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1. What the White House and Congress Can Do to Prevent Global Mass Atrocities

Author:
Federica D'Alessandra
Publication Date:
05-2025
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Abstract:
The Unites States has long recognized that preventing and responding to mass atrocities is both a moral responsibility and in its national security interest. Commitment to atrocity prevention and response has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support, and the U.S. government has long been a global leader on the issue. In 2011, the United States was the first country to establish an interagency body dedicated to atrocity prevention. Ever since, each Republican and Democratic administration—with the support of Congress—has taken additional, important steps toward implementing this objective. In 2019, under President Donald Trump, the United States was the first country to enact federal legislation addressing global mass atrocities. The Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act mandates the White House to report annually to Congress on government-led atrocity prevention efforts. Under the act, the second Trump administration will again be required to report to Congress by mid-2025, raising the question: What is in store for the atrocity prevention agenda under Trump 2.0? This paper reviews the atrocity prevention track record of the first Trump administration and other relevant action taken so far in this second term to parse out what efforts to sustain and uphold U.S. atrocity prevention obligations could look like under Trump’s second White House. This paper highlights how a number of steps the administration has already taken, including but not limited to the recently announced reorganization of the U.S. Department of State and the effective dissolution of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), unless promptly addressed, will raise dire challenges for the readiness and capacity of the State Department and other relevant agencies tasked with operationalizing U.S. commitments to this end. Accordingly, this paper advances a number of actionable recommendations that both the White House and the U.S. Congress should urgently consider to ensure the administration stands ready and capable to fulfill its obligations under the Elie Wiesel Act and other relevant legislation.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, National Security, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

2. Improving the Use of Lessons Learned and Other Evidence for Atrocity Prevention in the US Department of State

Author:
Tallan Donine, Julia Fromholz, and Lawerence Woocher
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
There are no simple solutions to the prevention of mass atrocities. Decisions about what actions to take to address atrocity risks are invariably difficult judgment calls. Given the stakes, policy makers should make every effort to increase their chances—even if just marginally—of making wise decisions. One way to improve policy choices is to use all available information and insights that are relevant to the decision, including lessons or evidence drawn from analysis of experience or data. Virtually every report on US government efforts to prevent mass atrocities has called for greater investment in lessons learned efforts. At the same time, recent legislation and policy initiatives demonstrate that the US government is increasingly committed to using evidence in policy making across the board, including in atrocity prevention. Yet, no study has analyzed the obstacles to using lessons learned and other evidence for atrocity prevention and how they might be addressed. This report seeks to help fill the gap. This report focuses specifically on the use of lessons learned and other evidence within the US Department of State as a whole, given its lead role in developing and carrying out US foreign policy, including actions to help prevent and respond to mass atrocities. The State Department is a large and diverse institution, making it difficult to characterize the degree to which it exhibits the attributes associated with effective use of lessons learned and other evidence. Nevertheless, we identified a number of common themes across interviews with 25 former and current officials, which paint a picture of the difficulty of encouraging use of lessons learned and other evidence for atrocity prevention in the State Department and help identify potential areas for improvement. This report intends to draw attention to areas of atrocity prevention policy making that could be strengthened; it should not be read as an assessment of any particular entity within the Department.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, State Department, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

3. Civil Society-Led Truth-Seeking Initiatives: Expanding Opportunities for Acknowledgment and Redress

Author:
Eduardo González Cueva, Jill Williams, and Félix Reátegui Carrillo
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
The International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
Abstract:
This study reviews civil society-led truth-seeking initiatives in different regions of the world drawing on their experiences, methodologies, and contributions. It identifies lessons learned and best practices and presents practical options for activists considering similar endeavors. The report is inspired by and builds on the work of transitional justice practitioners, including at ICTJ, who deploy wide-ranging modalities to advance truth seeking, including oral history, artwork, theatrical productions, reenactments, museum exhibits, memorials, films, and documentation projects. The right to the truth is a fundamental component of redress for victims of massive human rights violations. Institutional silence, suppression of complaints, and refusal to acknowledge such violations further perpetuates them by protecting and enabling those responsible. In many contexts, government-supported truth commissions are not possible. Moreover, total reliance on state-sanctioned formats can result in one-size-fits-all approaches to truth seeking, devoid of creativity or potential. In the absence of political will, civil society actors have responded to demands for truth by devising and carrying out truth-seeking efforts independently, using a wide array of tools and methods. Civil society-led truth-seeking initiatives provide a practical channel by which communities can respond to demands for redress when the state fails to deliver on its obligations to protect victims’ rights. While truth-seeking initiatives can take many forms, they generally share three main objectives: (1) establish the facts about human rights violations that remain disputed or denied and validate different interpretations and analyses of those facts; (2) protect, acknowledge, and empower victims and survivors; and (3) inform public policy, promote institutional reform, and contribute to social and political transformation. Through an examination of case studies from the United States, Colombia, Scotland, and West Papua, the report highlights common considerations and procedural questions that civil society groups should consider when designing and implementing a truth-seeking mechanism. These considerations can help inspire and guide civil society actors as they lead truth-seeking efforts in the United States and around the world.
Topic:
Reform, Transitional Justice, Youth, Criminal Justice, Memory, Engagement, Reparations, Gender, Atrocity Prevention, and Truth and Reconciliation
Political Geography:
Europe, Asia, Colombia, South America, North America, and United States of America

4. Lessons Learned in Preventing and Responding to Atrocities: Organizing, Expanding, and Encouraging the Use of Policy-relevant Knowledge

Author:
Alexandra Hall
Publication Date:
01-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
“Lessons Learned in Preventing and Responding to Atrocities: Organizing, Expanding, and Encouraging the Use of Policy-relevant Knowledge” aims to improve atrocity prevention strategies by strengthening their linkages to an expanding and increasingly accessible body of policy-relevant knowledge. It is motivated by the assumption that understanding the effectiveness of different policy options should influence how governments devise strategies to prevent and respond to atrocities. However, there are at least three key challenges to encouraging the use of knowledge in policy decision-making: (1) Extant knowledge is diffuse and rarely organized in ways that respond to policymakers’ key questions; (2) There are large gaps in the existing knowledge base; and (3) Policy processes frequently fail to make use of policy-relevant knowledge, even when it exists in accessible forms. The Simon-Skjodt Center developed three distinct elements for the “Lessons Learned” project. The first element of the project is to collect, distill, and organize existing policy-relevant knowledge--defined broadly to include theoretical and empirical research as well as the insights of experienced practitioners. The second element is to help expand the knowledge base by conducting or commissioning retrospective studies of U.S. policy in relation to major atrocity crises. The third element is to analyze how lessons learned from past policy actions could be more regularly integrated into U.S. government atrocity prevention processes.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Atrocities, Domestic Policy, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Global Focus and United States of America

5. [How] Do External Actors Support Civilian-Led Atrocity Prevention?

Author:
Riva Kantowitz and Kyra Fox
Publication Date:
07-2020
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
This report presents external actors’ perspectives on how to most effectively support civilian-led atrocity prevention efforts. Recent studies suggest that civilians—working through civil society organizations, through less formal, local community mechanisms, or both—are not passive actors but, in fact, use a range of active strategies to prevent atrocities. External support can help or harm these efforts. We use case studies of three external actors—the US government, the Swiss government, and the former Nexus Fund—to understand how these external actors structure their processes to support civilian-led atrocity prevention efforts. These three actors share a stated commitment to help prevent mass atrocities, including through providing support to civil society. Their differences, including the size and scope of foreign assistance, the size of bureaucracies, the configuration of key staff roles, and the degree to which they single out atrocity prevention from other goals, allowed us to explore how these factors affected their support to civilian-led atrocity prevention. We put forward a framework, based on the conclusions from the research, to help external actors identify how to improve their support for civilian-led efforts in practice. The framework encourages external actors to engage with internal process questions such as, “How can we be more accountable to local communities?” and “What is our comparative advantage relative to other donors?” External actors should use this set of questions as a diagnostic tool to create holistic atrocity prevention strategies designed to support civilian-led atrocity prevention efforts. The report’s primary recommendation is that external actors commit their institutions to engaging thoughtfully with the different models and strategies presented, dedicating time and resources to studying their own systems and processes and thinking about how they may be re-imagined to support civilian-led work.
Topic:
Civil Society, Civilians, Atrocities, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Switzerland and United States of America

6. Fighting Fire with Fire: The Growing Nexus between Atrocity Prevention and Counterterrorism and Its Implications for the Use of Force to Protect Civilians

Author:
Colin Thomas-Jensen
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
By the fall of 2014, before the United States and its partners began the military campaign to erode the territory held by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria, the international community understood the horrors endured by civilians living under IS control. While IS leadership plotted politically motivated attacks against its enemies in the region and in the West, reports trickling out from areas under the group’s merciless grip and IS’s own online propaganda clearly indicated a grave pattern of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including violence targeted at ethnic and religious minorities; women; the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community; and other vulnerable groups. As the United States considered its response to the rise of IS, the duality of the group’s threat—an external one to Americans and American interests and an internal one to civilians living in IS-held areas—animated two communities of US policy makers that had rarely interacted with one another: those focused on counterterrorism and atrocity prevention. The US-led military operation to prevent genocide by IS against the Yazidi community on Mount Sinjar, Iraq, that President Barack Obama announced on August 7, 2014, included the first volley of airstrikes in the more-than-three-year counterterrorism campaign to defeat IS in Iraq and Syria. Important for the atrocity-prevention community, the airstrikes and deployment of Special Operations Forces (alongside humanitarian experts) to help coordinate the evacuation of civilians demonstrated an openness on the part of senior US policy makers to use counterterrorism capabilities to prevent a mass atrocity. In hindsight, however, US-led lethal action against IS fighters who threatened thousands of Yazidis trapped on Mount Sinjar was more the outcome of a unique set of circumstances than a harbinger of a more collaborative relationship between the counterterrorism community and policy makers focused on preventing atrocities committed by state actors, such as the governments of Syria, South Sudan, and Myanmar, and nonstate actors, including militia groups with little to no connection with international terrorist networks. With terrorist groups such as IS, Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin, and al-Shabaab in the Horn of Africa almost certain to continue atrocities against local populations in areas in which they operate, a fundamental question for policy makers arises. Did the extreme circumstances under which the United States and its partners decided to intervene on Mount Sinjar necessarily represent a threshold for action, or can a more normalized relationship between the atrocityprevention and counterterrorism communities be advanced—a relationship that would seek to leverage counterterrorism tools and resources to take decisive action to protect non-US citizens from atrocities while improving measures to avoid civilian casualties, including civilians killed during actions taken by US counterterrorism partners? Drawing from interviews with nearly 40 former and current US policy makers and outside experts1 , as well as a convening of 20 experts at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in June 2017, this paper explains the increasing relevance of the counterterrorism–atrocityprevention nexus and defines some of the significant challenges of closer collaboration between those communities, with a specific focus on preventing imminent atrocities. Defining when (including clearly articulated criteria for what constitutes “imminent” in this scenario), how, and under whose authority to use force to prevent atrocities against civilians is only one element of broadening a counterterrorism strategy that also includes diplomacy and countering violent extremism (CVE) efforts. 2 This paper is narrowly focused on the use of force and argues that in some circumstances, the atrocity-prevention agenda can be advanced by using counterterrorism tools—including lethal strikes—to prevent imminent atrocities against civilians in areas where terrorist groups operate.
Topic:
Counter-terrorism, Islamic State, Civilians, Atrocity Prevention, and Protection
Political Geography:
Iraq, Middle East, Global Focus, and United States of America

7. Atrocity Prevention Under the Obama Administration: What We Learned and the Path Ahead

Author:
Stephen Pomper
Publication Date:
02-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
This report is intended to provide an insider’s view on where the Obama administration’s efforts to prevent mass atrocities succeeded, where they did not, and where future policy makers who wrestle with the challenge of prevention might find useful lessons in the administration’s experience, both positive and negative. The first part of the report summarizes the intellectual roots of the Obama administration’s atrocityprevention policy, identifying the goals and expectations created by two key works—Samantha Power’s “A Problem from Hell”: America in the Age of Genocide1 and the report of a bipartisan task force on genocide prevention led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen.2 The second part of the report describes how the administration translated those goals and expectations into policy and summarizes the administration’s record on atrocity prevention. It focuses in particular on situations in which policy changes and innovations appear to have had a positive effect, however modest, and on efforts to develop new capabilities under the policy. The third part looks at the two most prominent situations in which the policy was unsuccessful —Libya and Syria. The fourth part offers an “after action” assessment of the administration’s atrocity-prevention policy, drawing from interviews with former senior officials to identify both the strengths and contributions of the policy and its most pronounced shortcomings. The fifth part offers recommendations for future executive-branch officials, legislators and staff, and civil society partners for ways in which they could help the United States improve its performance on atrocity prevention going forward. The report is in many respects a hotwash exercise. The bulk of it was written in the first six months following the end of the Obama administration, drawing from the author’s reflections on his recent tenure as senior director for African Affairs, Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the staff of the Obama administration’s National Security Council, as well as his experience as chairman of the Atrocities Prevention Board. The report also draws extensively from interviews with more than 30 former senior Obama administration officials and others with insight on the administration’s atrocity-prevention efforts.3 Finally, this report owes a significant debt to earlier reports that have also sought to evaluate the administration’s atrocity-prevention record.4 Given the brevity of the report relative to the scope of its topic, both the analysis and recommendations herein are relatively skeletal. The report is offered with humility and as an effort to add one group of recollections and perspectives to a growing historical record. It is hoped that as this record continues to develop, it will provide the next generation of atrocity-prevention proponents new and better options to confront the challenges of the future, having profited as fully as possible from the lessons of the past.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Humanitarian Intervention, Barack Obama, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Middle East, Libya, Syria, North America, and United States of America

8. From Independence to Civil War: Atrocity Prevention and US Policy toward South Sudan

Author:
Jon Temin
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
Could the civil war in South Sudan have been prevented? Could some of the violence and misery caused by the war have been avoided? Those questions are academic in some ways, as so much damage has been done. But in other ways, seeking answers is vital because patterns of violence in the 21st century suggest there will be more wars that resemble the South Sudan conflict: (a) fought within a country’s borders, (b) fought between multiple groups that regularly fragment and realign, (c) driven in part by access to lucrative natural resources and capture of state coffers, (d) with civilians often targeted, and (e) in which the lines between civilians and combatants are sometimes blurred. When the threat of such state collapse appears elsewhere—and we should expect that it will—lessons from the South Sudan experience will be valuable. This project seeks to identify some of those lessons by examining US policy toward South Sudan in the years leading up to and during the civil war. President Barack Obama’s administration placed an emphasis on atrocity prevention, and South Sudan’s civil war was the source of some of the most egregious atrocities anywhere during his time in office. The author conducted in-depth interviews with more than 30 former and current American officials (from the Obama and George W. Bush administrations), South Sudanese experts, and longtime observers of South Sudan from the think tank, nongovernmental organization (NGO), and academic communities. Through those interviews, the author sought to identify pivotal periods in US policy making, short stretches of time during which events in South Sudan compelled the United States to act—or, in hindsight, times at which the United States could have acted with greater conviction but did not. This report identifies four such periods. For each, the author seeks to identify alternative policies that could have been considered and to assess whether those policies may have been able to prevent or limit violence.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Civil War, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Africa, South Sudan, and United States of America

9. Critical Junctures in United States Policy toward Syria: An Assessment of the Counterfactuals

Author:
Mona Yacoubian
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
More than any other foreign policy crisis during the Obama administration’s eight years, the Syrian conflict has engendered enormous debate about what the United States might have done differently: Could this catastrophe have been avoided? In particular, might different decisions at critical junctures in US policy debates have diminished the level of killing and atrocities? This paper explores these questions based primarily on interviews with former US officials and nongovernmental Syria experts.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Syrian War, Atrocities, Chemical Weapons, Bashar al-Assad, Containment, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, North America, and United States of America

10. Evaluating Counterfactual US Policy Action in Syria, 2011-16: A Review of Empirical Evidence from Related Cases

Author:
Daniel Solomon
Publication Date:
08-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Abstract:
In public and policy debates about the US response to the conflict in Syria, comparisons to past responses to international cases of mass atrocity have become a fixture. In these debates, analysts use lessons from those past responses to forecast the likely consequences of US policy action in Syria or to speculate about the counterfactual consequences of actions not taken at various junctures. Comparisons to historical cases of international response provide important mental models for policy makers seeking to use specific tools and strategies to respond to the risk or occurrence of mass atrocities.2 For example, Barack Obama has said that his unwillingness to pursue military action against the government of Bashar al-Assad in response to its use of chemical weapons in August 2013 resulted in part from his dismay at the instability that followed the military operation that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) led against Muammar Gaddafi’s forces in Libya in 2011.3 For Obama, the risk that even limited military action in Syria could become “another Libya” was enough to remove a range of possible military options from consideration. Which counterfactual US actions, if any, might have prevented or mitigated violence against civilians in Syria? This paper uses a systematic review of empirical studies of international responses to mass atrocities and related phenomena to evaluate these contemporary debates about US policy action in Syria.4 The purpose of this review is to evaluate plausible alternative avenues the US may have taken to prevent or mitigate mass atrocities against civilians in Syria. This analysis centers on “minimal rewrite” counterfactuals, in which a different policy action at a specific, time-bounded juncture in the US policy process on Syria might have led to a different outcome in violence against civilians. “Minimal rewrite” counterfactuals are opposed to socalled miracle world counterfactuals, which would require significant changes to the structural or contextual conditions that shape US policy.5 The paper centers on three policy actions that the US government debated—and in some cases implemented, to a limited degree—at various junctures since the conflict began in March 2011: (a) lethal support to the armed Syrian opposition, (b) limited strikes against Syrian government targets, and (c) no-fly zones. Although those US officials sometimes debated these options during overlapping junctures, the paper addresses opposition support and the direct military options as separate phenomena. The paper uses a review of historical, qualitative and quantitative studies of related cases and policy actions to assess the extent to which these actions may have affected the scope and severity of subsequent atrocities in Syria.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Syrian War, Atrocities, Counterfactuals, and Atrocity Prevention
Political Geography:
Middle East, Syria, North America, and United States of America