One easy thing Congress can do to prevent genocide
It’s getting harder and harder for politicians in Washington to agree on just about anything these days. Congress lurches from budget crisis to budget crisis, comprehensive immigration reform has failed twice in the last ten years, and it’s looking less and less likely that Justice Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court will be filled before the next president is sworn in. But there is one bright spot of bipartisan agreement in the fractured political universe of 2016: the Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act (GAPA).
Over seventy years after the Holocaust, the United States still lacks a comprehensive framework to prevent and respond to mass atrocities and genocide.
-Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD)
GAPA accomplishes three main objectives: first, institutionalizing the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB); second, authorizing the Complex Crises Fund to finance flexible responses from USAID and the State Department; and third, requiring early warning training for Foreign Service Officers.
Institutionalizing the APB is the single biggest action Congress can take to make the machinery of the U.S. government work to actively prevent atrocities. As Savannah Wooten and I wrote in the Duke Chronicle two months ago:
In 2012, the Obama administration created the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), an inter-agency entity tasked with monitoring and mitigating mass atrocities by facilitating information-sharing and coordination amongst U.S. government officials. Each month, high-ranking officials from the Department of State, Defense, Treasury, CIA, FBI, USAID and National Security Council convene to discuss emerging crises. The APB itself has the authority to conduct early warning analyses in potential crisis zones and to recommend a coordinated, agency-specific government plan of action.
Preventative institutions and response mechanisms like the APB mark a welcome departure from the United States’ prior record of hesitation and ill-preparedness. But the upcoming presidential transition may be a time of peril for these new institutions.
As it stands, the Atrocities Prevention Board is only a temporary entity within the U.S. government rather than a permanent structure. To permanently institutionalize the APB and solidify the United States’ commitment to preventing genocide and mass atrocities, Congress must act.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of a broad coalition of advocates —among them STAND, Peace Alliance, Humanity United, Enough Project, Jewish World Watch, United to End Genocide, Friends Committee on National Legislation, and the #TogetherWeRemember movement—GAPA has secured bipartisan support from a total of 17 Senators (and counting).
I’m honored to join my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to enhance our nation’s ability to detect the early warning signs of atrocities, which can ultimately help protect at-risk groups and save innocent lives.
-Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC)
Now that we at #TogetherWeRemember are approaching our annual name-reading for genocide remembrance, it’s vital to aid these genocide prevention efforts. Indeed, supporting GAPA is one way to make sure that more names aren’t added to our list. Congress has a unique opportunity to make sure that atrocity prevention doesn’t slip through the cracks as we transition from one president to the next. It is time to act.
Special thanks to GAPA’s many co-sponsors, especially to Ben Cardin and Thom Tillis for taking the lead, as well as to Richard Burr, the latest Senator to co-sponsor the legislation. From the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate the work Congress is doing to make the world a better place. (And there’s a sentence you don’t hear every day!)
