On February 5, 2013 the Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide co-sponsored a panel discussion among experts on hate speech and incitement to genocide. The focus of the discussion was how to address inflammatory language with policies and practices that do not infringe on free speech.

The United Nations Special Advisor on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, Adama Dieng, set the tone for the panel with a keynote address on the need to develop strategies to identify—and prevent—the most extreme cases of hate speech, as well as ways to address the root causes of hatred and racism without relying on legislation and criminal law.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, Frank La Rue, agreed, saying the right to freedom of speech must be paramount since infringing on speech rights can have severe consequences, especially in repressive countries where governments use prohibitions on speech to silence dissent.

“Restrictions on speech should be the exception,” he said. “The state has an obligation to protect people from harm, but not from offense.” Such prohibitions, he noted, should only apply to cases where speech causes harm to others—such as with incitement to genocide and child pornography.

As a way to distinguish speech that is offensive from speech that can lead to harm, Susan Benesch, the Edith Everett Fellow at the Center for the Prevention of Genocide, presented her research on how to recognize “dangerous speech,” a subset of hate speech that has been shown to lead to violence, including genocide, in past cases. Dangerous speech, she said, is often characterized by dehumanizing language; targeted populations are called “rats” or “cockroaches”—or other reviled vermin—as a way to justify violence against them.

Another hallmark of dangerous speech, Benesch said, is a rhetorical tactic called “accusation in a mirror.” Those seeking to incite violence against a target group falsely accuse that group of planning its own campaign of violence. By presenting the target group as an existential threat, inciters motivate their audiences to pursue violence as justifiable self defense.

The best antidote to hate speech and incitement to genocide, the panelists agreed, is more speech, especially messages that counter hate speech. Such messages are particularly effective when delivered by influential or popular figures.

George Weiss of Amsterdam-based Radio La Benevolencija Humanitarian Tools Foundation outlined ways his organization has used “edutainment”—popular culture programming that inoculates audiences against inflammatory language—to address hate speech. Weiss’ group created a soap opera, New Dawn—currently one of the most popular shows in Rwanda—that features residents from two villages in conflict. The protagonists of the show model the behavior of “active bystanders”—those who resist violence and encourage reconciliation. Extensive evaluations of the program have shown that exposure to its messages has changed viewers’ attitudes about resolving conflict.

“We show people how to attack problems, not people,” Weiss said.

The February 5 event was held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and co-sponsored by the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, and the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations.

President Obama today signed legislation expanding the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program to give the Secretary of State the authority to offer a reward for information leading to the arrest or conviction of anyone wanted by any international tribunal for genocide or other serious human rights violations. The president invited members of the genocide prevention community, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, to the Oval Office for the bill signing.

Among the top targets of the new law, passed by Congress on a bipartisan basis, are commanders of militia groups attacking civilians in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Joseph Kony, the notorious leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army. The LRA has been responsible for terrible attacks on civilian groups in Uganda and Congo, and its leaders have been indicted and sought for arrest by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

“All of these individuals face charges before international criminal tribunals for horrific acts, including attacks on civilians, murder, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, and rape,” President Obama said in a statement. “We have made unmistakably clear that the United States is committed to seeing war criminals and other perpetrators of atrocities held accountable for their crimes, and today’s legislation can help us achieve that goal.”

The new law is designed to be part of an expanding series of tools aimed at preventing genocide and other forms of mass atrocity.

Learn more about the Rewards for Justice program.

As the war between the Assad regime and rebel forces continues, rising sectarian tensions are leading to more actors taking up arms, according to a report released by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. The periodic updates from the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria paint a troubling picture of self-defense groups arising within Christian, Alawite Muslim, and other minority groups inside the country. The report describes clashes in areas formerly controlled by the government between rebel groups and armed "Popular Committees." These committees are formed by those minority groups—sometimes with direct government support—who are worried that the rebels will not protect their communities may take reprisal steps against them. In addition, it notes that newly forming rebel factions are increasingly resistant to positioning themselves under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army.

The long-feared scenario of Syria’s divisions becoming fault lines in the civil war makes an already dangerous situation worse. The Commission’s report describes a “low intensity sectarian conflict” occurring alongside the clashes with the government. As a result, foreign fighters are entering Syria to take up arms to support their sect; individuals captured by their rivals are being killed due to their religious affiliation; and real and perceived threats are leading groups to organize and arm themselves. In addition to the summary execution of prisoners, the report also documents torture and illegal detentions, the use of snipers, aerial bombardments targeting civilian areas and hospitals, and attacks on cultural sites.

The potential for deepening sectarian divides complicates efforts to resolve the conflict and prepare for post-conflict reconstruction. The UN Human Rights Council indicated its intention to investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity going forward, noting that “patterns of international human rights and humanitarian law violations…continued unabated.” As the international community attempts to facilitate an end to the conflict and lay the foundations for the post-Assad period in Syria, this aspect of the crisis will likely make that path to peace longer and more difficult.

On December 13 at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, the Museum co-sponsored a lively discussion about the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, the emerging international doctrine aimed at protecting civilians from genocide and other forms of mass atrocities.

The featured speakers were former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Ambassador Richard Williamson, two distinguished foreign policy practitioners now chairing a working group on R2P co-convened by the Museum. Also on the panel was New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose reporting from crises around the world deeply influences public understanding of genocide and mass atrocities. Michael Abramowitz, director of the Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide, moderated the discussion.

After the failed international responses of the mid- and late-1990s in Rwanda and Bosnia, R2P emerged to help policy makers and the world at large better understand that these atrocities are preventable and we all share a responsibility for ensuring they are not replicated. The R2P doctrine departs from past concepts of humanitarian intervention in a key respect. It contends that the first and principal responsibility is imposed upon states themselves to protect their own citizens from the four named crimes that specifically target civilians: ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.

Following from this, other states in the international community have the responsibility to assist and support those nations in fulfilling their responsibility. However, if a state fails in its responsibility to protect its own citizens—as we see today in Syria, where the state is in many respects the aggressor—then the international community has a responsibility to protect populations at risk.

As the situation in Syria highlights, R2P has been unevenly applied and implemented since it was endorsed by every nation in the world at the UN World Summit in 2005. In Libya in 2011, the United Nations Security Council successfully invoked R2P in approving a military operation aimed at forestalling atrocities in the besieged city of Benghazi; in other cases, such as the widespread rape and other atrocities that have taken place over the past ten years in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, R2P has been less successful.

The panelists were in agreement that R2P has been a useful tool—but far from a panacea for the continuing horrors of genocide and mass atrocities.

Watch a video from the event:

In a New York Times op-ed, Simon Adams, executive director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, discusses the potential for genocide to unfold in Syria. Adams warns that as the current conflict intensifies, the risk increases of a violent backlash against Alawites and other minorities. He calls on governments to take decisive action to prevent further crimes against humanity from being committed, and to put an end to impunity for such crimes by engaging the International Criminal Court to ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.

Read the op-ed.

A UN internal review panel released a report highly critical of the organization’s actions during the final five months of the conflict in Sri Lanka between the government and separatist rebels. During that period, January—May 2009, thousands of civilians were killed and wounded as government forces advanced on the stronghold of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE)—a group designated as a terrorist organization by the US and other governments. The Sri Lankan Army’s advance and the LTTE’s use of civilians as human shields resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being caught between the warring parties. The report examines the failure of various UN bodies to adequately respond to the crisis as the human toll mounted, and evidence emerged of potential violations of international law by both parties.

The report delves into several areas where the UN efforts constituted a “grave failure” to fulfill its responsibility to protect civilians under threat. It is particularly critical of internal deliberations that proposed watering down public statements about the risks that civilians faced, by not releasing casualty figures or attributing deaths to the Sri Lankan army’s use of heavy weapons. While recognizing the extraordinary work and courage of a few outstanding staff members operating in-country, the report is unequivocal in stating that the UN system failed to develop an effective strategy to respond to early warning signs of mass violence and subsequent violations of international humanitarian law.

These events and the loss of 40,000 civilian lives in Sri Lanka underscore the continued need to develop effective early warning systems and coordinated responses to mass atrocity situations, both recommendations of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, a body that was co-convened by the Museum. The report specifically notes that the differing perspectives among member states on the meaning and implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) mired discussions in debate rather than focusing them on action. This revelation highlights the need to understand the political and practical impediments to implementing R2P in difficult environments. This subject is currently under investigation by the R2P Working Group co-chaired former Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and former Presidential Special Envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson. Its report is due out in early 2013.

Read the UN report.

Michael Abramowitz, director of the Museum’s genocide prevention program, recently sat down with US Permanent Representative to the United Nations Susan Rice to discuss the work the UN and the US government are doing to better prevent genocide and mass atrocities, and what is being done in places most at risk today.

Citing President Obama’s April 2012 speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum where he unveiled a new approach to preventing genocide and mass atrocities, USAID and Humanity United have launched the Tech Challenge for Atrocity Prevention, an initiative calling for innovative tech tools and solutions—big and small—to make advances in preventing atrocities.

They will award up to $10,000 for creative ideas and prototypes that respond to five specific challenges of preventing atrocities.

Watch the video below or visit www.thetechchallenge.org for more information and how to apply.

Over the past year and a half, a humanitarian crisis has been building in the border areas between Sudan and South Sudan, where the government of Sudan has been struggling to suppress a rebellion, in part by targeting and terrorizing civilian groups. Hundreds of thousands of civilians have fled the fighting, and aid groups are reporting on the dangers of widespread famine because the government of Sudan has been blocking aid from reaching peoples in the Nuba Mountains. The Museum asked Pete Muller, an experienced photojournalist who has lived in South Sudan for three years and traveled repeatedly to the border region, to share his photos and report on the crisis:

View Pete Muller's photo gallery of scenes from the region.

It has long been a flaw of the Sudanese state that its government, seated in the northern city of Khartoum and ruled by the National Congress Party (NCP), refuses to embrace the country’s vast racial, religious, and ethnic diversity. This dynamic was the crux of most Sudanese conflicts throughout the 20th century and underlay the country’s partition in the 21st. Today, along the remote borders of a truncated Sudan, identity politics and marginalization are again at the root of war.

Between 2009 and 2012, I lived in South Sudan, where I worked to document that country’s tense and precarious transition to independence. During my time there, I made numerous trips to border regions, where I observed various aspects of the conflicts between rebels and the government of Sudan. The government’s Sudan Armed Forces control the air space and use that advantage to carry out wildly inaccurate, albeit regular and frightening, aerial assaults on rebel territory, as well as to limit humanitarian assistance. The rebels, who are in and of the people, exploit the asymmetric nature of the fight by controlling the hinterlands, staging hit-and-run ambushes and fighting elusively.

While these dynamics are typical of insurgency and counterinsurgency operations, the context in which they are occurring is fraught with complexity. Following South Sudan’s independence in July 2011, the populations in Sudan’s Blue Nile State and the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan—elements of which have been mobilized against Khartoum for decades—found themselves in a precarious and frustrating position, isolated from their former southern allies and under the enduringly harsh and undemocratic rule of the NCP.

They started the rebellion with the stated hope of toppling the NCP and transforming government institutions in ways that will reflect the country’s diverse population. “We want to build a system in which citizenship, not ethnicity, is the basis for inclusion,” Malik Agar, the former governor turned rebel commander in Blue Nile State, told me during a tour of the battlefield. To achieve this goal, the rebellions in both Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan commenced and grew, as did the Sudanese government’s heavy-handed response. The intensification of fighting led to a mass exodus of civilians and a dire humanitarian emergency in refugee camps along the southern side of the new border between the two countries.

During my travels to the border region, I observed the terrible human consequences of this fighting in the gaunt bodies and upended lives of civilians caught amid the warring forces. Those remaining in the combat theaters cower in riverbeds and other lowland shelters, their eyes fixed on the skies from which Sudanese bombers sow terror. They are too frightened to cultivate their land and, as a result, face acute food shortages. Those who have fled into a matrix of squalid and overcrowded refugee camps along the southern side of the border gain little respite. There they face scarce access to food, water, medical assistance, and shelter. In recent weeks, humanitarian organizations have reported that more than four children per day are dying in the camps—well above the emergency threshold, according to the United Nations.

Despite the severity of the circumstances, I was moved on many occasions by the humility and resilience of those I encountered in this maelstrom. In April 2012, during a period of unusually high tension and violence along the border, I sat in the Pariang refugee camp inside a sweltering tent with a group of young Nuba women. They’d walked to Pariang from their homes across the border in South Kordofan, a journey that took nearly a week. They passed Yida, the largest camp for the Nuba people, opting instead to reach Pariang, a particularly desolate and isolated destination. They did so because they heard that Pariang would be the only refugee camp to offer secondary education. However, because of a spike in violence, Pariang’s teachers had fled, leaving hundreds of teenage Nuba with no access to education.

Inside their tent, with Sudanese bombers whining overhead, the girls braid each other’s hair and lament how the war interrupted their schooling, a pursuit they consider sacrosanct. “This war has got in the way of so many things for us,” says Kauser Mousa, 17. “We’ve come to Pariang hoping to continue our education. It is the most important thing for us. It is the only way for our people to make progress,” she adds, referring to the marginalization of the Nuba people by the Khartoum government. Between brush strokes, the girls speak in measured tones about the situation around them, often finding things to laugh about. As I collect my things, sweaty and disheveled, I ask the group if I may use their remarks in my reports. “You must,” Kauser exclaims. “The world must know what is happening here.”

Two thirds of Americans believe that genocide is preventable, and almost 70 percent think the United States should act to prevent or stop genocide and mass atrocities in other parts of the world, according to a new poll commissioned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

These poll results were unveiled today in Washington D.C. at a symposium on ending genocide in the 21st century addressed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, other senior government officials, experts on mass atrocities, and leading journalists. In her keynote address, Clinton said the United States and other governments had a responsibility to act to prevent genocide “before the match is struck” even though the course of action is not always clear.

“The questions of when and how to act are difficult,” Clinton told the gathering, organized by the Museum in cooperation with the Council on Foreign Relations and CNN. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Every situation requires a tailored and careful response.”

Clinton said that the Obama administration considered genocide prevention “a core national security interest” and moral responsibility, but this was “not code for military action.” She said that “force must remain a last resort” and listed a series of other, usually more appropriate foreign policy tools, including “diplomacy, financial sanctions, humanitarian assistance, [and] law enforcement measures.”

The poll on American attitudes towards genocide was conducted by the polling firm Penn Schoen Berland on the basis of a telephone survey of more than 1,000 Americans between June 30 and July 10, 2012. According to pollster Mark Penn it showed that 78 percent of Americans support U.S. military action to stop genocide, particularly if carried out in cooperation with other governments. Fifty-five percent are in favor of some kind of military action in Syria, where more than 10,000 people have been killed in an anti-government uprising over the last year.

“Americans believe that genocide is preventable,” Penn told the meeting. He said that the political and moral calculus for intervention to prevent genocide was changing “in an Internet society where everything can be captured on a cell phone.”

The poll suggested that six out of ten Americans approved military action to stop mass atrocities in Bosnia and Libya, and would have approved similar action in Rwanda and Darfur.

While the poll showed that 71 percent of Americans believe that it is “in the U.S. national interest” to prevent genocide, and 55 percent feel that international organizations have proven ineffective, a clear majority of Americans favor multilateral action over unilateral action. Fifty-three percent of those questioned said multilateral action was the most effective means of preventing or responding to genocide compared to only 10 percent who favored unilateral action.

Several speakers, including Secretary Clinton, called for the development of a long-term genocide prevention strategy, noting that it is difficult, if not impossible, to halt mass atrocities once they have already begun. The chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Christopher Kojm, said his analysts were working on the first-ever National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to identify factors that play a role in mass violence, including scarce natural resources, economic crises, and rapidly changing technology.

Kojm said modern technology was proving to be a double-edged sword, providing ordinary citizens with the means of rapidly disseminating news about mass atrocities but also enabling governments to identify, detain, and otherwise harass dissidents. Modern information technology gives authoritarian governments “an unprecedented ability to monitor their own citizens,” he noted. “How this plays out will be one of the main topics we will be discussing in the NIE.”

Clinton took a more upbeat view of the impact of the new technology, saying it was changing the way the United States was detecting and responding to mass atrocities. She said the State Department was working on a project to detect the use of malicious software by foreign governments to target protestors “and then warn those being targeted.”

Other featured speakers included Holocaust historian Timothy Snyder and futurist Peter Schwartz who joined Kojm on a panel moderated by Washington Post Pulitzer-prize winner Dana Priest, examining the impact of economic, technological and demographic factors in causing genocide. CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer chaired a panel on new strategies for preventing genocide that included network entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa, CNN Beirut correspondent Arwa Damon, military strategist Sarah Sewall, and former U.S. special envoy to Sudan Richard Williamson.

Watch Secretary Clinton's keynote address and Mr. Penn's presentation of the poll results.

This post was contributed by Museum fellow Michael Dobbs.