Genocide Commission: Preventing Genocide is an Achievable Goal
Posted by Heather Hurlburt
It seems strange to say that the release of today's Genocide Commission report made me happy, but it did, for a couple good reasons:
First, the report asserts very strongly:
We conclude in this report that preventing genocide is an achievable goal. The idea that genocide is somehow completely unpredictable and undeterrable is one of the biggest psychological justifications for doing nothing about it.
Second, the report's recommendations are structured in such a way that they -- for the most part -- build genocide prevention and response into existing structures rather than proposing yet another set of parallel foreign policy institutions to deal with the challenge. This offers a welcome sophistication about how, if problems are linked together, so must solutions be. It also avoids buying into the let's-hype-the-problem-to-make-it-more-dramatic approach that is too often counter-productive when it seems as if nothing we do in response could ever be enough. I'm not sure all the recommendations are really workable -- and I would have likedto see the political will piece go beyond asking for Presidential speeches to recommend public education, which I think is the crucial missing puzzle piece when it comes to political will. But the steps they propose -- an NIE on genocide risks, a focus on strengthening civil society in at-risk states, strengthening civilian response capabilities and training the military for the kinds of genocide response it might be asked to assist with in the most extreme cases, and rebuilding international capabilities for cooperative genocide prevention and response -- are steps one could imagine an Obama Administration taking. (For more on how the international piece needs strengthening, a timely piece on how member state indifference is hurting UN peacekeeping, the force of last resort.)
And that brings me to the last reason I'm feeling good about this report -- we'll soon have a president who can be expected to take its concerns seriously, and who knows that his political support comes from people and groups for whom genocide prevention is a high priority.
Update: John Boonstra over at UN Dispatch starts to get into the substance.
The problem that those in the progressive community face when discussing the issue of Darfur is that they have to confront the legacy of Iraq. Those progressives, who support intervention in Darfur, need to mention that unlike Iraq, the United States will act on a multilateral basis and not unilaterally.
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