In a landmark agreement, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which seeks to keep weapons out of the hands of would-be perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, or other war crimes. To achieve that objective, the ATT will establish regulations for the international arms trade and mechanisms for combating illicit weapons sales.

A key element of the treaty requires arms-exporting countries to assess the likelihood that transferring weapons would contribute to violations of international humanitarian and human rights law. If it concludes that the arms would be used to commit genocide and mass atrocities, then the transfer will not be authorized. The ATT also encourages signatories to work cooperatively to prevent weapons from being re-directed to parties other than the intended recipient.

“There is an urgent need to prevent those who are bent on committing the world’s worst crimes from acquiring the means to do so,” said Michael Abramowitz, Director of the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. “To the extent that this treaty is able to block perpetrators’ access to weapons, it deserves policy makers’ full consideration.”

Read the Arms Trade Treaty.

The outbreak of violence between Buddhists and Muslims in central Burma last week indicates that there is “considerable risk” of further sectarian violence in the country, according to United Nations Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng. Noting that the recent riots, which claimed dozens of lives, followed on widespread violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Arakan state last year, Dieng called upon the Burmese government on March 25 to take immediate measures to stop the escalating sectarian violence and hold those responsible accountable. These measures “must address not only the immediate consequences of the current violence but also the root causes of the problem. Failing to do so can have serious future consequences which the international community has solemnly promised to prevent.”

On March 28, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, emphasized the need for immediate government action “to stop the violence from spreading to other parts of the country and undermining the reform process” in Burma, which is also known as Myanmar. Repeating Dieng’s call that those responsible for acts of violence be brought to justice, he added, “I have received reports of State involvement in some of the acts of violence.” The government strongly rejected this accusation.

The violence in central Burma reportedly began March 20 with a brawl between Buddhist customers and a Muslim shopkeeper in the town of Meikhtila. Over three days, Buddhist mobs burned mosques and Muslim shops and homes in the town. Attacks against mosques and Muslim-owned properties subsequently occurred in other towns. Government sources report that 42 persons died in the violence, while 37 religious buildings and 1,227 residences were damaged or destroyed.

The attacks on Muslims in central Burma echo the violence in Arakan state that, beginning last June and continuing into the fall, principally targeted members of the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority. Members of the ethnic Arakan Buddhist majority have destroyed numerous Rohingya communities, killing at least 180 and displacing more than 100,000. Unlike the Rohingya, however, who lack legal status and most basic rights in Burma, the Muslim victims of last week’s violence have long been recognized as Burmese citizens.

Read Special Adviser Deng's statement.

In June 2012, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum expressed grave concern about the escalating violence in Syria and warned that the increasingly sectarian nature of that violence could, if unchecked, lead to genocide. In the nine months since then, the number of Syrians displaced or killed has increased nearly tenfold and war crimes and crimes against humanity are becoming ever more common, with many victims targeted because of their religion. The United Nations estimates that to date, at least 70,000 Syrians have died, and there are approximately one million refugees.

The Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide asked Syria expert Ambassador Frederic C. Hof, Senior Fellow of the Rafik Hariri Center of the Atlantic Council, to prepare a paper on the risks for genocidal violence in Syria and how those risks might be mitigated. In Sectarian Violence in Syria’s Civil War: Causes, Consequences, and Recommendations for Mitigation, Ambassador Hof examines the likeliest scenarios for Syria’s future and concludes that genocidal actions are indeed a possibility in the worst case scenario.



Hof warns, moreover, that this scenario is becoming ever more likely the longer the conflict lasts. While the Museum does not endorse specific policy prescriptions, including those in Ambassador Hof’s paper, we hope that the urgency of its findings will help motivate the international community to move swiftly to protect the Syrian people from further sectarian mass atrocities and possible deterioration into genocidal violence.

Read the Museum’s statement on the study.

Read the full paper.

Read a Washington Post op-ed by Ambassador Hof in which he discusses the tough policy decisions the U.S. faces regarding engagement and support for the Syrian opposition.

In a recent blog on the Huffington Post, Susan Benesch, the Museum’s Edith Everett Genocide Prevention Fellow, discusses the myriad of campaigns and initiatives Kenyans and the international community put in place to prevent violence during the March 4 elections. Benesch views these efforts as largely successful, but cautions that a number of factors could render this peace temporary while the country awaits the Supreme Court’s ruling on challenger Raila Odinga’s petition to invalidate the tally. In fact, since the election, the peaceful messages of election week have been replaced by angry, threatening messages aimed at certain ethnic groups.

Read the blog post.

One of the most senior of the Khmer Rouge leaders on trial in Cambodia for the mass atrocities committed in that country between 1975 and 1979 has died. Ieng Sary belonged to the inner circle of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and, as Cambodia’s Foreign Minister, was one of the few public faces of the brutal regime that was responsible for the deaths of up to two million Cambodians, between one quarter and one third of the population. He died Thursday in Phnom Penh at the age of 87.

The Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide recently conducted a “Bearing Witness” trip to Cambodia to attend the trial of the last surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge in the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia, the ECCC. This tribunal, which is a joint UN-Cambodian operated court, has faced challenges since its inception. Among the greatest of these has been the length of time that has elapsed between when the crimes were committed and when those alleged to be responsible were finally brought to account for their acts. Unlike other recent tribunals, such as the courts in The Hague for the former Yugoslavia and in Arusha for Rwanda, which convened relatively soon after the atrocities committed in those countries, the ECCC only brought the defendants into the dock more than three decades after the crimes with which they are charged.

Elizabeth Becker, a journalist who covered the Khmer Rouge for the Washington Post and author of When the War was Over, was one of the experts who accompanied the bearing witness trip. She was one of the few Western journalists granted access to Pol Pot while he was in power and had interviewed Ieng Sary extensively both in Cambodia and when he represented the Khmer Rouge abroad. She said his testimony before the court would have been significant. “As Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot’s brother-in-law, Ieng Sary was part of the movement from the beginning, and had intimate knowledge of it,” Becker said. “But this is what happens when you wait 30 years to bring people to trial—this [his death before he could be brought to justice] should never have happened. Cambodians have been deprived of justice. Justice delayed is justice denied,” she added.

Read more about the Museum’s Bearing Witness trip, the challenges facing the ECCC, and the search for justice and accountability in Cambodia here.

The Task Force on the European Union Prevention of Mass Atrocities delivered its assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the EU’s ability to respond to mass atrocities. This effort in many ways parallels the work of the Museum co-sponsored Genocide Prevention Task Force (GPTF), which in 2008 put forward a blueprint for U.S. policymakers to detect, prevent and respond to genocide and mass atrocities.

Initiated by the Budapest Centre for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, the European report’s recommendations seek to augment the capacities of the EU system to respond to emerging crises, and to address existing core problems that currently impede prevention efforts. The assessment recognizes that the EU has a strong self-interest in bolstering its prevention capabilities because mass atrocities negatively impact a wide range of its international priorities. As the report notes, mass atrocities reverse economic development, create refugee flows, destabilize neighboring countries and regions, and contribute to future conflicts.

The assessment also points out that the moral credibility and integrity of the EU is threatened by ineffective prevention efforts, and notes “as Europe is set to decline against other powers economically and militarily, this credibility is an important asset that can easily be damaged.” However, the EU has strong basis for strengthening its ability to respond to mass atrocities, including its existing commitments to international norms, such as the responsibility to protect (R2P), as well as to human rights and conflict prevention.

The Task Force specifically indicates the following challenges within the EU system: the lack of attention to atrocity prevention in core planning documents; the focus on crisis management rather than having a prevention mindset; the absence of a specific focus on mass atrocities while analyzing unfolding events; and limited internal and external coordination on these issues. To address these problems, the assessment outlines recommendations for incorporating prevention into planning processes, cultivating expertise in this area, strengthening warning-response systems, integrating the understanding of mass atrocities into other EU work, making mass atrocity rapid reaction capacities stronger, and coordinating with internal and external actors, including regional organizations.

These themes—similar in many ways to the recommendations for US policymakers presented by the GPTF—demonstrate how complex the challenges are for preventing mass atrocities. This assessment offers a number of concrete proposals that may enable the EU to make atrocity prevention a regular function of its institutions, and hopefully, better equipped to prevent genocide and mass atrocities in the future.

Read the assessment.

By Susan Benesch

Kenyans have every right to be impatient, since they still don't know who they elected president, after standing under the blazing sun for up to six hours on Monday, to vote. Election day generally went well, as in 2007—prior to the outbreak of post-election violence in which more than 1,300 people were killed after that election's results were disputed. This time around, despite a deadly attack on a police station in the coastal city of Mombasa by a local separatist group and reports of voting irregularities, millions of voters cast their ballots peacefully and have been waiting patiently for the results. The count has gone slowly, and finally the electoral commission announced that its electronic vote-counting system had crashed, inspiring rumors that it was hacked.

Indeed, all kinds of rumors are flying intensely. At the same time, many Kenyans—offline and online—have been diligently reminding each other not to spread rumors, to stay calm, and to keep the peace. "One People, One Nation, One Destiny," reads one of many tweets intended to forestall suspicion and violence along tribal lines, many of which have been broadcast on television, exponentially increasing the impact of those online messages.

Humor abounds as well. "At this rate, the Vatican will choose a new Pope before we Kenyans get our votes counted," groused one tweet. This has bolstered patience while thousands of Kenyans have stayed home from work since the election, glued to the TV as announcers intone the numbers of votes won by each local candidate in each local race, on and on and on.

On election day itself, a man painted "Wanted—Peace Alive" on the tarmac of a road near a polling station. The news media have joined in the effort in many ways also: the top Kenyan newspaper, "The Daily Nation" ran this banner front-page headline on Election Day: "Never Again."

The government and innumerable NGOs have also formed something of a "peace industry," blanketing Kenya with peace advertising, but quite a bit of it is spontaneous. It's impressive and inspiring. I have never seen such a mindful, collective effort to forestall violence.

Now the electoral commission is manually compiling the results and we are all waiting. Kalonzo Musyoka, the running mate of Raila Odinga, one of the two leading candidates for president, suggested today that the election is being rigged, and charged that the electoral commission has broken the law by evicting political party representatives from the tallying center. Musyoka did add, "This is not a call for mass action" and said his coalition is committed to the rule of law.

Kenya's political leaders—especially the leading candidates—must be extremely careful of what they say when the electoral commission announces its results. (That should happen sometime between tomorrow and Monday, the deadline under the law). They have every right to protest irregularities, especially if might swing the results of the election, but heated accusations could also easily inflame tensions again. They must not squander the tremendous effort to maintain peace, by the Kenyan government, by innumerable local and foreign NGOs, but far more importantly by the admirable Kenyan public themselves, or as they are known here, the wananchi.

Susan Benesch is currently serving as the Edith Everett Genocide Prevention Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By Susan Benesch

One can hardly take a walk, turn on a TV, or even visit YouTube in Nairobi now without being bombarded by peace propaganda—rainbow graffiti murals, ads by soccer stars, PSAs, prayers, and of course a music video, “Rufftone and the GSU,” in which rows of troops from Kenya’s General Service Unit sway fetchingly in their combat fatigues and red berets, singing “let hatred not finish us…we forgive and love each other.” The GSU is a paramilitary force that deals with Kenyan civil disorder, for example by beating up students who demonstrated for multiparty elections a few years ago. Kenyans are keenly hoping that the GSU will be able to stick to singing during the national elections today.

Kenya’s presidential vote is taking place in the tense shadow of the last one in December 2007, when more than 1,300 people were killed after the incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, was abruptly declared victor in a televised announcement. Within an hour, Kibaki was sworn back into office and his government shut down all radio and television broadcasting. On the same afternoon, SMS messages began popping up on Kenyan cellphones, falsely reporting that one of Kibaki’s political opponents, a member of a rival Kenyan tribe, had been killed. Almost immediately, bullets began flying along with frightening rumors. By the time the violence finally ended more than two months later, some 500,000 people had fled their homes to escape neighbors who had turned on them. International mediators including former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had persuaded Kibaki to form a coalition government with Raila Odinga, who still believes Kibaki stole the presidency from him.

This time Kibaki, now 81, has chosen to retire but Prime Minister Odinga is running for president again. Odinga’s new opponent is Uhuru Kenyatta, who is neck-and-neck with Odinga according to polls, even though Kenyatta has been indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity stemming from his alleged role in masterminding the post-election violence of 2008. Kenyatta says he fully expects to win the office that he considers his birthright (his father Jomo Kenyatta was the country’s first president after independence). He is so sure of the outcome that a Kenyatta campaign billboard in Nairobi seems to offer to spare Kenyans the bother of conducting the election. Using a slang term for “president” it reads, “It is decided—prezo Uhuru!” Odinga also professes to be so confident of winning that if he is not declared the winner, he has said, it will be because the election was rigged.

The language and behavior of the two men is dangerous, since one of them must lose, and the contest is so close that it would be easy for either one of them to persuade his supporters that he—and they—have been cheated. They know that they are playing with fire and that no peace mural or video can succeed unless Kenya’s political leaders preserve peace as well.

Susan Benesch is currently serving as the Edith Everett Genocide Prevention Fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By Peter S. Canellos

The piles of bones and faded, tattered clothing that fill the Nyamata Church, about an hour outside of Kigali, Rwanda, tell a vivid narrative, of terrified Tutsis clustering into a Catholic church, believing that its sanctuary would protect them from Hutu militants, as it had once before, but would not again. The skulls piled in the Buddhist memorial at Choeung Ek, in Cambodia, convey a similar sense of horror, as does the muddy trail through the former rice paddies known as the "killing fields." But the Cambodian narrative isn't nearly as clear as Rwanda's.

Determining what, exactly, motivated the mass killings under the Khmer Rouge government, from 1975-1979, and marked certain victims for death is an ongoing source of exploration among global human rights activists. While religion and ethnicity played some part in singling out those who were targeted, particularly among the Muslim minority known as "Cham," they weren't the dominant criteria: Anyone educated and perceived to be in the thrall of Western ways was also a likely victim, even if they shared the same race, ethnicity, religion, or even family background as those who did the killing.

This, of course, has led some observers to suggest that Cambodian massacres, while crimes against humanity, don't amount to a genocide, except perhaps in the targeting of Muslims. Legally, this should be a minor distinction. The horrors felt by those who were separated from society, brutalized, and then killed for their alleged Western ways aren't materially different from those felt by people targeted for their race, religion, ethnicity, or national background. But for scholars seeking to glean a deeper understanding of what drives societies to commit mass slaughters, Cambodia presents a unique challenge. It isn't a typical case of political violence, in which a murderous dictator represses his opponents to keep himself in power, and it isn't an obvious genocide. Not surprisingly, the country itself seems not to know how to process its ongoing feels of grief and loss.

In Rwanda, the 1994 genocide remains a defining event. Almost every policy of the Tutsi-dominated Kagame government is dedicated to preventing another genocide, from its harsh speech laws punishing anyone who preaches "divisionism" or the "genocide ideology;" to its educational, health, and economic policies, which aim to bolster a unified national identity through swift development; to its sometimes brutal foreign policy, dedicated to preventing bands of Hutu extremists from reconstituting in other countries. In Kigali, those convicted of genocide-related crimes are visible in their government-issued jumpsuits, performing public works.

In Cambodia, with its murkier history, the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge are largely a submerged trauma. The government acceded to war-crimes trials, but seems reluctant to permit investigators to bring cases against anyone beyond the highest government officials and most notorious killers. After more than three decades, the wounds remain for families and individuals, but closure seems quite distant. Some people appear to be waiting for justice to be delivered in the afterlife.

Cambodians' indirect responses to their traumas of the 1970s further complicate the task of outsiders seeking to understand the roots of genocide. For every victim willing to step forward and tell his or her horrific story—and there are many, especially among the Cambodians who emigrated to the United States—there are many others suffering in relative silence. And while Rwanda has held village trials where victims can point to those who raped or abused them, or who stood by while others did, Cambodia seems uncertain about how to apportion guilt. The old saw of just-following-orders doesn't carry much weight in Rwanda, where chaos reigned. But in Southeast Asia, with a greater tradition of obedience to authority, there is more reluctance to condemn a guard captain or foot soldier for atrocities committed before their eyes.

This is not to say that there aren't obvious parallels between the killings in Rwanda and Cambodia. The fateful, if accidental, roles played by outside powers stand out. France helped prop up the Hutu-led government that ushered in the Rwandan genocide; the United States' secret bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War served to destabilize the country, making it easier for the Khmer Rouge to take power.

And there is, of course, the universality of death symbolized by those skulls. Mass killings may differ in their pathologies, but not in the emotions they evoke, be it for their victims or for outsiders whose only standing is as members of the human race.

Peter S. Canellos is the editorial page editor of The Boston Globe. He traveled to Rwanda in November, 2011, with the International Reporting Project. In October, 2012, he was part of a fact-finding trip to Cambodia organized by the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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.

Read a report about the event.

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.