Innovation from the grassroots up

Consider for a moment if the Holocaust were known as “the
humanitarian crisis that occurred in Germany before and during the
Second World War.” This label ignores the nature of the
victims, the crime, and the criminals. And well-meaning citizens of
future eras could assume that preventing another such crisis required
only increasing the capacity of humanitarian organizations—when in fact
preventing another Holocaust requires stopping the growth of certain
sorts of regimes, and intervening when such regimes pursue programs
that can only be called evil. Longer term, it requires rooting out
racism and ethnocentrism and stopping the use of these scourges by
exploitative leaders.

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
was the single most important element of international law to be
adopted in response to the Holocaust. It was intended to be the
embodiment in law of the commitment “never again.”

Unfortunately, the result has been “never intervene” rather than “never again.”
The Convention apparently has never been used to prevent a genocide.
According to my reading of history, and fact checking in the
comprehensive book on Genocide written by Samantha Power of Harvard, no US president has ever intervened to stop a genocide in the 55 years since the Convention was adopted.

What we do is punish the criminals after the fact. We currently have
local trials going on in Rwanda, a show trial in the Hague of Milosevic
(now on recess because of his ill health) and we look forward to the
trial of Saddan Hussein, as well as to that of Charles Taylor of
Liberia. All will likely be convicted of crimes against humanity. So
what? Public trials after the fact may absolve our consciences
(falsely, I believe) but they do not protect victims nor do they deter
future genocides.

In order to protect people and deter genocide we need to:

(1) Be willing to make use of the Genocide Convention: invoke it, and to threaten to invoke it in order to deter evil regimes;
(2) Embrace the Convention’s mandate to intervene to prevent genocidal
situations from reaching full tragic proportions: Invoke the Convention
on the basis of indicators of intent and means to commit genocide. Do
not be limited to genocide fully accomplished.
(3) Establish agreed-upon operational criteria for determining when a situation is genocidal.
(4) Establish a trusted, independent body to study situations that
appear to be genocidal, with the power to find facts, enter contested
territory, and interview victims.
(5) Establish a forum and process for deciding whether a situation is
genocidal. This would not have to the UN Security Council—it could be a
council of the US government. Indeed, every major nation could have
such councils.
(6) Establish in advance resources for military in addition to
humanitarian intervention to prevent or stop genocide. This must be
done by nations, because NGOs do not have the resources, mandates or
international legal protections to set up military forces.
(7) Pick a “next test case” and intervene. In so doing we (a) set a
precedent for intervention, (b) show potentially genocidal regimes that
we are credible agents of intervention—and thus to be feared if
appropriate, (c) develop our capabilities for intervention and for
post-intervention reconstruction.

Which brings me to Darfur and Sudan. There is no better test case for intervention, for the following reasons:

(1) The situation in Darfur clearly meets the test of genocide.
Jennifer Leaning and Physicians for Human Rights have developed “indicators of genocide” and collected data to show that Sudan is in violation.
(2) The need is great. The regime has proven itself brazenly
untrustworthy for two decades, as well as over the past two weeks. It
will continue genocide until intervention happens, or until its
genocidal aims are met.
(3) Sudan is no Iraq. It has a small military, and uses primitive
methods to accomplish its genocidal aims—essentially, engineered mass
migration and famine. Thus the military intervention itself would not
be expensive, and could be accomplished by African peacekeeping forces
paid for by either the UN or the United States.
(4) The post-conflict humanitarian intervention will be less expensive
after military intervention than without it because the world will be
able to safeguard aid workers and supplies and prevent theft. In
addition, local resources can be brought to bear, such as using the
Sudanese national railroad to transport food.

President Bush will take a truly historic step of world leadership if the US government labels Darfur a genocide.
Human Rights enforcement will never be the same. A new Bush Doctrine,
of prevention of crimes against humanity, will stand alongside the
doctrine of prevention of terrorism.

Finally, protection of human rights and prevention of terrorism go hand in hand.
Afghanistan and Iraq were guilty of human rights violations for years.
Sudan harbored Osama bin Laden during his time of greatest innovation
and development. North Korea is both a human rights violator and a
rogue nation. Liberia destabilized western Africa and destroyed decades
of economic and social progress. Intervening to stop genocide is the
first step in being able to stop human rights abusers from enacting a
wider range of crimes. And stopping nations that are human rights
abusers may turn out to be an important step in ripping up the roots of
terrorism.

Both Kofi Annan and Colin Powell—as well as Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International—are ducking the use of the term “genocide.” They
prefer not to venture into uncharted waters of international law and
intervention. They prefer the status quo of slow diplomacy and UN
Security Council resolutions—and perhaps eventual UN peacekeeping
forces. Unfortunately, the past shows clearly what happens under the
status quo: nothing.

If we seek prevention, we have to try something new. To date we have not prevented a single genocide in the past 55 years. The Genocide Convention exists for our use. Please let us invoke it.
We will make history—and we perhaps will save a few hundred thousand
lives in Darfur. As important, we will take our first true steps down
the path to being able to experience, rather than just say, “never
again.”

Update: The Scotsman has a signed editorial today that is complementary to the above essay. An excerpt:

It has taken me years to realise how much words in
diplomacy do matter. Take the phrases used by the world’s politicians
and power brokers about the situation in Sudan’s Darfur region. Here’s
a selection:

“The world’s most serious humanitarian crisis”; “horrific”; “a
catastrophe”; “terrible crimes have been committed”; “an epic
humanitarian crisis”; “ethnic cleansing”; “massive violations of
international humanitarian law”; “overwhelming evidence of atrocities”
…

You get the drift. But the one word not being used is “genocide”,
despite the confident assertion by Andrew Natsios, director of the US
Agency for International Development, that a minimum of 300,000 black
African Darfurians, at best, and more than a million at worst, will die
as a result of the attacks on them by Sudan’s Arab, Islamic
fundamentalist government, its armed forces and Janjaweed militias.

It is now agreed that the slaughter in 1994 in Rwanda of 800,000
Tutsis and moderate Hutus by government militias was genocide. The
masterminds of the Rwanda genocide are being tried for precisely that
crime at an international tribunal in Tanzania. At what point, you
might ask - between 300,000 and 800,000 deaths in Darfur - will
genocide be declared? Who decides? We also know now that the Muslim
oppressors of Darfur have set up precisely the same kind of rape camps
as the Serbs established in Bosnia. Will genocide be declared when
someone can catalogue 20,000 Darfur rapes?

In 1994, as the full horror of what was happening in Rwanda
filtered through to Washington, the State Department was ordered not to
use the “genocide” word: the UN Security Council followed America’s
lead and also avoided using it. The end result was humanitarian aid
instead of effective police action: the international response veered
between indifference and a compassion that was not translated into the
kind of action necessary to stop the killing.

For daily (and sometimes hourly) updates and information on Darfur
and Sudan, as well as background reading, click to
http://passionofthepresent.org

It would be wonderful for John Kerry or John Edwards to make a
statement condemning the genocide in Darfur Sudan, and asking for
strong UN peacekeeping action.  This would go far with several
important communities, including African-American Christians,
progressive Jews, and southern and western white missionary-oriented
Christians who have been championing this cause.  More important,
it could begin to lay out how a truly pragmatic and moral foreign
policy might work under president Kerry.  Sudan is a prime example
of the “gap regions” where future terrorism and other problems
breed–and that many on both sides of the fence see as our principle
security challenge.  See the comprehensive daily site following
the genocide in Darfur and Sudan, http://passionofthepresent.org, for
more information.

The panel discussion CRISIS IN SUDAN: THE FAILURE TO RESPOND was
held yesterday afternoon July 7 at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard
University. The panel and discussion went on for more than two and a
half hours, and involved about 150 people.

The panelists and audience were extraordinary. Here are some notes
that will give you at least some flavor of the discussion. Where I have
good enough notes to quote, I do. Otherwise I offer close paraphrases:

JENNIFER LEANING

Prof. of Int’l Health, Harvard School of Public Health, and recently
returned from Chad-Sudan border on mission for Physicians for Human
Rights

“We need to operationalize the concept of genocide. We need
to agree on indicators of genocide, which we can then apply in crisis
situations in order to act in time.” According to Leaning, indicators
of genocide are met in Darfur. For example, in Darfur the
attacks are systematic and consistent, suggesting central
orchestration. The attackers move across regions in a pattern that
indicates an overall intent to put a population on the run. The attacks
include comprehensive damage aimed at destroying the long-term
sustainability of populations, including burning town structures,
poisoning or otherwise destroying water sources, destroying orchards
and crops, and killing and stealing livestock.

The pattern of destruction in Sudan parallels that in the
government-promoted famine of 1998, and in other similar actions in
South Sudan over the past twenty years.

There are people at high levels in the administration who
want to take action, but they need more detailed insights into how to
do it. I believe that some of us should pool our knowledge and help
provide ideas. [See below Eric Reeve’s comments about nationalizing the
Sudanese railway, and liberating concentration camps—which were a
direct response to this suggestion.]

LIZ WALKER
Award-winning television journalist, news anchor, Harvard Divinity School student
My Sister’s Keeper

I speak today for my colleagues who are in South Sudan. Earlier this
afternoon I spoke with Gloria White-Hammond, my friend and the founder
of My Sister’s Keeper, who is stranded in the rains after visiting
several villages in which we have projects.

We have made a priority of working with women. Women have
experienced unspeakable trauma—gang rape, genital mutilation, murder of
their husbands and families. In many cases they are now bearing and
rearing the children of rape.

There is no question that this is genocide. The situation in the
South and in the West, that is Darfur, may differ in timing, but the
government tactics are the same. This has been going on for years.

I have covered Sudan numerous times on television, and I
speak about it everywhere I go. But there is real resistance to hearing
it. This has been a story that is difficult for Americans to listen to.
People seem to glaze over when I speak.

We have a problem of inaction that we must solve.

ERIC REEVES
Sudan expert and activist, Smith College

“We need to understand that this regime is experienced in
manipulating the international community. It knows how to get what it
wants from the Arab states, from the UN, and indeed from the African
Union.” It is expert at using delaying tactics, at stretching out
negotiations, and extending the period within which it can carry out
its murderous plans. It has engineered famines before, and is doing so
again. This is not new behavior. It has been going on for 20 years and
the government-engineered social collapses in the South killed more
than two million people.

“We need to understand that it is already too late for Darfur. The
genocide has already been put into motion. It cannot now be stopped,
only mitigated.”

The situation is clearly a genocide. No one will call it that.
Understand why. To do so commits signers of the genocide convention to
take action “to prevent and to stop” genocide. No nation has ever found
it easy to invoke this.

We need to put together a comprehensive understanding of the
conditions in Darfur, so that we know what intervention must look like.
For example, to feed people in Darfur we will need to import more than
35,000 metric tons of food per month, for about 18 months. This cannot
be accomplished by air or truck. The right answer seems to be to
nationalized the Sudanese railway line running from Port Sudan to the
interior. This is the sort of thing that a forceful humanitarian
intervention would need to do.

Also, the “camps” that the government runs in Darfur really
cannot be called anything other than concentration camps. In many such
camps people are being held against their will, and are being
intentionally starved. So an intervention will need not simply to
protect refugees, but also to free them from government imprisonment.

[Mr. Reeves publishes a twice-weekly analysis of the Sudan
situation, distributed as an email. We will be adding it as a feature
of http://passionofthepresent.org.]

ADOTEI AKWEI
Amnesty Int’l USA’s Advocacy Director for Africa

“We need to speak of action. Others before me have documented the destruction.”

We hear that 350 monitors and their protective force has been
authorized for Sudan. But we must realize that little or nothing is
happening on the ground.

“At this time there are only about 30 cease-fire monitors in the
area, and they have no means of travel from the areas where the
government has dropped them. Thus there is no monitoring going on now.”

We need not only effective cease-fire monitors, but human rights
monitors/investigators. There have been no charges of human rights
violations against any person during the entire year and a half of the
current crisis. We need human rights monitors who can travel, take
testimony, collect evidence, and pursue not only militia members but
members of the Sudanese armed forces.

But we need much more than monitoring. We need strong intervention.
There are really two options before us: Unilateral intervention, or
intervention by the United Nations and the African Union, using African
troops with UN blue helmets. It is unlikely that the United States or
any other nation with the capacity to act unilaterally will do so. It
is more likely that the UN will authorize a peacekeeping force. We need
to press hard for an enabling resolution at the UN Security Council
that will make way for a peacekeeping force.

KRISTA RIDDLEY
Deputy Director for Policy, Oxfam America

Ms. Riddley asked that her comments be off-the-record.

AMBASSADOR JOHN SHATTUCK, Moderator, President & CEO, John F. Kennedy Library & Foundation

[In the 90’s Mr. Shattuck was Assistant Secretary of State for
Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. While serving in this position, Mr.
Shattuck worked to end the war in Bosnia and negotiate the Dayton Peace
Agreement; establish the International Criminal Tribunals for the
former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.]

“As someone who has worked in government and taken input and support
from those in the public, let me first say that the fact that we are
having this meeting will have an impact.”

Second, remember that many in government want to act. But they need support, encouragement, and information.

“For example, if you want to help, visit or contact the
offices of Kofi Annan and Colin Powell in the next week or so to
express your support for strong action. This will be particularly
effective if you can represent some organization that they recognize
and respect. For example, if a group from the American Bar Association
would visit Colin Powell, this could make a real difference.”

We need to learn the practical politics of making human rights a priority.

THE AUDIENCE

I can’t begin to do justice to all the contributions from the
audience–I made several good connections and expect to bring several
people to our attention in later posts.

An important and heated discussion broke out when one audience member pointed out that Amnesty International USA has not yet agreed to call the situation in Darfur a “genocide”–despite
a mid-May formal request by Phil Villiers, a long-time member and
participant in the Director’s Leadership Council of AIUSA. Indeed,
subsequent discussion after the meeting revealed that Human Rights Watch has avoided anything stronger than “ethnic cleansing,”.
Note that Jennifer Leaning’s organization Physicians for Human Rights
calls the situation a genocide, as does Liz Walker’s My Sister’s Keeper
and associated groups.

In a consideration of the causes of inaction, perhaps one of the causes of inaction is this very unwillingness to call the crisis a genocide.
By playing into the definition of Darfur as a “humanitarian crisis” or
even “ethnic cleansing” NGOs and human rights organizations become
enablers of the game of denial and delay being pursued by the Sudanese
government and their allies. If human rights organizations are not
going to call genocides genocides, who will? Who in the “second
superpower” of civil society is better equiped to make such a
determination?

As a world community, we prosecute war crimes after the fact. We
create the Holocaust Museum. But where do we get the courage and the
honesty to call a genocide what it is while it is being perpetrated and people can be saved?
We need to be able to do this. The labeling of a situation a genocide
forces action. Declaring “genocide” is indeed the only single solution
to inaction. There are of course many other important ways to take
action, but this one action–labeling a situation a “genocide”–should
under international law trigger a whole constellation of subsequent
actions to prevent and/or stop the genocide in real time.

This would seem to be Eric Reeves’ point in emphasizing the strong consequences that are compelled by such a finding. It
is not true that “the label doesn’t matter.” If that were true, at
least some political leaders would use the term genocide. The reason
that no one does is no coincidence. No one apparently is willing to
trigger real, preventive, protective action under the Genocide
Convention.

Shame on these leaders and shame on the human rights
organizations who abdicate their responsibility as the relevant civil
society experts, and who also refuse to call the situation a genocide.
If there is one thing they should be pushing it is the correct labeling
of this tragic genocide. This label, more than any other single
contribution, would lead to action.