MuseumDESCRIPTION:
The Museum’s John Heffernan and U.S. Institute of Peace’s Lawrence Woocher discuss the newly released report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. The Task Force was convened by the Museum, USIP and the American Academy of Diplomacy.
TRANSCRIPT:
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention. This is Bridget Conley-Zilkic. With me today are Lawrence Woocher who’s the senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace and their Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention, and John Heffernan, who is the Museum’s director of the Genocide Prevention Initiative. Thank you both for joining me.
JOHN HEFFERNAN: Thank you. It’s good to be here.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: We are to talk about a project that was organized by both the Museum, U.S. Institute of Peace and the American Academy for Diplomacy, the Genocide Prevention Task Force, whose report was released on December 8. John, what is the Genocide Prevention Task Force?
JOHN HEFFERNAN: Well, that’s a good question and it’s good to be here. First of all, at the Holocaust Museum, we seek to honor the memory of the Holocaust by responding to genocide today. We have a two pronged approach. One is to reach out to the public and educate people about mass atrocities and threats of mass atrocities and genocide around the world. But we’re also trying to reach out to foreign policy professionals and enhance their capacity to respond to and to prevent genocide. And in that vein, along with the United States Institute of Peace and the American Academy of Diplomacy, we launched the Genocide Prevention Task Force about a year ago, in November actually, 2007. And the purpose of the Task Force is really to spotlight genocide, to move genocide and mass atrocities from the margins of the foreign policy debate to the front and center. And secondly, and more importantly, the purpose of the task force and this report that has just recently been released is to provide to this new incoming administration real concrete recommendations about what they can do to prevent genocide, so that in fact we can enhance their capacity and really insert systemic change into our U.S. government that is aimed at preventing genocide.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And can you tell us a little bit about who was involved in the task force?
JOHN HEFFERNAN: Sure. As I mentioned, the convening organizations are the United States Institute of Peace, the American Academy for Diplomacy and the Museum. Task force co-chairs are Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Former Secretary of Defense William Cohen. And then we have 11 task force members: former Senator John Danforth, Tom Daschle, Stuart Eisenstat, “Washington Post” columnist Michael Gerson, former Congressman Dan Glickman, former Congressman Jack Kemp, former head of the ad hoc Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, former Ambassador to the U.N. Tom Pickering, the late Julia Taft, former Congressman Vin Weber and General Anthony Zinni. These are all people that have held high level positions and various administrations in this country and have all had in some way or another a genocide and mass atrocities portfolio, if you will. And so, their experience is very, very important and has helped inform this overall report.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And Lawrence, the task force, as John said, was created about a year ago. It’s an incredible undertaking within one year to produce a series of recommendations that ideally will change how the American government responds to threats of genocide. How did the task force go about its work?
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: Well, we did that by a combination of discussions at the level of principals, that is the task force co-chairs and the members that John mentioned and a series of expert working groups where we gathered at an expert level, another 50 or so experienced scholars and practitioners or former officials in their own right to look in more detail at the various components of what would be an effective genocide prevention system or set of policies. So we had five of those working groups starting with Early Warning.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And you were the expert lead on that group, right?
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: That’s correct. So in that group, we looked at questions around information gathering, intelligence analysis, how the U.S. government can identify where the risks of genocide and mass atrocities are greatest and how that can be used to then spur action in a preventive fashion. The second group was on early prevention strategies, how can the U.S. government engage in countries at risk before there are crises, to actually prevent crises that might escalate into genocide and mass atrocities? Thirdly, there was a group on preventive diplomacy and looking at the crisis response mechanisms with the U.S. government. How can the U.S. deploy the kinds of integrated and coherent strategies drawn on diplomatic and economic and other kinds of tools to halt and reverse escalation towards mass violence? Fourth, we had a group that looked at military options. And here, we were keen to look not just at military intervention which is the most commonly discussed option, but really the whole range of ways in which military assets can be used to support prevention and response strategies to genocide and mass atrocities. Finally, we had a group that looked at international action and how the U.S. government can work in partnership with others in the international community and strengthen international norms and institutions.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And Lawrence, beyond the expert working groups, who else did you consult with?
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: We consulted quite widely with, I think, 200 some odd independent voices, current U.S. government officials from all the important executive agencies, officials from other governments, international organization officials at the U.N., the African Union, the European Union and the like, and then quite a large group of independent scholars and NGO practitioners.
JOHN HEFFERNAN: In addition to what Lawrence said, we have gone back to many of these people that we consulted with early on and shared with them what we were sharing with you today in terms of the key themes and key recommendations. And we’re asking people particularly NGOs, advocacy NGOs, to take on some of these recommendations as part of their advocacy agenda for 2009. We simply can’t do this alone.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And what were some of the key findings of these expert groups?
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: Well, first we found that the U.S. government does not really have a coherent government wide policy on preventing genocide and mass atrocities. Past responses to perceived threats of genocide and mass atrocities have tended to be ad hoc as a result. Sometimes there have been effective measures taken, but these have relied largely on individuals who’ve taken it upon themselves to fight through a bureaucracy without an overarching policy framework, without significant, dedicated capacity within the government or clear lines of responsibility. So we then found that that there’s a need to think through how we can establish both high level priority signals from the very top through the bureaucracy as well as establishing some dedicated capacity and institutional mechanisms.
Another important finding was related to international partnerships where while there is quite a strong recognition that international partners are extremely important, that the United States shouldn’t and cannot take this charge alone. There’s, I think, not a clear understanding of who the range of partners is and what kinds of capacities they have and how the U.S. can work most effectively with those kinds of other actors.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And what are some of the major recommendations that the report makes to the next administration?
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: I think first is that the incoming president and his senior officials need to demonstrate that preventing genocide and mass atrocities is really a national priority. This is not just a humanitarian concern but it threatens both American values and real significant American national interests. So the report calls on the incoming president to demonstrate a real national priority by things like an early executive order, by discussing this in the State of the Union Address or other significant public statements, and then ultimately developing a government wide policy which would provide this kind of overarching framework, which could be operationalized through a presidential directive.
That is, I think, the first and sort of central component. We imagine that a lot of the specific recommendations would be pieces of what this new government wide policy would look like. A very important piece of that we would see as creating a new inter- agency mechanism, which would regularly review the best analysis of where the greatest threats are and coordinate preventive action across the most relevant executive agencies. So that’s what we’re calling an atrocities prevention committee, which would be based at the National Security Council to have a direct line to the White House.
We’re also then calling for increased funding and investment in prevention. We found that the overall amount of U.S. government resources going into prevention oriented activities is too limited. Secondly, that it’s allocated in a way that does not allow for flexibility to respond to emerging, unforeseen crises. So the task force calls for a $250 million annual additional appropriation in something they call a genocide prevention initiative, which would be largely through existing foreign assistance mechanisms, but also and importantly, reserving $50 million of this new appropriation for urgent investment in off-cycle projects to halt unforeseen contingencies.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And the report is obviously geared for a foreign policy professional audience. What should the general public know about this report? And that’s a question for either of you.
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: I think that one important thing for the public to know is that the debate as it’s framed publicly when situations around the world show signs of escalating to genocide and mass atrocities tends to be kind of an all or nothing debate, which we found to be really a false dichotomy. The debate tends to be around well, we either can send in 50,000 troops and put an end to this or we can stand by idly and do nothing. And that we found actually just to be wrong. There’s actually a wide range of things the U.S. government at can do--intermediate steps which are much less costly or risky than a large scale military intervention. That can have a real impact in reducing risks and stopping these kinds of crises. The way that debate is framed not only is just wrong on the merits but impedes sort of effective debate at the political levels as well as in the broader public.
JOHN HEFFERNAN: The other thing that we’re saying in this report is not necessarily the general public but the public writ large, particularly NGOs working on the ground or NGOs working here in Washington that have access to information sometimes, particularly humanitarian NGOs who are on the ground and have sometimes the best information possible, should also be a part of this process in terms of providing intelligence and information that the government can actually work with. One of our recommendations is to bring all of these resources together so that the government can rely on its own intelligence but also outside intelligence.
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: Can I just add one more point on the public side?
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: Sure.
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: All recommendations in the reports save one or two—[are directed at] some part of the U.S. government. But there is actually one which is directed to the American people at large. The task force urges them to continue to try and build a permanent constituency for prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. In recognition of the real impact that citizen activism has made in the Darfur crisis in particular but the power they have to influence the ways in which our government responds to and prioritizes these kinds of issues.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: And one final question. As you set out on this project, both of you-- it’s been a year now, were there any things that came up that surprised you, that you learned about genocide or about the government responds to it, additions that this report makes to our body of knowledge of how genocide happens and how we respond?
JOHN HEFFERNAN: I think one of the surprises that I found is, and Lawrence mentioned it earlier, is that there really is a lack of coordination with the U.S. government, that we have a lot of these entities, a lot of components within various agencies that have a genocide and mass atrocities portfolio, that a lot of people just simply don’t even talk to each other. And the other thing is that based on these recommendations, I truly believe that preventing genocide is achievable. It is achievable. But obviously not only do you need to implement these types of recommendations that we’re talking about but there needs to be the political will among decision-makers, policymakers in the United States as well as around the world to actually take this up as a key issue.
LAWRENCE WOOCHER: I think one of the interesting things is the ways in which the kinds of changes that we recommend for the U.S. government to more effectively prevent genocide and mass atrocities are also the kinds of changes I think you would look to for the U.S. to address the whole wider range of what you might call nontraditional foreign policy challenges or security threats. To effectively respond to threats of genocide and mass atrocities, the U.S. government needs to be paying attention to parts of the world that we have not traditionally paid very much attention to. We need to work more effectively with a wide range of international partners. We need to be flexible and kind of nimble in our responses and able to respond rapidly as circumstances on the ground change. These are the same kinds of things that you would need to effectively deal with, you know, global pandemics, threats of terrorism, organized crime and a whole range of things that are also pressing on the agenda. So to me that’s an encouraging thing, that this really does represent an important moment of opportunity not only for this agenda but for the broader agenda.
BRIDGET CONLEY-ZILKIC: John, Lawrence, thank you both for being with me today. And I will also say the full text of the report is available on the Museum and USIP and the American Academy of Diplomacy’s websites. And I encourage all of our listeners to take a look at it and be a part of helping us get those recommendations implemented. Thank you.
JOHN HEFFERNAN: Thank you, Bridget.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
