The Simon-Skjodt Center’s update to the Tools for Atrocity Prevention resource indicates some advances and continuing gaps in understanding how to use different policy tools to help prevent mass atrocities.
Atrocity prevention practitioners have long called for greater investment in lessons learned efforts. The Simon-Skjodt Center’s new report outlines the challenges to the use of lessons learned and other evidence in atrocity prevention policy making at the US Department of State. It offers specific recommendations to advance priority goals given the strong legal and policy mandates already in place.
Thinking about strategies—how a set of actions will yield impact—should help policy makers increase the likelihood of preventing mass atrocities. The Simon-Skjodt Center’s new report offers a framework to encourage thinking holistically about which prevention tools used together are likely to have the greatest impact.
Rising political instability in Chad since the April 2021 death of the country’s longtime president has sparked concern of increasing mass atrocity risks. This instability risks worsening underlying and interrelated dynamics across the country. Urgent action is needed to respond to these risks.