are not just working to stop atrocities today. We are taking a number of steps to strengthen the U.S. government’s capacity to prevent them in the future -- including creating an Atrocities Prevention Board, enhancing the collection and analysis of intelligence, and expanding our multilateral diplomatic efforts. And while we pledge to do everything we can, preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that the United States and all peoples and countries around the world share, and that is why we must all commit to work together to turn our promise of “never again” into a reality.
