A welcome effort to prevent genocide

Published: Saturday December 01, 2007

A Christian figure stand between human skulls, Aug 20, 2003 at the Ntarama church in Nyamata south of Kigali where up to 5,000 people were killed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.  . Karel Prinsloo / AP.

The world's response to genocide in our day has been woefully inadequate. In fact, it has been criminally negligent.

Holocaust and genocide education, it is true, has made people - in the United States, in Europe, and beyond - aware of the capacity of states to destroy entire groups and civilizations and of the need to respond decisively to such evil. People proclaim, "Never again." But this popular conviction has seldom translated into action.

Governments sometimes tap into this popular sentiment when they want to intervene abroad for other reasons. But they are loath to act decisively - risking lives, expending funds, straining alliances - simply because a crime against humanity is underway.

We must thus welcome the high-profile effort of the United States Institute of Peace, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the American Academy of Diplomacy to convene a Genocide Prevention Task Force.

The task force will explore early warning, pre-crisis engagement, preventive diplomacy, military intervention, and the role of international institutions. It is to issue a report in a year.

The task force, announced November 13, is chaired by Madeleine Albright, who was secretary of state while the genocide in Rwanda was underway, and William Cohen, the former secretary of defense.

It is, of course, unacceptable and ironic that each of them signed a letter opposing the passage "at this time" of the Armenian Genocide resolution in the House of Representatives. But what matters most now is where they plan to lead the task force.

Ms. Albright has said she regrets that the Clinton administration and the United Nations did not do more to stop the slaughter of the ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda. It is thus perhaps appropriate that she is looking for ways to prevent genocide in the future. The two chairs' intimate knowledge of the policy-making process and the balancing of priorities could make them especially well qualified to find ways to ensure action.

We are thus hopeful that the commission and its report will serve to change the way U.S. policy is made when confronted with the risk or reality of genocide. For this hope to be fulfilled, the task force cannot avoid looking critically at the past. Its members must muster the courage to look back and learn lessons from mistakes made by all, including broadly the United States, but also the Task Force members themselves.

The resolution Ms. Albright and Mr. Cohen opposed highlights some of what the United States has done right in the past. In looking at the past for lessons, the task force would do well to highlight - as the resolution does - the role of Henry Morgenthau, the United States ambassador, as well as American consular officials throughout the Ottoman Empire in confronting the Armenian Genocide. The role of the secretary of state and his British counterpart in raising awareness of the Genocide is also worth highlighting.

Armenian-Americans would do well to be constructively engaged in the ongoing work of the task force. If there's an opportunity to help prevent genocide in the future, we descendents of genocide survivors must assist.

Let us contact the Task Force and urge it to comprehensively and critically evaluate third-party responses to all modern instances of genocide, including the Holocaust and the genocides against Armenians, Cambodians, Rwandans, and others throughout the 20th century. Let us note that genocide cannot be prevented in the future without courageously assessing the lessons from the past.

http://www.usip.org/genocide_taskforce/index.html