 Good morning everyone, name virtual welcome to you. My name is Philippe Louvre-Martin and I'm the Director of Governance, Justice and Security here at USIP. Assistant Secretary Natali, Assistant Secretary Madison, Ambassador Tan, Deputy Assistant Secretary Gillan, Mr. Kate, Mr. McKennell, Ms. Kikkohler. We're very happy to welcome you to USIP this evening, even if we cannot do so in person. The United States Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, that it's practical and essential for US and global security. We do not only believe that peace is possible, we're actively dedicated to making peace possible wherever we work around the world. We pursue this vision of a world without violent conflict by working on the ground with local partners. We provide people, organizations and governments with the tools, the knowledge and training to manage conflicts so that conflict doesn't become violent and we work on resolving conflict when it does. In a seminal speech delivered at the White House in 1999, Eddie Visel warned us against the dangers of indifference. He noted that indifference can be tempting that it is always easier to look away. He noted also that indifference is particularly dangerous because it reduces victims of atrocities to mere abstractions. He warned us that indifference always benefits the aggressor, but never the victims. USIP is deeply committed to ensuring that we never succumb to the comfort of indifference when we face atrocities. It is in that spirit that this virtual event co-hosted by USIP and the State Department's Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations bring senior officials together to discuss the US government's actions to implement the Eddie Visel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018. USIP's commitment to atrocity prevention goes back a long way. Along with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the American Academy of Diplomacy, USIP served as a co-chair of the Genocide Prevention Task Force in 2008, which laid much of the groundwork for the government's atrocity prevention policy today. In addition, USIP has designed trainings for US government officials on atrocity prevention and research peace-building tools that may support atrocity prevention efforts. We currently partner with the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum to research the linkages between atrocity prevention and cross-cutting criminal justice issues to support justice sector actors and better incorporating atrocity prevention into their work. So we're very pleased to have members of the Atrocity Early Warning Task Force with us this morning to discuss their work to improve US policy on atrocity prevention. The Eddie Visele Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 underscored the commitment of the US government to institutionalizing never again. In the years since the Act's passage, the Atrocity Early Warning Task Force has worked to embody this commitment. Yet, much remains to be done to ensure the safety of civilians and communities that risk for atrocities. In countries like Burma, China, Iraq, and South Sudan, marginalized groups and civilians continue to face the risk of atrocities committed by state and non-state actors. So we hope this panel will honorably evaluate the work that has been done, but also the work that will happen moving forward to mitigate atrocity risk. I would now like to introduce Assistant Secretary for State for Conflict and Stabilization Operations, Dr. Denise Natali, who will provide introductory remarks. Dr. Natali and the bureau she leads serve as the task forces secretariat, coordinating the task forces work and helping to advance its priorities. Following Dr. Natali's remarks, Ms. Naomi Kikohler from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum will introduce her panelists and lead our discussion. Dr. Natali, once again, thank you for joining us and over to you. Can you hear me? Mm-hmm. Okay, I'd like to share the story of Sarah Goldseltwe, who was awarded the Department of State's International Women of Courage Award this year. Sarah Goldseltwe, I'm muted. Okay, just a second. Okay. Go ahead. Sorry, I'm not muted. I'm not muted, we're good. Are we good? We can hear you well. You can hear me. Sarah Goldseltwe, excuse me, was born in LA Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, China. She attended medical university and worked as a doctor, a teacher, an education director and headmaster. In July, 2016, Sarah Goldseltwe and her family attempted to move to Kazakhstan, but the Chinese Communist Party confiscated her passport and prevented her from going with her husband and children. From November, 2017 to March, 2018, Sarah Goldseltwe was forced by the Chinese Communist Party to teach Chinese to ethnic minority people in a detention camp. In March, 2018, Sarah Goldseltwe fled to Kazakhstan to avoid being sent back to the camps where she feared she would die. Subsequently, Sarah Goldseltwe became one of the first victims of the world to speak publicly about the Chinese Communist Party's repressive campaign against Muslims, igniting a movement against these abuses. Her testimony was among the first evidence that reached the broader international community of the Chinese Communist Party's repressive policy, including both the camps and the coercive methods used against Muslim minorities. Sarah Goldseltwe and her family received asylum in Sweden where they now live. Sarah Goldseltwe is not alone in her suffering. Her traumatic situation is one of the many human rights violations perpetrated by the Chinese government against ethnic and religious minorities. According to the Department of State, since 2017, Chinese authorities have been definitely detained between 800,000 and 1 million Uighur ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities. They're forced to live in nearly 1,200 newly constructed re-education camps or in the Chinese government's words, vocational training centers where they are exposed to heinous treatment. This administration is committed to making sure that atrocities such as these do not occur. The December 2017 US National Security Strategy affirms that the United States has a vital interest in protecting civilians like Sarah Goldseltwe and her family from atrocity crimes. The national security strategy states, we will hold perpetrators of genocide and mass atrocities accountable. President Trump has further reaffirmed that atrocity prevention is a core US national security interest. When he signed the Eli Weasel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act in January 2019, the goal of the Eli Weasel Act is to enhance the US government's capabilities and efforts to prevent, mitigate, and respond to atrocities globally. Since President Trump signed the Eli Weasel Act, the US government has enhanced its early warning capabilities and our efforts to mitigate atrocities. And I'd like to emphasize that our work and our efforts to mitigate atrocities and to implement the Eli Weasel Act differ from previous atrocity prevention initiatives. We are moving beyond studying and conceptualizing risks to taking timely actions that effectively enhance civilian security. As the secretariat for the National Security Council's Atrocity Early Warning Task Force, my bureau, the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at CSO at the State Department, is and has developed atrocity response action plans based on three lines of effort, prevention, prosecution, and prevention, excuse me, protection and prosecution. First prevention, to prevent attacks against civilians, we are using data-driven assessments to locate where atrocities are occurring at the local levels, who are the victims, the perpetrators, and identifying government responses. We're also identifying new data sources at local levels, using satellite imagery to enhance these efforts. We're closely collaborating with the interagency, including the intelligence community, as well as our civil society partners to ensure that our officers in the field have updated data and assessments on atrocity risks so that they can better target their efforts. CSO has also developed the State Department's first online atrocity prevention course, which has trained over 1,200 foreign affairs staff to date on identifying early warning indicators and taking action against potential atrocities. Secondly, our action plan protects at-risk civilians. United States is training national security forces to prevent atrocities and to protect civilians in targeted locations. Our diplomats are working to build trust and inclusive feedback loops between national security forces, local community leaders, and non-state armed groups so that we can enhance local security. We are training and mobilizing faith-based and traditional leaders to convene community conflict resolution initiatives. And we are ensuring that women play meaningful roles in preventing and resolving conflict. Conflict-related sexual violence is both an early warning sign for atrocities and atrocity crime in and of itself. Third, we are prosecuting perpetrators and holding them accountable for atrocities. This effort includes gathering data on the ground to identify the perpetrators, building the capacity of justice sectors to preserve evidence and to prosecute and applying sanctions and visa restrictions against perpetrators. Each of these lines of efforts that we have developed includes working closely with our international partners to share information and to assure burden share. It also includes using metrics and ongoing assessments so that we can assure impact is tied to clear policy outcomes. Our approach is about targeted, actionable and effective interventions. When we say never again, it must mean more than words. It must mean taking clear and timely action. Saragal's story, and I'd like to conclude, and that hundreds and thousands of ethnic and religious minorities still detained under inhumane conditions in China's re-education camps reminds us of the noble call to action for Eli Weasel, who boldly stated, we must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Whenever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion or political views, that place must at the moment become the center of our universe. Again, thank you for your leadership. Thank you for this important event that is being conducted and helping us to all work together so that we can achieve impactful results that save lives. Thank you for your participation today. Thank you very much, Denise, for that introduction and for starting us off in such a strong way to talk about the work that the task force has been doing and the implementation of the Eli Weasel Genocide Prevention Act. Every government over the last 25 years has tragically had to deal with the commission of genocide and large-scale mass atrocity crimes on its launch. This is an issue that truly is a bipartisan issue. And I think the fact that we are coming together today to talk about the work of the task force compelled in large part by the work that Congress has done to enact the act and to create reporting requirements, which is such a critical role that Congress has to play in pushing for transparency and accountability in the efforts that the US government is undertaking to advance atrocity prevention is I think a really positive sign. It's important to acknowledge the leadership that has been undertaken by the current and the past administration when it comes to actually trying to institutionalize atrocity prevention. And I do want to acknowledge not just the congressional leaders, but also each of you and those before you who've been working on trying to advance this agenda and especially to those at the working level who day in and day out seek to find creative ways to find strategies too at an early stage address early warning signs and take steps to try to help save lives. We have an opportunity to hear from a number of key principles that are leading some of those efforts over the course of the next hour or so. And I wanted to start by posing a question to the Assistant Secretary of State, Steven Gillan. Steve has a long careers of Foreign Service Officer and has worked in some of the most challenging environments when it comes to actually seeing the early warning signs and the consequences of inaction, be that from Sarajevo, Coast of Ode to more recently, Iraq. And Steve, I wanted to ask you to build on an element of issues that have been touched in the most recent task force report, but also in the 2019 report to Congress. One of the big challenges that many of us face working on atrocity prevention is how to overcome what appears to be at times a divide within not just the Secretary of State, but within many departments, true also for the United Nations and other governments as well, between the kind of regional and functional sides of the House. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what can be done to better address the difference in perspectives and also at times in the perception of the mission of the regional and functional bureaus. Morning Naomi, thanks so much, it's a great question. I want to thank also USIP for hosting me today and thank my fellow panel members who will allow me to join you. It's a great question as I said, as most of you are aware, there are both functional regional bureaus in the State Department. And I can tell you from my own experience having served in both kinds of bureaus and currently in a functional bureau that the priorities and equities and areas of focus for both are unsurprisingly very different. I'm fortunate enough to serve in the, currently serve in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, which as I said is a functional bureau. And as such, I get to advocate, working towards aggressively promoting democracy, human rights, labor globally. I've previously served in regional bureaus and those regional bureaus have a different focus, but the mission in the end is the same. The tenants that I'm advocating for as part of my duties in the DRL Bureau are central to American values and important to support, not only for reasons of our values, but also for strategic reasons. Our colleagues in the regional bureaus, and I know from my own experience having worked in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, for example, our colleagues in the regional bureaus support the same aims, but also must manage the bilateral relationships, the regional dynamics, security partnerships and a host of other concerns. Occasionally that means that a given post or embassy or country team may need to prioritize another area or equity, not to the detriment of human rights democracy, rather to focus on another facet of foreign policy. This is a very important question though, this difference of how you approach different bureaus and how you enhance one bureau's ability to get buy-in throughout the department, their particular department or agency in the US government. And understanding how to do that is, I think it's key to addressing atrocities prevention issues. My experience has been, having been on both sides of events on regional bureaus and functional bureaus currently is, in the long term, rectifying human rights violations, human rights abuses, preventing atrocities that will result in mass human rights abuses, is in the US strategic interests because it shapes our future partnerships and security arrangements moving forward. And I think my fellow foreign service officers out of post in the regional bureaus understand this in the short term, of course, we depend on you outside of US government to help bolster the relationships we have inside the department within the US government by raising attention and making those connections between the strategic relationships and the human rights abuses and potential future atrocities. But thanks again Naomi, that's a really important question. Just kind of following up on that, and I do want to just take a moment just to remind the audience that you can pose questions for when we open up to the question and answer in the chat function. Steve, one of the challenges is at times there appears to be attention as though it is an either or. And one way of overcoming that perception that there are these either ors that you can only act to advance national security interests if you forgo in some cases human rights concerns or concerns about early warning signs of mass atrocities is through enhanced training and through exposure and engagement with staff throughout the Department of State. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what some of the steps have been in a concrete way over the past year to try to ensure that officials are being trained in understanding the early warning signs to look for, understand the chains of reporting and also have a better understanding of the tools that are available to try to prevent atrocities so that we are not stuck in this constant back and forth debate over whether or not taking steps to mitigate risks might undermine other security interests. Thanks again for that follow up question. Look, I think you're absolutely right. The key to solving kind of what are, as you rightly described, tensions, albeit my experience friendly intentions with tensions among offices and bureaus, the department and agency is creating an understanding even among those who serve in the bureaus that are usually more focused on bilateral relationships, security arrangements and not as much on the human rights dimension or maybe the atrocities prevention. But I think this was part of the benefit of the capacity building kind of built into the Elie Wiesel Act. As you know, it requires atrocity prevention training for foreign service officers who will be assigned to countries experiencing or at risk of mass atrocities and our team created a class as was mentioned, now offered at Foreign Service Institute for those foreign service officers like my colleagues across both functional and regional bureaus of the department and now overseas posts. During these trainings, officers are introduced to concepts that help them recognize the patterns of escalation early warning, as you say and signs of potential atrocities and methods for preventing and responding to those atrocities. And we in Washington have to have the data and reporting to feed into the policy process. In practical terms, what that means is enabling me, people of my colleagues from the Daryl Bureau and the CSO Bureau to get with our regional bureau colleagues and say, here's the proof of what's going on and let us help you connect the dots for how it is in American strategic interest as well and the bilateral relationships interests as well to make those connections. Besides kind of the requirements of the Elie Wiesel Act is played out in the training, we've also been leading forward to in our training, atrocities prevention training out in the field in December of 2019. For example, we held the first ever regional atrocity prevention training in South Africa in December 2019, as I said, the personnel from 28 US missions, embassies around the world across Africa in conjunction with the Auschwitz Institute will prevention of genocide mass atrocities. I think these kinds of trainings alerting foreign service officers out in the field who have a special relationship with the regional bureaus which are charged with maintaining lines of communication with our posts out in the field is critical in the short run to help us in those functional bureaus that are focused on atrocities prevention. But the long run, they also created culture among foreign service officers and US government personnel writ large to be more sensitive and kind of speak the language of atrocity prevention. So when they come back for Washington assignments, they've already developed that way of communicating, presenting and making the case for stepping in as necessary out. Oh, I'm happy to say it's a great question. I'm happy to say more, but I hope that answers the question. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I think, you know, your comments kind of echo an aspiration that we and many others have that essentially what we're trying to do is make atrocity prevention wrote develop the muscle memory so that we have folks across the system understanding what to look for and how to respond when they do see warning signs. And of course, that leads to, I think a really important question about what are the assets that are available to help advance both early warning, but in those situations where unfortunately we see prevention fail, what is the response that might be possible and steps that can be taken to help protect civilians? And with that, I wanted to turn to David Kate, the director of the atrocity, a director for atrocity prevention policy in the office of the Secretary of Defense. David, it's a pleasure to be able to hear from you. I think that one of the areas that we don't often touch as much on is the role of the Secretary of Defense and DOD in atrocity prevention. And so I just wanted to start by having you describe a little bit your perspective of how atrocity prevention fits into DOD's work. Thank you very much and thank you to USIP for hosting this and inviting us. It's a great question. DOD does in fact have significant capabilities to conduct security sector reform to help prevent atrocities. Our institutional capacity building programs are at the center of our efforts to support SSR. These programs work to improve institutional functions and processes of our foreign partners. We're also increasing our efforts to build the legal institutional capacity of our partners to support the protection of civilians consistent with the law of armed conflict and human rights law. We work with partners to improve their ability to investigate incidents of civilian casualties and to establish mechanisms for effective civilian oversight of defense and national security legal institutions. One of our more SSR focused programs is likely engaged in the majority of countries in the world. Our regional centers, which seek to engage most countries in their assigned regions work to positively influence the development of partners security structures such that those structures are appropriate for democratic states. Our more focused and targeted efforts implemented by the Institute for Security Governance the Ministry of Defense Advisors Program and our Defense Institute of International Legal Studies are conducted in roughly 50 countries around the world. Since about 2006, when DOD began to provide training and equipment to partner nations program called Section 1206, we have addressed human rights in the countries whose militaries we have trained and equipped. And in recent years, we have paid even greater attention to human rights training. Current law requires that we conduct both institutional capacity building and human rights training in countries where we provide equipment and training. These SSR efforts broadly seek to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of partner nation defense and security establishments including by focusing on human rights and respect for civilian control of defense and security forces. By professionalizing defense and security forces and conducting human rights training, we can work to improve the behaviors of security forces, their respect for human rights and for civilian control of the military. So while DOD is working on a number of initiatives to improve its training of partner security forces on IHL and human rights, we also need to provide better education and training on atrocity prevention matters for our own people including on the tools the department can bring to bear. US military personnel receive training on human rights and international humanitarian law when they join their services, but this is not enough to improve our ability to engage more robustly in atrocity prevention. We plan to adapt training materials that our state department colleagues were gracious enough to provide into our DOD training. With greater awareness of atrocity risk indicators, DOD personnel will be better prepared to facilitate planning and the conduct of appropriate capacity building efforts. And I'll briefly touch on a protection of civilians as kind of a discrete topic. In FY 18, Congress asked us to provide a joint DOD and state plan for how we would build internal USG capacity to actually conduct protection of civilians related activities through our principal DOD training program. That effort is underway. We provided the plan about a year and a half ago and there are three fundamental phases. The first is kind of an internal stock taking on what capabilities we have developing doctrine and SOPs and things like that. We're in the middle of kind of phase one still. Phase two would be to conduct actual pilot programs and phase three is to think through more deeply probably what actual capabilities we have to actually conduct these events specifically targeted at protection of civilians and to make sure that we establish all the appropriate monitoring and evaluation and learn from what we're doing so that we can come back and improve our own processes. So in conclusion, DOD does have significant capabilities to engage in atrocity prevention through security sector reform. We look forward to even greater collaboration with the interagency and with our like-minded international partners to take all of this work forward. And I look forward to the rest of the panel and any questions. Thank you. Thank you, David. One quick follow-up. Do you have a timeline for the phased approach that you're referencing in regards to working with state? Because from our own experiences, even the work that we were doing in Iraq, it was remarkable to see the amount of information that DOD and your colleagues actually had about the communities on the ground and some of the unique risks that they face. So it's heartening to hear that there is more of a dialogue now about how to actually work in a coordinated manner around early warning so that that information can be shared throughout the system. So I can't comment specifically on another timeline. This is a, we're a large ship, takes a little bit of time to turn some things. I would come back to probably the atrocity early warning task force and the mechanisms, there's been a lot of energy in the last year or so to try to make sure that our interagency coordination and the atrocity early warning task force processes for ensuring that we all get together regularly and drill down on certain countries. That leads us to reach out to all of the providers of different kinds of activities within the department of defense, to our folks at embassies, to really pulse them on these things. That work has begun and I think is showing some promise certainly and will show much more in the future. Thank you for that. And I just wanna acknowledge all the incredible work that's been done by many people on advancing the work that you referenced around protection of civilians and the mass atrocity response operations work to help enhance the training and the capacity building of your own forces. So thank you very much for that. I wanted to pick up on a theme that Denise touched on, which was around prosecutions, but also the relationship between international justice and prevention and shift a little bit to Morse 10, the ambassador for global criminal justice. And Morse, I was hoping that you could comment and explain a little bit from your office's perspective, what the US approach is to going about making determinations that atrocity crimes have occurred. We've had some experience working with you and others when it has come to genocide determinations in the context of Iraq. And most recently, we were heartened to see the efforts that were taken by the Department of State to do such a thorough documentation of the crimes that have taken place against the Rohingya by the Burmese Patmada, which translated into a finding of kind of ethnic cleansing, which isn't a traditional legal term. And I'm curious, because this has been an ongoing discussion within many circles within Washington about how does the US government make these determinations? How do you see the relationship between that process and prevention? Morse? Unmuting would help, wouldn't it? So I first wanted to express my gratitude to the US Institute of Peace for convening this important meeting on this very important topic. I also wanted to express my gratitude to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum back when I was a law professor before assuming my present position, I benefited by attending your SudeKoff seminar on the prevention of mass atrocity crimes and had a couple of my now colleagues, David Mandel Anthony and Ari Basson, accompanying me in that. I wanted to say as a general proposition that an ounce of prevention can be better than a pound of cure. That is, I think, a general maxim that can help to guide us, but to go more specifically to your question about atrocity determination. I'd like to first recommend to those who are listening, one of my predecessors in this office, Ambassador Todd Bachwald wrote an excellent piece that lays out this whole subject quite capably and I would commend that work to you, but in a much shorter way and to address it partially here in this context. Let me see if I can make a few points along these lines. Making the decision as to whether to characterize the situation as a specific atrocity situation, namely as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and or ethnic cleansing, which you correctly noted is not a legal term, is a serious one. Many governments will not make such statements officially at all, preferring to leave the question to judicial bodies, particularly in the case of the three atrocity crimes. US symbol leads this question to the courts in most cases. However, on a handful of occasions, the Secretary of State has determined whether the US government should publicly characterize particular abuses as genocide crimes against humanity, war crimes and or ethnic cleansing. The process for how the Secretary makes an atrocity determination has varied over the years, but since the US ratified the genocide convention in 1988, there have been two common elements. First, there's an analysis of all the facts, including classified information that are available to the United States. There may be times when the US will spend resources to seek out additional facts prior to making a determination. Second, there's an application of the facts to law to determine if the terms are legally available. Might be useful here to note that the law here refers to US law or US interpretations of international law. So for example, if we were to review whether genocide has taken place, we would look at the federal genocide statute as well as the genocide convention, including any US understandings about the convention. There is no automatic trigger for atrocity determination. The absence of a US atrocity determination does not necessarily mean that the specific atrocity is not taking place or that the US government believes that the atrocity is not taking place. Determinations can be an important policy tool and can be useful to combat disinformation, help galvanize international support for justice and accountability, encourage humanitarian assistance, prevent further atrocities and promote respect for human rights. From my perch in the Office of Global Criminal Justice, the most important thing is that we are taking action to prevent atrocities, to bring justice to the victims of atrocities and to hold accountable those who are responsible for atrocities. A determination may be an important tool for us to achieve our goals, but is not the end goal in and of itself. Thanks so much, Morse, for that. I think that it is obviously a question and a conversation that relates very much to not just at times legal questions, as you outlined, but there is also political dimensions that often factor into the process of making determinations. And I would point people to the report that Morse highlighted. It's available on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's website and Chronicles, pass efforts by the US government to make determinations. As Morse mentioned, the US government is one of the only governments that actually at times has undertaken it, but there is no one clear kind of common approach. I think from our perspective, it is very important to call crimes by their names, but as you mentioned, we need to see a wide array of tools used to try to protect communities, especially in situations like the Rohingya where the risks remain ongoing and where the risk of genocide persists in that vein, I wanted to just ask a follow-up question around what are some of the other transitional justice tools that your office seeks to help and advance in specific cases where you do believe that atrocity crimes have been taking place? Yeah, thank you for that question. There are an array of transitional justice tools that we employ, whether it's truth and reconciliation commissions, whether it is a hybrid tribunal that is part domestic and part international and not only tries to address particular mass atrocities, but tries to build capacity for the domestic system moving forward. Sometimes these domestic systems are destroyed in the wake of a war or things along these lines. There is really an array of different things, illustration, not permitting those who have committed past crimes along these lines to old positions of trust and responsibility. But let me see if I can get into some specifics along these lines. The State Department has been supportive of a new trend in international criminal justice development of international information gathering mechanisms. In Syrian Iraq, these have taken the form of the international impartial independent mechanism also known as the triple IM responsible for the most serious crimes under international law committed in the Syrian Arab Republic since 2011. Created by the UN General Assembly in 2016 and the UN investigative team against Daesh, ISIS, that acronym is UNITAD, created by the Security Council in 2017 to collect, store and preserve evidence of ISIS atrocities that may amount to genocide war crimes and crimes against humanity. And some of this information has been used in domestic prosecutions already. To date, the department has provided two and a half million to the triple IM to help its efforts in Syria and three million to UNITAD to support efforts including one million JCG provided to UNITAD with fiscal year 2018 funds. Importantly, the department also supports a number of civil society groups including Syrian and Iraqi groups to document and analyze evidence of human rights abuses and share this evidence with the triple IM and UNITAD. While neither the triple IM or UNITAD are prosecutorial entities in their own right, the evidence each is gathering is being used, as I mentioned by national prosecutorial entities in Europe and by our own law enforcement in actionable prosecutions to help facilitate and expedite fair and independent criminal proceedings in countries that may have jurisdiction over these crimes. The work of both bodies also provide important transitional justice purposes such as memorializing atrocities and what happened to victims, possibly serving as a deterrent to other perpetrators and helping survivors feel as though what happened to them is being taken seriously. The US is supportive of commitments by our partners and allies to contribute financially to our shared goals. As you may recall around April of 2020, UNITAD and the European Union announced the EU would provide three and a half million euros to UNITAD to begin a digitization and archiving project of ISIS crimes in Iraq. UNITAD will provide technical assistance and training to Iraq to support the central government and Kurdistan regional government developing a comprehensive indexed inventory of ISIS crimes in Iraq. The contribution is the largest UNITAD has received to date and complements continued effort, continued support of accountability efforts. We also have a war crimes rewards program, another area that we work in. This unique program offers rewards of up to $5 million for information that leads to the rest transfer or conviction of certain individuals wanted for war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity by international hybrid or mixed tribunals. Over the life of the program we have contributed to more than 20 cases. Right now the program is focused on the six Rwandans still at large and won by the international residual mechanism for criminal tribunals also known as the MIKT for the rules in the genocide. One Rwandan who was designated, Phyllisian Kabuga was recently arrested in France. Kabuga was the chief financier of the Rwandan genocide and also was very much involved in the incitement thereof. Through the rewards program, we work closely with the mechanism and international partners on these cases. We also have a tip line where individuals can confidentially submit information. I might just mention that Netflix recently had a program the world's most wanted which included Phyllisian Kabuga who after being at large for over 26 years was captured. I'd like to turn also to the South Sudan. The U.S. has been clear that accountability is necessary to break the cycles of violence that plagued South Sudan. We continue to urge the government of South Sudan to work with the African Union to establish the hybrid court and the other transitional justice mechanisms provided for in the peace agreement signed just over two years ago to address the root causes of the conflict and meet the needs of victims. And finally, let me mention about the Western Balkans. Over 20 years since the end of conflicts in the Balkans, we continue to support justice for victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. We look forward to the conclusion of proceedings against three senior leaders including Ratko Mladic at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals and support the Kosovo Specialist Chambers as it moves to address the confirmation of charges in a number of cases, including a well-known case in regards to the head of state. We also support the national courts which have taken on the work of securing justice for the crimes that were not addressed by the international courts as this work is critical to promoting the rule of law and addressing the harms done to victims in conflict. Thank you, Morse, for that and for giving such a detailed overview about the type of work that you're doing to try to enhance the capacity at the local level of justice actors, which I think dovetails with the work that David and others have been talking about and feeds well into Kirsten's work. So I wanted to turn to Kirsten Madison, the Assistant Secretary of INL. Kirsten, we've had the privilege of working with your team on an initiative on how to train local security, law enforcement, and judicial actors on understanding early warning signs of atrocity prevention. One of the big challenges that we face in the atrocity prevention field is how to draw connections and find the intersection between different agendas. And one of those agendas is women peace and security. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit because it was not highlighted in depth in the last report around what some of that work looks like for your team and your approach to looking at related agendas and bringing them together. Okay, I passed the first hurdle. I found my mute button. Thanks for it. It's so hard sometimes for including us in this panel. It's such an important conversation. And I'm reminded from Morris' intervention and Steven's, INL is a programmatic organization, we're a foreign assistance organization, but there's a huge amount of work. Our work comes in the context of the diplomacy to build will and to highlight these issues that the regional bureau's lead and then thematically folks like Morris lead in a very focused way. And I think Morris mentioned civil society, that connective tissue, which DRL is really great at forming, but to civil society in countries, there's a connective tissue that has to be formed there that connects to these issues. So our work happens in the context of many other pieces of this puzzle, some of which is DRL, great diplomacy by Morris and the teams that are led by the regional bureau's. For INL, we have programming in 90 countries around the world. Many of those countries are at risk for atrocities. And our goal everywhere is to increase the legitimacy of criminal justice institutions and help them become more responsive to the needs of citizens. A truly functional justice system ensures that all citizens, including marginalized groups can be heard, can have their grievances addressed in the context of the structure of the law. So we are always working to promote criminal justice systems that equally serve all citizens, that balance public safety and the rule of law at the same time respecting human rights and sort of individual fundamental freedoms. That could be challenging in some places. And we're very conscious of the fact that the, that the often the sort of one piece of the state that citizens see might be the cops on the beat or the individuals that represent the states in their community. And that's that sort of connective point where the question of whether or not the state is seen as legitimate and whether or not those who are governed trust to have trust and confidence and those who govern them is kind of decided. So we think it's really important. In line with the women peace and security strategy, we really do just to get more specifically focused on what you've asked about. We very specifically work to promote the participation of women as police and other criminal justice practitioners. We think it improves understanding and it improves the response to crime in communities. In fact, I think the research shows that there's a very positive correlation between the percentage of women and police and reporting of crimes including sexual assault and domestic violence and policemen women are less likely to use an excessive force than their male counterparts. And I think it's absolutely critical if you're trying to address issues like sexual and gender-based violence that you have women in the system who are shaping how the system responds to those issues. And we work very closely and I know with our counterparts in partner countries to increase accountability for sexual and gender-based violence. Intercommunal sexual and gender-based violence, obviously, can be a component of atrocities. It also can be a sort of flashpoint that drives increased violence and sort of sends countries on a bad trajectory. Sometimes we meet countries where they are and where we can shape what they do and how their institutions are functioning. So sometimes our programming in this area can be specifically designed to prevent and to increase accountability or we may have to focus sort of more broadly because of where they are on building the capacity of criminal justice institutions and actors to hold perpetrators accountable for sexually and gender-based violence and very specifically to increase access to justice for survivors. So we, for example, might be educating magistrates, investigators, prosecutors, court staff, lawyers on how to conduct investigations, prosecutions, to manage trial and evidence management and engage with survivors and communities in what is a very sort of difficult and fraught area. And I think if you looked, for example, in a place like Afghanistan, you know, we have been working in Afghanistan with a goal of prevention, but also increasing accountability for sexually and gender-based violence. And we helped the Attorney General's office in Afghanistan establish, train and mentor a specialized set of prosecution units that are focused on violence against women. And, you know, that's sort of a, it's a long haul thing. You don't do that overnight. It takes a lot of dedication on our part. It takes a lot of diplomacy to bring the government forward on this when they have so many other things to focus on. But the reality is that the Afghan government has actually expanded those units across the country and that we've seen a rise in prosecutions of crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence. It doesn't, again, it doesn't happen overnight. So I think, you know, under the nest of the diplomacy and the larger goal of the US of addressing these issues, we bring the programmatic resources at the table and we try to do very practical things, long haul institution building that actually bolsters the ability, the capability and the will of governments to take this on. Thanks. Thank you so much for that, Kirsten. And we're going to such detail with the example around Afghanistan. I think, you know, with some humility, we can look at even events that have been transpiring here in the United States to see how critically important it is for there to be trust in security, in the security sector, in the rule of law and how critical that is to a functioning democracy where atrocities are prevented. So very much appreciate your explanation there and also the acknowledgement of just as with so many of the efforts that each of you have spoken about how long-term that investment is and it really does underscore why this commitment to atrocity prevention cannot be merely something that is picked up by one administration forgotten by another. We need to see the continuity of the investment in training in the capacities of the US officials but also in the partner countries and individuals and local civil society that you're working with, which is why conversations like this right now are so important, explaining what your work looks like and also the continued reporting and engagement with Congress is so critical. With that, I wanted to turn just for the kind of last set of questions to USAID before we open it up to those who are viewing and grateful to have Ryan McHannel participate on behalf of USAID. Ryan is the director of the Center for Conflict Prevention. I should say that everyone who has participated has a truly remarkable background and varied background, having worked throughout the US government and with civil society as well. I did notice, Ryan, that you worked for the Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, which has done really important work on atrocity prevention and looking at these particular issues. I wanted to talk to you and ask, because USAID plays such a critical role from an upstream prevention perspective, if you could talk a little bit more about how atrocity prevention is being integrated throughout the agency when it comes to both humanitarian and development programs to address the structural and upstream issues. Sure, so hello, I'm Ryan and I hope you can see me. But first of all, I want to say thanks a lot for Naomi and Philippe and the rest of the team. There's a lot that goes on to make something like this happen, get my bald head not shiny and things like that. So I appreciate that. Yeah, to answer your question or to sort of respond to it, it's actually a larger, it puts into perspective a larger challenge that we have as we roll out this new bureau for conflict prevention and stabilization. And I think there's, for us, there's three main challenges that we have to sort of work around, but there are several opportunities as well. So the first one of course is that, we don't have any dedicated funding specifically for this particular issue set. And so it requires a lot of creative thinking and a lot of communication about how this particular problem set, which is incredibly important, particularly on a prevention perspective, can be integrated into our work. And so it's always a challenge to raise awareness within an agency that already has such a broad mandate where so many things are already kind of crisis related and crisis response. And that's also true among our partners who do not live and breathe the sort of atrocity prevention space all the time. The other challenge, of course, is the growing urgency and the number of actual and potential cases that mass atrocities or potential mass atrocities that have been cited by others today. And we can talk about a little bit more. On the other hand, there's a lot of really interesting opportunities. The first, of course, is the leadership and commitment that this administration has shown. And as you mentioned, that's gone back to previous administrations as well. But I really wanna credit Secretary Natali and our colleagues at CSO and to see other members of the task force for that. I think that the rubric that she started with around prevent, protect, and prosecute is really useful. And so I've been scribbling on my notes, kind of reorganize my discussion around that. I also alluded to this along the way, which is that USAID is on its own internal reorganization and we've created this new Bureau for Copy Prevention stabilization, going back to what Ambassador Tan said about an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure. We're really good at throwing pounds of cure at things without focusing on the prevention. So the whole intent of that is to elevate the perspective around prevention. And I think we've learned a lot actually from the communities, including the Holocaust Museum and others, who have really been focused on prevention for longer, I think, than we have in some ways. It also better aligns with the L.A. V. Stale Act, the Global Fragility Act on Peace and Security. So there's a lot that's sort of on the table that goes into this. We depend a lot on the strong communication, advocacy, and information sharing by many of the people around the table here, obviously, but also robust advocacy and implementation from a variety of organizations, including many of our implementing partners. And it just hats off to the Holocaust Museum for the early warning project, which has affected some of our programming, which I'll discuss in a second. USAID's programs also sort of serve within the interagency as a way of ground truthing some of the reporting that we received, particularly the work that we do outside of national capitals where it can be sometimes very difficult, particularly in the COVID environment right now to get actual data about what's happening on the ground. So anyway, getting back to the question, how do we integrate? In terms of prevention, our focus is really on mitigating risks and bolstering the resilience to shocks that could lead to mass atrocities. And the programs that we run are part and parcel of our democracy, rights and governance and conflict mitigation programs that are managed by USAID's offices abroad, which we call missions. To take one example that I know pretty well in Cote d'Ivoire, the sort of atrocity risk right now is focused around a particular trigger event, which is the elections that are coming up in that country. USAID has already had a robust elections program in Cote d'Ivoire. It's focused on political transparency and inclusion. But actually as a result of the Holocaust Museum's really sort of elevating concerns around Cote d'Ivoire, we worked with our implementers there to include a component to track and counter hate speech and other dangerous communication that would indicate an early warning sign for mass atrocity. So that's one way that we're integrating that. In terms of response, again, our mission-based programs working in conflict-affected environments serve as a common platform for us to do that. There are plenty of examples of community-based early warning systems. Unfortunately, that have had to proliferate across the Sahel because of the ongoing risks of violent extremism and just generalized conflict in those countries. And then of course, in Burma, as well as support for victims of violence in South Sudan and in a variety of other countries around the world. In addition to what our missions do, we also have the specialized capability, pretty sure everyone has heard of it, the Office of Transition Initiatives, which is focused on supporting peaceful political transitions, but has also really devoted a lot of its time and energy on the concerns that we have around vulnerable communities and the potential for atrocities. And more recently, I think the focus has been on religious minorities in places like North and Iraq and Nigeria. The final aspect, while we don't really lead on prosecution for a development agency, that's not how we sort of do our business primarily, we do support recovery from mass violence and the ability of our partner nations to approach issues of prosecution and transitional justice. And you asked about transitional justice before. So just to point out a couple of points of that, we do have a broader range of development tools to promote justice and accountability as well as rebuilding social cohesion and advancing economic recovery. It's interesting, a lot of those are now tying in a little bit to COVID as well, because we're seeing the inequalities that come from COVID. But one example that I would give this couple of, one is in Ukraine, where USAID has been focusing on transitional justice for internally displaced and conflict-affected people, particularly who have been affected by the conflicts in the Donbas and Crimea regions. And that, if you think about sort of transitional justice from that perspective, it kind of hits all of them at once. If you do it well, it's a way of preventing the cycle from a sort of tit-for-tat kind of violence that goes back and forth between the perceived winners and losers as political events unfold. It's also of course a response to what's going on. And then it helps from a social perspective and from a societal perspective with recovery as well. We have similar programs actually in Latin America, actually similar, but along a similar line of complementary programs that support local organizations of members of families of people who have been disappeared or suffered from violence. And particularly those organizations that investigate disappearances and trying to use the state of the art technology like DNA investigations as a way of promoting recovery in the airline. So that's what I would say in response to that question. A lot more if you go into it. Thank you very much for that, Ryan. We are going to transition now to the question and answers from the audience. And I just wanna start by thanking USIP for the opportunity for us to engage in this conversation and to go a little bit deeper than the latest report was able to in terms of the work that the US government is doing to advance atrocity prevention. So we have quite a few questions that are coming in and I'm gonna start with one particular question which I think is very relevant because one of the aims of the LAWIS ALAC was also to be able to learn in a more specific, ideally unclassified but manner what the US government has been doing in specific countries around atrocity prevention programming. And each of you have spoken in different ways to some of the work that respective agencies and departments have been doing but the question in particular was in which countries did the United States move the needle to change the trajectory away from atrocity since 2016? It's a great question. And I am looking to see how to determine who whether I do the Socratic method and urge someone to speak up. I'm gonna start maybe by turning to Steve and Ryan to see if there is an example. Ryan, you spoke a little bit about the Côte d'Ivoire case. So why don't we start with Ryan? Thank you very much. Yeah, it's a difficult question because the fact it's hard to measure the negative of something and that's something that we all face I guess in this particular field but from USAID standpoint, we've made concerted efforts to address the underlying drivers and risk factors that make places. And so our contribution is largely as you talked about sort of upstream and also downstream period. So it's before sort of before and after and in the long over the long term which is consistent with our role as a development agency. We've tracked our impact through our monitoring evaluation and learning processes which we're trying to refine. We have a lot of engagement with our partner community on this. I think the example that sort of jumps out is in the Central African Republic where we've had concerted efforts and this is in partnership with USIP and several other organizations represented in the task force to for some concerted efforts to support early warning systems. I think this was true during the Lord's Resistance Army piece and then more recently because of the Civil War in that country or civil conflict. While CAR is still at risk, we've seen periods of improved environmental, the operational environment has improved and are tracking risk factors at a program level. And my own office, we use some of our people-to-people reconciliation funds to try to build on the peace process out there and to continue to move the needle forward. Thank you for that one, Ryan. And I think that that's an example again of just how long-term the engagement needs to be, sustained needs to be, but also the challenges that you face at various moments in terms of even understanding conditions as they evolve on the ground. We had a report that was put out from the museum by Charlie Brown that looked at the response by the US government in some of the earlier days to the most recent conflict and it also pointed to some of the challenges when you actually also don't have as strong of a physical footprint on the ground to be able to get some of the information, which leads me to a question around COVID and the implications of COVID to atrocity prevention programming, but also to data collection. And maybe in that regard, I'll turn to Steve for your first initial thoughts there. Well, thanks so much for that. The COVID is obviously proposing a challenge to all of us in the US government. I mean, thankfully, as my boss, this is Secretary of General likes to say, I guess there's this overlining of the COVID challenges and it's forced much the US government, including the State Department to get up to speed in 21st century in technology, such as the one we're using now to meet virtually. And we, for example, just this week carried on a strategic dialogue with Cutter virtually, as well as partly in person. And so there are workarounds in some measures, but there are definite challenges. For example, earlier I talked about the training consistent with the LA Vizel Act and ensuring that foreign service officers have what they need to identify potential conditions of atrocity, mass atrocities and sort of the language, the indicators of potential ways to prevent atrocities. But obviously there is no substitute for face-to-face contact, not only in the case of training of foreign service officers, but also face-to-face contact with interlocutors, post-country interlocutors on the ground, both the government actors, the security forces actors, but also the non-state actors, the NGOs, the community leaders established in those personal relationships are critical, not only to gaining information about potential atrocity situations, ongoing atrocities, but also as a way of kind of convening, facilitating engagement between parties that could potentially be on the receiving and delivering end of those atrocities. So we're all waiting to get past the current COVID crisis so we can give back to the business diplomacy and carry out the business that the American taxpayers are paying us under the LA Vizel Act. But in the short term, I'd say the work we do virtually and albeit limited COVID is enhanced by the programming that we do colleagues from USAID and Ambassador Tan kind of laid out some of the programs where we've made differences, we think we've made differences, although it is hard to measure a negative, but I think it is measurable the success even amid this COVID. If you look at our ability to support civil society, documentation groups, other non-state actors and community leaders are able to engage with governments even because the groundwork we laid through our programming and other efforts. And so it's difficult, well, it's difficult to measure success in the case of atrocities prevention because it is measuring a negative. We can measure the success of the extent to which US government has put up a unified front in supporting those actors, those factors, communities, various leaders on the ground that undoubtedly are key elements of atrocities prevention. So thanks for the question. Ryan, do you want to jump in from USAID's perspective? Sure. And I think this is of a piece with some of the discussions that we were talking about that the DOD and INL in particular are working with with respect to security forces. I mean, I think the COVID-19 has created a real opportunity for more autocratic governments obviously to crack down on basic freedoms. And so that has been a challenge and I think it's a credit to the work that our colleagues are doing in terms of security force assistance that the attention to human rights in those efforts has set the scene in some ways for us to have some open space. I think the example I was going to just present was in South Sudan where we've used some of our rapid response resources for COVID in a democracy and governance channel, I guess, to help ensure that some of the messaging that's going into sort of basic health and sanitation around COVID is also being targeted to those communities that have been affected by by atrocities and mass violence in that country in particular. So sort of ensuring that that vulnerable population is one of the key populations that's getting the information that's needed about that but also trying to use that as a way of, I guess sort of bolstering our response on trauma healing and documentation of some of the challenges that have been sort of pre-existing the COVID era. So. Ryan, you had mentioned before just an issue around funding and in the report it referenced that $10.5 million has been allocated by USAID and state to atrocity prevention efforts. And I think one of the questions that the COVID period begs is whether or not we will see an even greater investment in supporting local civil societies that they can enhance their own documentation collection of information but also coming up with new creative technological advances and strategies for sharing information from the ground because irrespective of whether or not COVID persists for another six months or we're in this situation for a number of years there has been a lot of changes and you referenced increasing authoritarian governments that are taking great strides to prevent local civil society organizations from sharing information from their stories to be told Xinjiang which Denise mentioned at the beginning is one of the most perfect examples there. So it strikes me that this is an area where COVID is forcing hopefully a lot of innovation on the part of the US government working with partners to try to find long-term solutions. Those that may require additional funds and ideally those where we can be creative and innovative and not have to find the money for it because we know how difficult that often is. I wanted to go to a question that was touching on one of the themes that we started the original discussions with and I apologize I'm reading off of my phone here. The question is what happens when discussion of mass atrocities is too politically sensitive to address with our foreign counterparts or even too politically sensitive to address within our own interagency. I think that's a question that many of us often ponder and grapple with. We know that the task force is led by the White House. We know that there is in the latest report the reference of four meetings that happened that are convened by CSO. We discussed earlier some of the challenges around the regional functional divide and how to overcome that. I wonder if I can maybe turn to Steve and also David just from the DOD perspective to touch on these questions of what to do with the difficult conversations with foreign governments but also within the interagency system. Thank you. Well, it's a great question. My experience as a career diplomat is that whereas sometimes difficult subject, sensitive subjects can be very difficult to raise, very challenging to raise with foreign interlocutors and sometimes in the interagency. It's almost rarely impossible to raise. That's really where sort of when you are able to go to partner governments, to contacts on the ground, to colleagues in the interagency, it's like all diplomacy, it's a matter of relationship building of over the span of careers of those of us in government, just like raising difficult issues within a family or community outside of government. So obviously the more information we have from the Holocaust Museum, from USIP, other partners on the ground here, but also the international implementers and partners we work with overseas, the more accurate information, more credible information, the easier avenue we have to go to either foreign interlocutors, host government, partner government, what's so broad, or interagency colleagues and say here's the situation. Here's, as I said earlier, here's the strategic context, not only why it's in the US government's interest to prevent this atrocity, to redress this human rights abuse. We go to our host government interlocutors with whom we continually, because of our US missions abroad, maintain not only that close policy level diplomatic relationship, but also in many cases, what we pay foreign service officers abroad to do all the time is develop that close rapport with their foreign contacts and say, we talk, we've got some information here, not only in our interests of the US government, but it's also in your government's interest to take up this subject. And there's a cyclical relationship there quite often, you go back to their agency where it may be difficult to discuss the topic at times because the competing interests, if the footwork has been done, if that relationship building has been done abroad in both governments and non governments, you raise it to your agency colleagues and say, hey, this is what's going on and this is why we need to take a look at it. I tell you in most cases, if not all, good partnerships inside the US government and outside result in a willingness to speak candidly, to hear you out privately at first, but it's just part of the work and diplomacy, if that makes sense. David, your perspective, because I know that that, especially at that last point about building rapport at many moments, we turn to DOD and DOD colleagues because of the deep relationship you have to speak with other governments, but there are also challenging moments within the interagency process where DOD may come down on a different side of perhaps some of the folks at DRL. So curious how you look at that issue. Sure, thank you. So as I noted earlier, I mean, we are working to continue to improve training of all of our people who are out in the field. I think these kinds of issues are one more of the issues that we need to focus on. We do our, I mean, these folks who are in the field are already fairly well trained. We have a cadre of what we call foreign area officers who select to go into career fields where they specialize in the language, they understand the local culture, all of those different issues. They do field work to build their skills up. And those are the folks who are representing our DOD in the embassy country team. And they do, in fact, develop very good relationships with their defense counterparts. But more broadly, as Steve's noted, this is fundamentally a State Department issue and they are trained diplomats and they lead on these issues. We will support them on the occasion where through the atrocity early morning task force we may have a different view than perhaps any other agency. We will bring that to the meeting and we'll have that discussion but at the end of the day, it rises up to an NSC decision and DOD will play its role. Naomi, may I just add one more, this is Steve, may I add just one more thought on that? Yes, please do. I should also say that David's point is one of my great pleasures and honors as a Foreign Service Officer having served overseas tours is to serve with DOD Foreign Area Officer counterparts. And I gotta tell you, if it gets to the situation you described where it's very difficult to raise a subject with a host government. With a Foreign Service Officer and a Foreign Area Officer going in and talking to their counterparts in Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it becomes a lot easier because the US government puts on a unified front and it really is one team one fight. And that presses the host government and the host government wants to have that good relationship with the United States and they do their best to reciprocate in most cases. Really appreciate those examples because I think it does underscore again the point that you're looking for a whole system of government response and that policy is set at so many different levels. We often focus on the principles but it is the day-to-day work that is being done on the ground that often can have the determining impact and effect on what might potentially unfold and whether or not the US government is able to help have a preventive role. And in that vein, it also means that embassies place such a critical role and hopefully through the LAWIS ALAC which is I think a starting point for trying to really institutionalize training will see a much broader and consistent hopefully in future years expansion of that training to reach not just those going to high-risk countries but that this is something that is part of all incoming US government officials training and preparation irrespective of whether or not they're going to Treasury, State, DOD, I know anywhere that they're going to be situated. Morse, I had a question for you and it's something that's been in the news quite a bit and it pertains to what the US relationship with the international criminal court will look like going forward. Of course, the court does have within it a component where they talk about the importance of prevention. And we know that in the history of the court there have been statements made to put potential perpetrators on notice even prior to crimes taking place. You spoke quite a lot about the US government's support for innovative new mechanisms to document and collect evidence. Some of those mechanisms have been created as a bit of a workaround because we don't have always opportunities to have forums where you can actually prosecute individuals at the moment. So there's the hope that in the future one can and the international criminal component has always been seen as one of the core components of an architecture of both prevention, prosecution and response. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the US relationship there and with other related justice mechanisms. Thank you for your question, Naomi. I want to address this from a number of different angles. First of all, let me say that we share the core atrocity crime justice seeking that is built into the Rome statute for the International Criminal Court. And it's my office in particular that is seeking to help prevent, mitigate and address and provide accountability for mass atrocity crimes going on around the world, genocide crimes against humanity and also war crimes. And so this is something that is shared, is shared very much throughout the US government, I think in Congress, in the State Department, elsewhere on very much of a bipartisan basis regardless of whichever party may be in charge in a particular administration. With that said, I would also say another bipartisan matter is to see to it that American personnel is held accountable domestically by our very capable and in a lot of ways, exemplary system that is held up as a model around the world with tremendous capacity. And so that's where some of this trouble has come in terms of more recently with respect to the ICC. We have in the past supported various efforts of the ICC in the three convictions on substantive crimes that they've had, we've assisted with two of them and we've helped in various ways in the past. Having said that, we're in a challenging situation right now because the situation Afghanistan, our personnel have been consistently included in that preliminary investigation. It didn't have to be, they could have been offloaded earlier, they could be offloaded even now, but that hasn't happened. And that means that our personnel has been at risk of prosecution before the ICC. And might I add in ways that would fall below the constitutional standards that we have in our domestic system, whether it's the right to trial by jury or other protections that our constitution provides. And so it has been a challenging situation. We believe in the US government that this interference by the ICC where they're not respecting complementarity, gravity or the interests of justice is making it harder for the US to be able to help prevent these mass atrocity crimes and mitigate these mass atrocity crimes around the world because there's no country that has more of these ideals as well as the capacity to be able to help prevent these sorts of mass atrocity crimes going on around the world. And if the ICC is going to ironically enough use our own public documents to be able to try to mount a case eventually, potentially against US personnel, that is something that the president and the secretary deemed to be utterly unacceptable. And we are seeking not only to keep that from happening in this instance, but to keep it from being possible moving forward. And we're looking forward to a day when the ICC will not be diverting its rather limited resources to such misadventures, but would be really focused more on the core mission that it has. Thank you. Thank you Morris for your candor and kind of outlining your perspective on that particular issue. I think it's fair to say that it's an example of the divergence of views that many have working within the atrocity prevention field on the various tools that exist and that are available to help prevent atrocities. And where I think as you noted before, there is common cause in trying to make sure that we are able to help strengthen the international architecture for prevention and better understand how the US government can play a role in doing that. I think that we are now kind of at time. I would like to thank USIP for convening today's discussion. As I mentioned before, it's been the first public opportunity to explore the work of the task force to understand better how this administration has been approaching atrocity prevention efforts and to begin to delve more deeply into some of the components that were outlined in the US government's report to Congress on this. Really want to thank all of you for participating in it. Very much want to thank your teams for the hard work that you are all doing around the world in trying to advance atrocity prevention and also thank our colleagues at SFRC, HVAC and throughout Congress who have been steadfast in their commitment to trying to make never again a reality and who as a result were able to help pass groundbreaking legislation that has allowed us to come together. I hope that we have an opportunity for future discussions. I think a lot of themes emerged from this including the ongoing questions around the regional functional divides, the future of DOD's efforts. I know that there has been Yeoman's work done to try to advance protection of civilians training and looking at assets from early warning. Morris, you raised the very difficult conversations around international justice. So I think there is a lot here to build on. And then of course, the core of so much of the prevention work rests on those who are working on the ground in USAID has been doing so much of that work, the Department of State and then of course, I now with all the training that you're doing. There is always more that can be done. Our role as an institution, as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum is to always strive to endeavor to do better because tragically we live in a world where now we know that the types of crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity are committed no longer just by state forces but also by non-state actors. We live in a world where with increasing complexity, the manner in which these crimes are being committed is rapidly evolving. And we're at times, it often feels as though the will of those intent on perpetrating the crimes is sometimes greater or the resources that they have are more expensive than at times we feel like we have in our ability to prevent. So we have to continue to endeavor to deepen our commitments and work in a collaborative way with government, civil society. So thank you very much for this conversation and thank you USIP for your continued work and focus from the Genocide Prevention Task Force up until today. So thank you, Philippe Warren and for everyone who was involved in pulling together this conversation and thank you to Denise Natali, her team and to all of our US government colleagues. Thank you. Take care. Thank you.