In commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum designated Stories of Freedom: What You Do Matters as the theme for Days of Remembrance 2010. Among the events the Museum held was an interview conducted by Sara Bloomfield, Director of the Museum, with Assistant Secretary of State Mike Posner. Posner addressed the challenges of fighting anti-Semitism and responding to genocide today. Assistant Secretary Posner complimented the work of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, which the Museum helped convene, and discussed progress that the Obama Administration has made in implementing the recommendations of the Task Force report.

Here are some highlights from that evening:



Read the full event transcript.

On Sunday morning, April 11, Sudanese began arriving at the polls to vote in their country’s first multi-party elections in 24 years. In the days leading up to the election, however, the number of candidates vying for office became considerably more limited.

Less than two weeks before the elections, on March 31, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) withdrew its candidate for Sudanese presidency, Yasir Arman, and, a week later, all of its candidates in 13 out of the 15 northern state elections. The SPLM cited election irregularities and the conflict in Darfur, which prevented anything approximating a free and fair election there. The SPLM stated its intention to participate only in parliamentary and local elections in the disputed Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states. The decision to drop out of the presidential race marked a decisive and poignant end to the South’s erstwhile dream of fighting for a reformed and united Sudan — the vision that SPLA leader John Garang carried to his death.

The day after SPLM’s decision to withdraw Mr. Arman, leading opposition parties in the north, including the popular Umma party, announced a full boycott of the elections.

Although Bashir seeks the legitimacy that befalls an elected leader, his likely victory has now been tainted by the boycott and continued reports of election irregularities. The logistics of the election have been exceedingly complicated. In order to participate in all national, parliamentary, and local elections, voters in the north have to vote eight times over the next few days and those in the south 12 times. On the second day of voting, the election commission announced that polls would be extended by two days to accommodate delays in delivering ballots papers to all 17,000 centers around the country.

Joseline was 17 when genocide came to her village in Butamwe in central Rwanda in April 1994. As Hutu men and boys -- men and boys that Joseline had grown up with -- began killing and raping their Tutsi friends and neighbors, Joseline ran into the tall grass around her village. For three days, she hid there until the fields were set ablaze.

Waiting until evening when the smoke masked the moonlight, Joseline fled. And survived.

The only surviving member of her family, Joseline returned to her village after the genocide. In 1999, as a 23 year old mother of two, with only a primary school education, she campaigned in the new government's first elections and won the position as head of development in her village. Her third child, Christian, was born seven years after the genocide into what his mother hopes is a safer world.

On April 7, we mark the 16th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. We honor the courage and strength of individuals like Joseline, who survived immense tragedy determined to help rebuild their country. And we remember the more than 500,000 who could not -- their lives cut short during the 100 days of genocide.

We know that the future can be different for Joseline, her children, and peoples around the world who might be targeted because of who they are. Visitors to the Museum and web site users from as far away as Beijing and Moscow have made personal pledges to help meet the challenge of genocide. How will you take action?

View Joseline’s story through photographs, listen to eyewitness testimony about Rwanda from journalists and rescuers, and learn about efforts to record the oral histories of survivors.

Learn more about the history of the genocide in Rwanda and what is happening today.

After visiting Chechnya on a fact-finding mission last month, British parliamentarians Jo Swinson and Frank Judd described the human rights situation in Grozny as "sinister and very disturbing." From 1999 to 2003, Judd was rapporteur to the parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe on Chechnya. He resigned from this position in 2003 in protest of the Chechen constitution referendum, which he believed was rigged and which ultimately gave Chechnya more autonomy, but stipulated that it remain firmly a part of Russia. Later that year, Judd explained the disappointments that led to his decision during a program at the Museum.

Returning to Chechnya for the first time since then, Judd acknowledged the extensive reconstruction in the formerly war-ruined capital city of Grozny, but he also voiced concerns about ongoing violations of human rights, including extra-judicial detention centres, disappearances, pressure on witnesses, and house burnings. The U.S. State Department's 2010 annual human rights report reached similar conclusions.

While in Chechnya, Judd met with Tanya Lokshina, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) researcher, and her colleague from the Russian human rights group Memorial. In an online piece that also poignantly recalls the passion and commitment of murdered human rights defender Natasha Estemirova, Lokshina describes her discussions with the British MPs:

We tell him about the paralyzing fear, that people are afraid to say anything against the authorities and that on the whole relatives of people kidnapped by law enforcement and security agencies under President Kadyrov's de facto control no longer even complain because any attempt to seek justice by talking to journalists or appealing to the General Prosecutor can have irreversible consequences for the whole family. Members of alleged militants' families are persecuted. They are beaten up, their houses burnt down and their sons kidnapped. Collective punishment and extrajudicial executions are promoted on Chechen TV by the highest-ranking officials in the republic.

Lokshina's vivid description about the strained atmosphere in Chechnya comes just weeks after Freedom House issued a press release criticizing statements made by the ombudsman -- the very man responsible for safeguarding human rights -- in Chechnya. In an interview published on January 11, 2010, the ombudsman "made a series of highly accusatory statements, alleging that Memorial was using facts about human rights violations to 'destabilize' the situation in Chechnya..."

Memorial temporarily suspended its operations in Chechnya after Estemirova's murder. In the meantime, others have courageously stepped in to help fill the void, working in a mobile group on a shift system. Although it was a lesson that hardly needed emphasis, Estemirova's murder reminded the world once again that investigating and documenting human rights violations in Chechnya can be deadly dangerous work.

In just a little over one month, Sudan will face its first major elections in 24 years.

They will be held for six levels of government, including the presidency and the national legislature. The presidential election requires an absolute majority vote (50 per cent plus one) in the first round. If none of the candidates receive this majority, there will be a second election: a run-off round. The major presidential candidates include President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir from the controlling party in the north, the National Congress Party (NCP), and Yasir Arman from the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Delivering the opening remarks at the political parties summit in southern Sudan, former Burundi President Pierre Buyoya, representing the African Union Panel on Darfur, remarked, "The challenges of building democracy and development from the ashes of war are great indeed."

A significant political milestone in their own right, the elections are a pivotal step on the road to meeting final implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the two-decades civil war between the north and the south. The conduct and outcomes of the elections will indicate the future direction of the nation, as it begins a difficult year in the lead-up to the 2011 referendum on southern independence. While many challenges lie ahead -- including resolving the status of the oil-rich border regions between the north and south -- the elections next month present many of their own concerns.

Violence, displacement, and political marginalization are still a reality for many of Sudan's citizens, and several ongoing issues threaten the viability of the elections.

To learn more about the issues surrounding the elections (including the national census, the restriction of political freedoms, and ongoing violence), read the full entry here at situation updates for Sudan.

Earlier this month, two grenade attacks occurred nearly simultaneously in Kigali, wounding at least 16 people. Last month, a similar attack involving a trio of explosions killed one person and injured 30. Rwandan authorities blamed the earlier attack on former army chief Lt. Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, who resigned as Rwanda's ambassador to India in late February and fled to South Africa in exile. Naymwasa denies the allegations and accuses the government of branding him as a member of the opposition.

These episodes of violence -- and the subsequent trading in accusations -- evokes a larger context involving two important developments in Rwanda:

Congolese rebel and former Rwandan ally, Laurent Nkunda, who has been under house arrest in Kigali for 14 months, is expecting to learn on March 26th if the Rwandan Supreme Court will decide to hear his case. And, for only the second time since the 1994 genocide, elections are due in Rwanda at the end of the summer. President Kagame's record of providing stability and economic growth, coupled with forceful control of the nation's political environment, has increased expectations that he will secure reelection. The government has been criticized for its intolerance of dissent. Reporters Without Borders ranks Rwanda 157th out of 175 countries in its press freedom index. Eritrea, Somalia, and Equatorial Guinea were the only African countries that received worse rankings.

Last month, Human Rights Watch called attention to the increasing intimidation of opposition parties and their members. HRW writes, "The Rwanda government and the RPF have strongly resisted any political opposition or broader challenge of their policies by civil society. On several occasions, the government has used accusations of participation in the genocide, or 'genocide ideology', as a way of targeting and discrediting its critics."

It is difficult to accurately gauge who is behind the grenade attacks or their intentions, besides causing injury and fear. Nevertheless, the attacks present real threats as the population -- still divided in many ways by the legacy of the genocide and war -- prepares for a major election.

Today, the world marks International Women's Day. Cities and nations all over the world take the day to celebrate the achievements of women and call attention to the challenges that they still face.

Some of these challenges are especially critical. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, gender-based violence is one of the most prevalent features of the ongoing conflict in the east. In Darfur, Sudan, the violation of rape is further compounded by the virtual lack of aid and support for survivors. In October 2009, researcher Bec Hamilton wrote about the disappearance of services for women in the wake of the Sudanese government's decision to expel and then slowly reinstate international aid organizations in Darfur. She wrote:

And, in [aid agencies'] absences, no one has been willing or able to rebuild Darfur's delicate patchwork of medical, psycho-social, and legal services for survivors of... gender based violence. "Since the expulsions, our main concern is for the women," one Darfuri leader in a sprawling camp for internally displaced persons, or IDPs, told me, as we took cover from the harsh desert sun under tattered plastic sheeting.

International Women's Day offers a dedicated opportunity to refocus on critical, often overlooked issues facing women today. Please follow the links below to access additional resources and learn more.

One Night, One Voice: Spotlighting Rape as a War Crime: A U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum event

Gender-based Violence and Genocide: A podcast with Kelly Askin

Survivors, Not Victims: A podcast with Professor Lee Ann de Reus

The Forgotten Needs of Darfur's Women: A podcast with Bec Hamilton

Women Changing Rwanda's Future: A podcast with Elizabeth Powley

A history of International Women's Day from the United Nations

Information and resources on gender equality and empowerment of women from the United Nations

From nearly 2,000 entries, Communication Arts has awarded the eyewitness interactive table in our exhibit, "From Memory to Action: Meeting the Challenge of Genocide", a winning spot in their Interactive Annual 2010!

The interactive table sits in the center of the installation space focused on contemporary cases of genocide and highlights the testimony from activists, survivors, rescuers, journalists, humanitarian aid workers, and more. With just their fingertips, visitors are able to open up and view dozens of powerful stories and dramatic photographs that emphasize the importance -- and impact -- of individual action in the midst of genocide. That's not all. Visitors are also able to save content that interests them to their own uniquely created online accounts and access it from home, allowing them to return to the stories and share the experience with others.

In awarding the spot to our eyewitness interactive table, Communication Arts judges commented:

"With such difficult subject matter this interactive does a wonderful job of utilizing the personal URL and mixed media to put the power of the journey into the hands of the user."

"A well-thought approach to bringing a challenging topic to life. The table form really helps to set the tone for the visitors that this is a communal experience and the ability for them to save content onto the cards and take the experience home with them has made this project stand out."

Even if you aren't planning on visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum anytime soon, you can still access the content -- and watch all the eyewitness testimonies -- by visiting our exhibit online.

In Foreign Policy, Mike Abramowitz, the Director of the Committee on Conscience at the Museum, and Lawrence Woocher, senior program officer at USIP, discuss the significance of intelligence chief Dennis Blair's testimony to the Senate and his emphasis on the risks facing Southern Sudan.

How Genocide Became a National Security Threat: And what Barack Obama should do about it.

Deep into his Feb. 2 congressional testimony on the U.S. government's annual threat assessment, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair raised the specter of an unfamiliar threat -- far from the terrorism, nuclear proliferation, and cyberattacks that the rest of his discussion focused on. "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," Blair told Congress. "Among these countries, a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in Southern Sudan."

Blair's testimony was an underappreciated breakthrough. Genocides and mass atrocities have traditionally been seen by the U.S. government as tragedies, but little more. President Bill Clinton never seriously contemplated intervening in Rwanda. George W. Bush's administration insisted that the violence in Darfur was genocide, but made little mention of any threat to U.S. interests arising there. Now, Blair has tacitly acknowledged what human rights groups and humanitarians have long insisted -- that mass killings are not only moral issues, but are threats to the national security of the United States. And in the world of politics, that subtle shift could make a big difference.

Genocide's negative consequences for the United States are increasingly plain. Mass violence destabilizes countries and entire regions, threatening to spread trafficking in drugs, arms, and persons, as well as infectious disease pandemics and youth radicalization. When prevention fails, the United States invariably foots much of the bill for post-atrocity relief and peacekeeping operations -- to the tune of billions of dollars. And even as Washington is paying, America's soft power is depleted when the world's only superpower stands idle while innocents are systematically slaughtered.

This reality has become increasingly stark in recent years, and it is finally catching Washington's attention. In fact, Blair's statement was just one of several signs that Barack Obama's administration is rethinking Washington's response to genocide. This month's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), a touchstone planning document for the military, states that the Defense Department should be prepared to offer the president with options for "preventing human suffering due to mass atrocities or large-scale natural disasters abroad." Although the previous QDR in 2006 also referred to humanitarian missions, it did not contemplate responses to mass atrocities. So now for the first time, the military should begin a much-needed process of strategic thinking about preventing genocide.

Even more promising, the White House has moved quietly in the last several weeks to create a high-level interagency committee at the National Security Council aimed at anticipating and preventing mass atrocities. This committee should force policymakers to grapple with the risk of mass atrocities early on, before crises get out of control. It should take control of a process now fragmented between agencies, helping combat the bureaucratic lethargy and ad hoc decision-making that has characterized past U.S. responses to genocide.

Of course, it is reasonable to ask whether these modest steps are truly meaningful when contrasted with the complex roots and incalculable impacts of genocidal violence. Although it's true that attention and organization do not guarantee foreign-policy success, their absence makes it nearly impossible. A year ago, the Genocide Prevention Task Force, chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, produced a blueprint of practical steps that the U.S. government could take to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. And it urged just the kinds of actions the administration has taken in recent weeks.

More is needed, of course, after the administrative structures are in place. As the Albright-Cohen task force found, leadership is the "indispensable ingredient" in preventing mass atrocities. Following Blair's statements this month, Obama and his most senior advisors should send even clearer signals to their subordinates and to the international community that preventing mass atrocities advances U.S. national security interests. One immediate move in this direction would be for the National Security Strategy now being prepared by the White House to declare the prevention of genocide an important U.S. objective. The president should then give a major public speech to explain to the American people why such a new approach is necessary.

The test case for all of this could come sooner than we think, as the Obama administration navigates the grave risks posed to civilians in Sudan. With violence down in Darfur and a peace treaty in the works between the main rebel group there and the government in Khartoum, Sudan no longer makes front-page headlines. But the situation for civilians across Africa's largest country is no less dangerous in the coming years, not least because 2.7 million Darfuris continue to live in displaced-persons camps. Moreover, north-south tensions, still boiling after decades of civil war, will come to a head over the next year. National elections in April and a referendum next January on southern independence could rekindle the mass, often ethnic violence that has plagued the country since independence in 1956.

Obama spoke of his commitment to do "everything we can to prevent and end atrocities like those that took place in Rwanda, those taking place in Darfur" at the Holocaust Days of Remembrance ceremony last April. Fulfilling his commitment will mean, among other things, personally engaging his special envoy for Sudan, the State Department, and the Pentagon to forge a strategy to prevent a foreseeable catastrophe.

The top intelligence officer of the United States is now on record warning of possible genocide. Is the rest of the administration up to the task?

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.