Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, emphasized -- above all other parallel risks -- the potential for mass killing or genocide in South Sudan. His analysis came as part of the Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Blair discussed the definition, triggers, strategies, and recent cases of mass killing:

The mass killing of civilians -- defined as the deliberate killing of at least 1,000 unarmed civilians of a particular political identity by state or state-sponsored actors in a single event or over a sustained period -- is a persistent feature of the global landscape. Within the past three years, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sudan all suffered mass killing episodes through violence, starvation, or deaths in prison camps. Sri Lanka may also have experienced a mass killing last spring: roughly 7,000 civilians were killed during Colombo's military victory over the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), according to UN estimates.

The risk for mass killing is driven by the presence of ongoing internal conflict or regime crises, combined with relatively poor socioeconomic conditions, international isolation, recent protest activity, discriminatory policies, or frequent leadership turnover. In such contexts, mass killings are typically deliberate strategies by new or threatened elites to assert state or rebel authority, to clear territory of insurgents, or to deter populations from supporting rebel or antigovernment movements.

Looking ahead over the next five years, a number of countries in Africa and Asia are at significant risk for a new outbreak of mass killing. All of the countries at significant risk have or are at high risk for experiencing internal conflicts or regime crises and exhibit one or more of the additional factors for mass killing. Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan.

Blair's statement fulfilled a recommendation presented in the final report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, which the Museum convened with the U.S. Institute of Peace and The American Academy of Diplomacy. The report offered a blueprint for improving U.S. government response to threats of genocide and mass atrocities and included the following recommendation: "The director of national intelligence should initiate the preparation of a National Intelligence Estimate on worldwide risk of genocide and mass atrocities."

Blair's focus on the risk for mass killing or genocide in southern Sudan reflects growing international concern for Sudan as the nation approaches presidential elections in April and the 2011 referendum for southern independence.

Blair also emphasized to the Senate Committee the principal challenges to stability in the Balkans and highlighted several worrying signs in Bosnia:

I remain concerned about Bosnia's future stability. While neither widespread violence nor a formal break-up of the state appears imminent, ethnic agendas still dominate the political process and reforms have stalled because of wrangling among the three main ethnic groups. The sides failed to agree on legal changes proposed jointly by the EU and the US at the end of 2009, undercutting efforts to strengthen the central government so that it is capable of taking the country into NATO and the EU. Bosnian Serb leaders seek to reverse some reforms, warn of legal challenges to the authority of the international community, and assert their right to eventually hold a referendum on secession, all of which is contributing to growing interethnic tensions. This dynamic appears likely to continue, as Bosnia's leaders will harden their positions to appeal to their nationalist constituents ahead of elections this fall.

We've recently published two new online galleries focusing on Darfur, Sudan and Srebrenica, Bosnia. Although the photographs emphasize the realities of very different conflicts, they reveal common experiences of trauma, loss, and displacement in the aftermath of genocide.

The first gallery displays images taken by Mark Brecke in Darfur, Sudan at the height of the violence in 2004. Brecke traveled to refugee camps in eastern Chad and behind enemy lines in Darfur with the Sudanese Liberation Army. His film, They Turned Our Desert Into Fire, documents his experiences and communicates the stories of voiceless victims.

In the second gallery, photographs by Tarik Samarah in 2002 illustrate the legacy of genocide in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serb forces killed an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys following the fall of Srebrenica in 1995. In an attempt to hide the evidence of these murders, Bosnian Serb authorities later moved many bodies to secondary and even tertiary mass grave sites. In the process, the remains of bodies were separated and sometimes mixed together, making the subsequent work of international and national authorities to identify them extremely difficult. Samarah's photographs convey the deeply human consequences of these actions.

With the power to capture the complexities of life in a single image, photography plays two unique, distinct, and tremendously important roles in genocide prevention and response. Photographs provide visual evidence so the world can know and remember; they also allow us to understand. By looking at a photograph, we bear witness to the emotions, relationships, and implications of that single moment. In the words of photographer, Ron Haviv, this "time to contemplate, time to absorb, time to put yourself into that situation" has the potential to influence a human being to not only reflect, but also act.

Our website includes an online gallery with hundreds of photographs from regions as diverse as Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya. The gallery also includes images taken by USHMM staff on bearing witness trips to Chad, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In November 2006, during an event called "Darfur: Who Will Survive Today," photographs taken in Darfur and Chad by eight different professional photographers were projected on the facade of the Museum. These photographs include the work of Ron Haviv and are displayed in two albums inside the online gallery.

Tomorrow, July 11, marks the anniversary of the start of the 1995 genocide at Srebrenica. On this day, newly identified remains are reburied at the Srebrenica Potocari Memorial and Cemetery.

Faced with the seemingly impossible task to locate, recover, and identify so many missing people, the International Commission of Missing Persons (ICMP) has made steady progress, helping to identify 12,518 individuals in Bosnia, roughly half of whom are Srebrenica victims. Just this past May, forensic experts investigated a newly-discovered mass grave in Bosnia where they found 12 Srebrenica victims. About 70 mass graves around Srebrenica have been found since the war.

Watch eyewitness testimony from Bosnia, learn more about Srebrenica, and make your own personal pledge to take action against genocide.

John Heffernan discusses his recent trip to the Congo and the importance of genocide prevention in an editorial piece published on May 22 in the Huffington Post:

Last week, the United Nations Security Council traveled to Ethiopia, Rwanda, Congo and Liberia to discuss Africa's hotspots -- areas that are threatened by genocide and mass atrocities. In a report on preventing genocide, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen make the case for why preventing and responding to genocide and mass atrocities is in the moral and strategic interests of the United States. The 140 page report lays out 34 recommendations to point out a choice between doing nothing and embarking on large-scale military interventions. A recent trip I took to the Great Lakes region of Africa dramatically illustrated why this "blueprint" should be taken seriously, and why U.S. leadership is so important in this area.

In the dirt courtyard outside the United Nations-funded hospital wing, in the war-affected border city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I met Jean Paul, his tiny legs barely holding up his small torso. Inside the white stucco building, other children from the nearby displacement camp were not so lucky as they clung for life, skin hanging off their bones. Jean Paul, who had the most endearing brown eyes, managed to muster enough energy to lift his little hand to give me the internationally recognized high five. Although he appeared to be on the road to recovery, this child of war, who looked to be no more than two years old, held up five fingers when I asked him his age. Jean Paul, a vivid reminder of the consequences of the horrific human toll exacted by mass atrocities and genocide inflicted by man, may also be a reminder of humanity's capacity to prevent such episodes; episodes in which tens of millions have lost their lives over the last century.

I have seen it before in Darfur, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo and most recently Rwanda and Congo, the direct assault on human values through systematic massacres, forced displacements, mass rapes and the plundering and destruction of homes, wells, crops, livestock and assets meant to sustain life. I know how these horrific acts destroy lives and livelihoods. But these most heinous crimes, genocide and mass atrocities, also threaten U.S. national interests, and we must be better prepared to prevent them.

In Rwanda today significant problems persist, but with assistance from the U.S. and other international donors, the country has worked hard to recover from one of the most brutal massacres of modern times. While vigilance is required to prevent repetition of the past violence in Rwanda, neighboring Congo, a huge country where the Rwandan genocide sparked successive wars involving 7 neighboring countries and resulting in an estimated 5.4 million deaths in the last ten years, needs worldwide attention to help end the reoccurring violence.

Evidence of the spillover effects of the Rwanda genocide were nowhere more apparent than in the displaced persons camps just outside of Goma in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo where Jean Paul lives - camps that the U.S. and other international donors have been supporting since 1994. While aid to Rwanda and Congo supports many important reconciliation and emergency relief projects, early preventive action would surely have been less expensive and could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

There's a pattern. We know from past examples that genocide and mass atrocities in one country fuel threats in other weak and corrupt states, and can prompt the type of long term conflicts that know no boundaries. In Rwanda, with refugee flows spreading to Congo and beyond, the international community, including the U.S. was called on to absorb and assist displaced people, provide support for a massive and ongoing humanitarian relief effort. The longer we wait the more exorbitant the price tag. In Bosnia alone, the U.S. invested an estimated $15 billion to support peacekeeping forces in the years since we belatedly intervened to stop the atrocities.

What's needed in these cases is early, high-level attention, facilitated by standing institutional mechanisms within our own government, and then strong international partnerships that can form the basis for effective and coordinated action. We need a comprehensive prevention approach that begins with early warning mechanisms, and involves early action to address high-risk situations, timely diplomatic responses to emerging crises, and greater preparedness to employ military options when those are required.

The genocide prevention report clearly lays out a way forward, starting with the recommendation to create an interagency Atrocity Prevention Committee to analyze threats of genocide and mass atrocities and that warning of these threatened acts be an automatic trigger of policy review. Moreover, the report calls of an investment of $250 million - less than a dollar for every American each year -- in new funds for crisis prevention and response.

We know that the long-lasting consequences of genocide and mass atrocities are enormous. Reconciliation after the fact is possible and essential, but if we shift our focus to prevention rather than response, lives and livelihoods will be saved and threats to our national interest will be mitigated. But, as the Genocide Task Force report emphasizes, for it to work, leadership is the indispensable ingredient. Leadership from the president, Congress, and the American people --, nothing is more central to preventing genocide and mass atrocities. Time is not on the side of Jean Paul. We owe it to him and the millions like him, to make genocide prevention a priority, now.