 Good morning and welcome. My name is Lisa Grande and I am the President of the United States Institute of Peace, which was created by Congress in 1984 as a national nonpartisan public institution dedicated to helping prevent, mitigate, and resolve violent conflict abroad. We are honored today to be launching the 2022 US strategy to anticipate, prevent, and respond to atrocities. And to also present the 2022 report to Congress, a mandated report required by the Eli Weisel Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Act. It's a privilege to be partnering today with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the US Department of State for the launch of these two reports. USIP is proud to have been part of an alliance of institutions and groups that have long advocated for a stronger, smarter US approach to preventing and responding to atrocities. In 2009, USIP co-chaired the Genocide Prevention Task Force with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The task force, which was expertly led by the late Secretary of State, Madeline Albright and former Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, helped to establish the seminal policy framework for preventing acts of mass atrocity and genocide and to make this issue a central pillar of our national security. It's a true honor for the Institute to be hosting this important discussion with leaders from across the United States government and the Atrocity Prevention Task Force itself. I'm very pleased to welcome Naomi Kikola to the podium. Naomi is the director of the Simon Schott Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she leads the Center's policy engagement with the US government and works with the bearing witness countries. Naomi previously worked at the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect at Amnesty International in Canada. She worked for the UN Office of the Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide. She worked at the Office of the Prosecutor at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and with the Carter Center. Naomi is the author of numerous publications, including flagship reports on atrocity prevention for the Holocaust Museum, the Nexus Fund for the UN and the Jacob Blasting Institute. Naomi, welcome. Thank you so much, ladies. I'd like to thank our co-hosts, the United States Institute of Peace, the State Department and in particular the Bureau of Conflict Stabilization Operations. I'd like to thank Attorney General Merrick Garland for his participation and for signaling the importance the Department of Justice puts on atrocity prevention, all the speakers and those joining virtually. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum serves as a memorial to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust and as a symbol of the horrors that can occur when hate goes unchecked. The Simon Scott Center for the Prevention of Genocide is a living embodiment of the museum's commitment to never again. We know that mass atrocities inflict irreparable harm on individuals, families and communities. We know that mass atrocities can potentially destabilize states and regions and undermine hard fought investments in development along with economic prosperity. We're joined here today by representatives of communities who have suffered genocide and other mass atrocities and who know the cost of insufficient response. And this risk ahead is glaring. At the Atrocity Prevention, as the Atrocity Prevention Strategy notes, at the end of 2020, the early warning project, a partnership between the museum and Dartmouth College had identified a record high of 20 episodes of ongoing mass killing. But there are bright spots. In the past decade, we've seen the US government take important steps to advance prevention. We've seen people from across government come together to share early warning information, to develop and implement prevention strategies, and ultimately to save lives. We have seen that investments in prevention can work. The release of the US strategy to anticipate, prevent, and respond to atrocities is a welcome step forward. The strategy articulates an all of government approach to tackling one of the most urgent problems of our time. It stresses the importance of consulting with civil society, coordinating across agencies, and evaluating and adapting responses. The strategy clearly reaffirms that preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States. And it clearly tasks different agencies and departments to create concrete steps to advance this goal. This includes explicitly calling for the integration of atrocity prevention into applicable functional and regional policy processes and strategies. In doing so, it seeks to elevate the priority placed on atrocity prevention and address what are all too often impediments to action. It takes humility to learn from the past and adjust course. We're glad the strategy embraces the retrospection necessary to ensure that future responses benefit from the lessons of the past. We at the Simon Scott Center for the Prevention of Genocide have embarked on a lessons learned project in order to identify lessons from history and research on policy tools that can potentially help prevent future genocides and related crimes against humanity. We know that the atrocity prevention field is relatively young and that asking questions about what has worked well and when may make us all more successful in heading off these crimes in the future. The release of this strategy is an example of the United States taking a leadership role in prioritizing atrocity prevention and should serve as a blueprint for other governments. We thank those who have worked for years to help birth this strategy and to sustain the commitment to the prevention of atrocities. We must remember that the real test will be how effectively and how fully this strategy is implemented. There are too many communities today in South Sudan, Ethiopia, Ukraine, Burma and China to name a few who are counting on the US and other countries to make sure that preventing mass atrocities against them is of the highest priority. Too many of them have been left wanting and successfully implementing this strategy can help secure a safer future for communities around the world. The strategy does not occur in a vacuum to achieve these goals will take committed government officials, civil society partners and congressional leadership to ensure it is adhered to. It is now my deep honor to introduce Dora Klayman, a survivor of the Holocaust and volunteer at the museum since 1999. Her story is a solemn reminder of the magnitude of harm that genocide and other mass atrocities can inflict and the importance of the task before all of us. My name is Dora Klayman. It is an honor to be here today as the US government launches its strategy to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocities. As a Holocaust survivor and longtime museum volunteer, I know all too well that atrocity prevention needs to be a priority for the US government. I was born in January 1938 in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, a country cobbled together after World War I. It was a country of differing historical alliances, several languages and various religions. Following the German invasion of Yugoslavia in April of 1941, and with the support of Nazi Germany, the ultra nationalist group, the Ustache, assumed leadership of the so-called independent state of Croatia, partly independent. It was a puppet government of Germany, eager to persecute anyone who was not aligned with them politically or was not Croatian and Catholic. Specifically, that included communists, Roma, Serbs and Jews. My maternal family members lived in Lubric, a small town in the north of Croatia. My grandfather, the town's rabbi, had served the Jewish community there for many years. Our family had a very cordial relationship with a predominantly Catholic population. And for the 40 years my family lived there, practically no anti-Semitic incidents occurred. My aunt Giza and her long-time partner, Józebeth Lutba-Rancic, a local bank director, had all but decided not to marry. But they changed their minds once the fear of German invasion came upon them. The hope was that Lutba's Catholic identity would protect Giza from persecution. By June, 1941, just a few months after the Nazis marched into Yugoslavia, my parents and infant brothers, Vrothko, were arrested. My father was deported to Yassanovac, concentration camp, and my mother was sent to Stara Gradiška, a sub-camp of Yassanovac. Neither survived. Fortunately, my little brother was saved by our housekeeper and brought to Lubric, where I had been staying with my extended family. My brother and I were first sheltered by our grandparents, but by 1942, nearly the entire Jewish community of Lutba had been deported, including my grandparents and the majority of my family members. All were soon killed in Yassanovac. We were left behind with my aunt Giza and her Catholic husband, Lutba. In 1943, Lutba was arrested on suspicion of supporting the partisan-resistant movement and was sent to Yassanovac. In his absence, my aunt Giza was denounced, arrested and deported to Auschwitz, where she died from illness, shortly after arrival. During this time, my brother and I hid with our Catholic neighbors, the Runjaks, and pretended to be their children. Most people in Lutbra knew we were Jewish, but they never denounced us. Sometime later, Lutba was released, along with other political prisoners. Fearing the worst and having been warned that the local priest made threats towards us while we were with the Runjak family, my brother and I were baptized for added protection. After liberation, we waited in vain for our family members to return. Once convinced that our parents would not return, Uncle Lutba adopted us, my brother and me, and we sought to rebuild our lives. The history of the Holocaust, my history, is the ultimate example of the world's failure to prevent genocide. And tragically, we know the genocide did not end with the Holocaust. What became my country after World War II, Yugoslavia, experienced yet another genocide in more recent times. We have continued to witness in many parts of the world, such as Rwanda, Iraq, Darfur, and Burma, persecution based on religious or ethnic identity. I'm grateful for the US government's commitment to track early warning sign of mass atrocities, respond effectively, and support communities in their recovery from these crimes. But all of us, whether we are government officials, survivors of the Holocaust or other genocides, or concerned citizens must remain vigilant to the risks of mass atrocities wherever civilians may be threatened and rededicate our efforts to make never again a reality. Everyone joins me in paying tribute to the extraordinary journey of Madame Clayman and all of the survivors of genocide everywhere. We are greatly honored now to welcome and to present the Attorney General of the United States, the Honorable Merrick Garland. As our nation's Chief Law Enforcement Officer, Attorney General Garland leads the Justice Department's 115,000 employees who work across the United States and in more than 50 countries worldwide. Attorney General Garland previously served first as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and from 2013 to 2020 as Chief Judge of the Circuit. Attorney General Garland also served with distinction as the Chair of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States from 2017 to 2020. Before becoming our nation's Attorney General, Attorney General Garland served under five other Attorney Generals including a Special Assistant to the Attorney General, Assistant United States Attorney, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Criminal Division and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General. We're now pleased to present his comments. Thank you to Lee's Grande and the United States Institute of Peace for hosting today's important discussion. And thank you to Dora Clayman for sharing your story on behalf of your family and on behalf of the millions who could not. Preventing and responding to atrocities is an undertaking that is as immense and complex as it is urgent. And as the President has said, it is a core national security imperative and a core moral imperative for the United States. At the Justice Department, our historical role in this effort has been to hold accountable those who perpetrate war crimes and to help other countries do the same. In the wake of World War II, it was a former Attorney General, Robert Jackson, who served as the Chief Prosecutor for the United States, the investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg trials. Decades later in 1979, the Justice Department created the Office of Special Investigations to identify, investigate, denaturalize and deport Nazi war criminals from the United States. In addition, that office provided support to foreign counterparts in bringing to justice perpetrators and other jurisdictions. Over the course of decades, prosecutors and investigators in that office worked tirelessly to track down and hold accountable war criminals around the world. Ms. Clayman described in her moving remarks, the horror faced by members of her family deported to the Asinovitz concentration camp in occupied Yugoslavia. Over 50 years later, the Justice Department worked with international partners to gather the evidence that helped lead to the extradition from Argentina and eventual conviction in Croatia of the commander of that concentration camp. Our past provides important context to the work the department is doing today to respond to atrocities. Over the past several months, the world has seen evidence of brutal atrocities being committed against the people of Ukraine. In response, the Justice Department is building on our historic work to hold war criminals accountable. Last month, I traveled to Ukraine or I met with our partners there who have been relentless and courageous in their investigation and prosecution of war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine. During my trip, I announced the creation of a war crimes accountability team within the department to advance our own investigations of potential war crimes and to support the work of our international partners in their own investigations. This team is providing a wide range of technical assistance on criminal cases and investigations, including evidence collection and forensic analysis. Immediately after traveling to Ukraine, I met in France with my European counterparts to coordinate our ongoing efforts alongside our Ukrainian partners to ensure accountability for war crimes and force violations of US and EU sanctions. To lead this effort, I asked Eli Rosenbaum to serve as the Justice Department's counselor for war crimes accountability. Mr. Rosenbaum is a 36-year veteran of the Justice Department. He previously served as director of the Office of Special Investigations, which I mentioned earlier and which was responsible for identifying, tracking down and bringing to justice Nazi war criminals. Last week, Mr. Rosenbaum and his team joined a State Department-led delegation to the Ukraine Accountability Conference at The Hague to coordinate international accountability efforts. We are hopeful that our approach toward addressing war crimes in Ukraine can serve as a model for our future efforts to address and respond to atrocities. The Justice Department is committed to investigating and prosecuting the perpetrators of war crimes that fall within our jurisdiction, and we are committed to providing capacity-building, training, and support to foreign partners in their efforts to do the same. The Justice Department believes that prosecuting the perpetrators of atrocities is an essential element of prevention and deterrence, but we also believe that we have a moral obligation to hold accountable those who are responsible for these crimes. For me, this work is also a personal obligation. My grandmother was one of five children born in what is now Belarus. In the early 20th century, four of the siblings tried to come to the United States. Three made it, the fourth was turned back at Ellis Island, and the fifth did not try. The two who stayed behind died in the Holocaust. We know that this work cannot bring back the family members many of us around the world have lost to genocide and atrocity, but it can and it will send a clear message that there is no hiding place for those who perpetrate these horrors. Thank you all for your work and support of that effort. Thank you so much, Attorney General, for those incredibly powerful and also personal words, and for reiterating the importance of the need for a multi-generational long-term commitment to these issues. I think the example that you just gave of the innovation that DOJ is bringing to the situation in the Ukraine, the creation of a new team led by Eli Rosenbaum is an incredible example of how the US government is working to put into practice the commitments that are encapsulated in the strategy. And with that, we're really fortunate to be joined today with a number of remarkable colleagues from within the US government who are charged with leading on the implementation of these efforts. And I wanted to just take a quick moment to introduce the panelists. We're joined today with Rob Foshe, the principal deputy assistant secretary of the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations at the US Department of State. Nithi Buri, the acting senior director for development, global health, and humanitarian response at the US National Security Council. Ambassador Beth Thinskac, the ambassador at large for global criminal justice at the US Department of State. Robert Jenkins, the assistant to the administrator, Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Stabilization at USAID. And then Michelle Struck, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for global partnerships at the US Department of Defense. So really a remarkable group that we had the privilege to be able to hear from about this incredibly important new strategy and development. Rob, as co-hosts with you and CSO, and given the important role that CSO plays as the secretariat for the task force on atrocity prevention and early warning, I wanted to turn to you to help us just better understand what are the key components of the strategy and how you are gonna move forward on implementing them. Well, thank you very much and thank all of you for joining us this morning and watching from your offices or homes. This is a hugely important meeting. We're very pleased that USIP pulled this together to talk about our efforts on preventing and responding to atrocity and the launch of this new strategy, which I think is gonna be critical to moving us forward. It's important to note that a lot of the work that we do and that will be covered by this strategy is already ongoing. We're not talking about a lot of new programs or projects, but we're talking about bringing them all into an alignment with the goal of anticipating, preventing, and responding to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. We're taking steps at an earlier stage now than just to respond to these crimes once they have occurred. And the strategy's idea is that we need to bring the government together, all the disparate elements, the diffuse elements that we're doing so that we have a very kind of combined and articulated goal that we're moving toward in terms of the prevention effort. And that's the main theme, I think, of this strategy and why it is so important. It lets us at the State Department talk to our colleagues more directly through the atrocity prevention task force about the efforts they're doing to prevent and to take other efforts to anticipate a atrocity wherever it may occur and by whomever. It lets us assess the work that we're doing, see the gaps, and then suggest what else could possibly be done. And this is all hugely important for the U.S. government. Now, the title of this meeting is U.S. Leadership in Atrocity Prevention. And I wanna underline that, why this is so important. No other country in the world has a law like the LA Vissel Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Act. And it is recognized by our partners around the world as a model for action, as a call for action. And they are listening and they are emulating and coming toward our same kind of objectives. No other country now has a strategy that the United States has to anticipate and prevent and respond to atrocity. And they are looking at this closely, both our partners as well as others who are committing these crimes to understand where the United States is going and what we're gonna bring to bear to try to stop these heinous events from occurring. Now, the strategy is really the next step in these efforts that I've been going on for almost 10 years now, if not longer. As I said, we're aligning our efforts to disrupt the processes that lead to atrocity. The earlier, the better. Everybody responds to atrocity once it occurs. We recognize it. But we need to start ahead of time so that we can stop the process from getting to that point. And that is one of the main strengths of this strategy. Secondly, we are trying to assist countries around the world that we have determined need help in protecting their citizens from the threat of atrocity, helping them with the resiliences, with their governments, with their services so that the climate for atrocity is pushed aside and people are able to respond and look to their governments for the protections they so greatly need and desire. And then lastly, of course, is responding to the crimes once they occur. And the strategy emphasizes the importance of looking at the survivors. The response should be survivor centered. It should take into account a sort of a trauma-informed approach to the survivors to help people who have survived or gone through these terrible events so that they come out better and stronger. Now, all this work is being led by the Atrocity Prevention Task Force under a work plan that we've adopted on an annual basis. The goal that we have in the strategy is for timely, effective action to anticipate, prevent, respond to atrocity in coordination with our partners. That is both bilateral partners, multilateral agencies, and local partners in all the countries we're concerned of under the overall direction of the Atrocity Prevention Task Force. Under the first goal of the early action and locally driven sort of efforts, we are identifying priority countries where we want to partner with them to help them build their strengths and resiliency to the threat of atrocity. Under the law, we have to identify 30 countries which we're in the process of doing, developing a short list of countries where we will look at more closely what they're doing. Of those 30 countries, we will prioritize among them where we think we could have the most effective action and that's the process that this strategy is pursuing, even after we're speaking now. Once we have identified those priority countries, we will do assessments, we will look for gaps in what's happening there, where we might be able to assist better either directly or with our partners bilaterally and in other places. Again, we're emphasizing the need for those countries to increase their ability to protect their own citizens from the threat of atrocity. And through doing that, we hope that we will develop best practices through a monitoring and evaluation and a learning process that will have application in other countries around the world, improving the way the United States leads efforts to again prevent and anticipate and respond to atrocity. In terms of partnerships, we are working with other countries that are with us through various either formal fora at the United Nations or informal fora like the International Atrocity Prevention Working Group to share data, to share information, to share best practices of what's going on and to make sure that in those countries that we're most concerned about, we're all working for the same policy outcome, not just program outcome, but policy so that we can improve the situations in those countries to the maximum extent. This is not something the United States can do alone. This is something that has to be done with others. Lastly, and I know I'm going on too long here, internally for the United States government, this strategy allows us to start doing the same sort of practice, talking to our partners throughout the interagency to make sure that they understand this is a priority. This is something for which we will be held accountable. We have to say, what are we doing? And in a year's time, we're gonna look back and say, did you do it and how successful were you? And that's what the strategy is all about. So it has this wonderful internal component as well as an external component. So let me leave it at that, thank you. That was great Rob, thank you so much for that. I think there were three things that really stood out. One is again the priority on early warning but also seeing the early warning assessments and the analysis also of crimes that may be occurring or imminent integrated into broader country strategies. So really having a conversation between those who are working on the regional work, the functional side and the thematic side. So just making sure that you've, sorry the regional functional branches of state are coming together and a whole of government response. And then also the importance that you're putting on engaging with survivor communities, ensuring that local civil society is informing what the response should be and that there's assistance given, including by USAID and others, to local peace building efforts and public prevention efforts. But that last piece that you said around the international response, the need for there to be a multilateral response. We all know that there is no one government who alone can play a determining role in terms of preventing these particular crimes but that in concert with actions taken with like-minded governments, regional institutions, local partners, we have a far better chance of averting the worst possible outcomes. And hopefully this blueprint serves, this strategy serves as a blueprint for the countries that you mentioned that are part of the International Trosy Prevention Working Group. It would be great to see other countries now develop similar strategies. Nithi, just picking up on that last point just about how to really galvanize a whole of government response. The White House has a really important role in signaling the importance of these particular issues. And I was just wondering if you could speak a little bit about how you plan on approaching and how you have been approaching, really underscoring that a trustee prevention is a core national security priority and not just, but of course, it's incredibly important, a moral responsibility as well. Thanks. Sure, thank you, Naomi. And thanks to the organizers of this event. At first, I'd like to just highlight President Biden's leadership since the start of the administration on converging and highlighting a range of global pressures and trends that elevate the importance of a trustee prevention. As you've seen since the start of his presidency, the president has set out an ambitious but critical agenda to restore the United States' role to combat a range of global threats and challenges. This includes defending democracy and advancing human rights, promoting the role of women and amplifying the voices of women leaders, whether as civil society, members of civil society or as elected officials and advancing and promoting women's meaningful participation in their communities with the vision of promoting and realizing a more equitable and just world, combating climate change and recommitting to multilateralism. So what does that all mean for a trustee prevention? It means that having acknowledged these threats, these challenges and the importance of addressing them, we have an opportunity as a U.S. government to make progress in more intentionally and deliberately considering how these factors and trends influence the trustee prevention agenda and in turn how a trustee prevention can actually be woven into addressing all of those challenges as well, which brings me to how we are treating the prevention of mass atrocities as a core national security threat and as a core moral responsibility. We in the U.S. government, as many of you know, have a legal framework that not only mandates but supports our work. We have a family of laws related to this work, starting with the Women, Peace and Security Act of 2017, the Elewazeel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act in 2018 and subsequently the Global Fragility Act in 2019 that provide us some goals post as the U.S. government. Collectively, these laws elevate our violence and conflict prevention efforts that are critical as an anchor to our efforts to prevent mass atrocities. We are a few years into the implementation of some of these laws and still nascent in others, but the research, advocacy and lessons learned in all of these areas have been around for a long time and as Rob noted, this is not new work for the U.S. government, it's essentially moving it forward. And yet a lot of work remains to be done to transform this knowledge into clear and meaningful action on a trustee prevention that goes beyond words on paper. At the outset of the Biden administration, we launched an interagency process to revitalize the U.S. government's efforts on atrocity prevention specifically. The goal is to avert the catastrophic generational human, economic, security and development toll of mass atrocities by better institutionalizing aspects of prevention throughout our system and our processes. This builds on the leadership of President Obama and his efforts outlined in the 2010 National Security Strategy and articulated in the Presidential Study Directive number 10, which led to the establishment of the Atrocities Prevention Board and then followed up with the Lee Wiesel Act. Now in 2022, the imperative to prevent and respond to mass atrocities remains not only relevant, but growing. Into the second year of our administration, we continue to see ongoing human rights and humanitarian crises in Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Burma and now Ukraine, just to name a few. And the ongoing repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising tide of authoritarianism and acute impacts of climate change on already vulnerable populations and all of these collectively demonstrate the continued urgency to pursue the atrocity prevention and response efforts that our government can undertake. And now we have the first ever strategy focused on atrocity prevention. This is an important and critical step in articulating our commitment and holding ourselves in the US government accountable. We hope that our international partners will follow suit so we can further consolidate our collective efforts and work together to advance them. We only need to follow the news to see the images currently from Ukraine and from all the countries that are not even being represented in our news outlets to understand why this work is so important. The Atrocity Prevention Task Force, which the National Security Council leads, remains in place, meets regularly with little fanfare and continues the work begun under the Atrocity Prevention Board. As a reminder, this is an interagency body composed of members of departments and agencies across the US government, each with a unique set of diplomatic assistance, defense and other tools to be leveraged towards the purpose of preventing atrocities, mitigating human suffering and ultimately saving lives. To emphasize, I just wanna note that many of the members are actually represented here. It is the experts that we have, the practitioners, the advisors, the officers and the leaders in the US government that compose this effort. Because the LA Wazil Act means that all of us in the US government, not just the atrocity prevention people or the conflict people or the development people or the gender people, need to regard atrocity prevention as a core national interest, all of us. And that's why this is a whole of government effort that is not meant to be siloed or stove piped as an initiative, but rather is something that is weaving together a range of efforts for a common goal. I'll just close with noting that the establishment of the Stabilization and Prevention Steering Committee, a high-level oversight mechanism called for by the Global Fragility Act, further and is further enshrined in our US strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability. We intend to continue to elevate atrocity prevention efforts. Thank you. Thank you so much, Anthony, for that. And for just underscoring how important and critical it is for there to be continued leadership across administrations, and you noted the efforts of President Biden, and I think it's with great humility, we recognize that over the last 20 years, every US president has confronted genocide on their watch. And you also underscored just how important congressional leadership is. The acts that you mentioned, be it the Global Fragility Act or the Elie Wiesel Act, of which the report was recently released as well, was a result of efforts taken by congressional champions, Senator Cardin and Senator Young in that regard to move it forward. And just the import that you put on the intersection of trying to find a comprehensive approach to advance these agendas, which I think aligns with many of our views that advancing atrocity prevention, as you said, is in the core national security interest. This is not in competition with other interests, rather it's to compliment the broader goals that the US government has in the countries where we're concerned about crimes occurring. Picking up on that theme, Ambassador Bernstein, the report talks in great detail both the Elie Wiesel report and the atrocity prevention strategy about the importance of accountability. And that's something that has increasingly come to the fore, especially as we just noted in the Attorney General's remarks in the context of the Ukraine. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how accountability efforts are conceptualized and understood as being part of the atrocity prevention strategy and US government efforts. Great, thanks so much. And thanks to everyone for being here and for our conveners. It's a really important conversation. I'm honored to be a part of it, especially with my interagency colleagues that are all working really every day on trying to advance this mandate. So my office is the Office of Global Criminal Justice. We were originally formed to be a liaison with the international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and then under Secretary Clinton, we expanded the mandate to include the whole range of transitional justice responses. And so now our role working with partner bureaus and offices within the State Department and then other agencies across the executive branch and also with the champions on the Hill is to help advise the US government, including our posts and embassies on how nations have historically and are currently responding to the commission of abuses in their midst. This may be sort of governmental repression. It could be armed conflict. It could be mass atrocities rising to the level of crimes against humanity or genocide. So we're called the Office of Global Criminal Justice, but we really think about justice as being very broadly defined. And we focus on the whole range of tools within the transitional justice toolkit. So this includes retributive justice, so criminal processes, but also elements of restorative justice, thinking about truth telling, thinking about reparation of survivors, thinking about instantiating guarantees of non-repetition, so societies will not repeat the violence of the past. And it has been shown both in empirical research and also in kind of deep dives of particular communities that societies emerging from periods of violence and repression are at a much higher risk of returning to violence or repression if they don't address the crimes of the past. We've seen this with large data sets and we've seen this with close research into particular situations, including through a number of affiliates of the Holocaust Museum. And so the goal of transitional justice practitioners is to find a bespoke set of responses to a situation of violence. And so criminal prosecutions is very important for a whole host of reasons. One is the expressive function of the criminal law. It signals that a particular course of conduct, policy, activities are unlawful, they're unlawful under domestic law, they're unlawful under international law, they're not to be tolerated, individuals should be held accountable. It also provides an opportunity for victims and survivors to reestablish a sort of set of dignity. If they were in a situation in which they were repressed or suffering from oppression within a particular community, they're suddenly able to tell their story, have it be acknowledged, have a court of law, either domestic or international or hybrid, indicate that indeed the abuses that you suffered were unlawful and should never have happened and you're entitled to some level of repair and redress. Criminal trials can also form a truth telling function in order to create a kind of historical record to bring together testimony, to bring together empirical information, to bring together documents to show how a particular course of conduct happened, why particular communities were targeted, why particular individuals were targeted. So there's a whole host of reasons why criminal trials can be important in the aftermath of violence, but it's not the only response. And I think if we look at areas where they've had a successful transitional justice policy or practice put in place, we see a whole range of other responses. So this includes truth telling. We know from the Latin American history and experience that truth commissions have been extremely important institutions in the aftermath of violence to take the testimony of a whole range of individuals to understand the consequences, the patterns of violence, understand who the actors were. Often they give perpetrators the opportunity to tell their own story, why they found themselves in a situation in which they were committing abuses, how the order of battle worked, how orders were given, how the chain of command functioned. All of that can be done in a truth telling institution like a truth commission. They will often produce a report that will contain very detailed recommendations about how to avoid this in the future, what sort of concrete reforms need to be made. And this is in many respects, the world of say USAID or CSO, working much farther upstream to put in place measures institutions that will ensure resiliency against efforts by individuals who would use violence to consolidate their power, to prevent those individuals from being successful and from essentially taking over state institutions and using them as tools of oppression. The other things we're looking for is things like vetting, right? Removing individuals from positions of power who were associated with abuses in a prior regime and ensuring that they don't have a role in a new government, in a new civilian led government on a different trajectory. And so using what we call lustration can be extremely important and these truth telling functions can help to identify individuals that were responsible for abuses or were part of a system that generated abuses. And then the final pillar of transitional justice that we often think about are these recurrences of non-repetition. And these can be things like the reforms that may come out of a truth commission process, but also thinking about memorialization, acknowledging abuses, these lustration efforts that are put in place to sort of bring a new crop of civil servants to the fore who are committed to a democratic pathway. And so the hope is that by engaging in a number of these measures after the fact as part of the response prong of the SAPRA strategy, that will engage in prevention by acknowledging abuses, by giving rehabilitation to victims and survivors and putting in place measures that will prevent a recurrence of violence. So much for that and for just the really comprehensive and holistic approach to justice and accountability that you articulated. I think one of the things that so many of us working in this space here over and over again with our colleagues and those who are facing atrocity crimes is that plea for we want justice. But as you just articulated justice means so many different things depending on the context and the individual and the community. And it serves so many different functions from the truth-telling and the historical record to the criminal responsibility to the efforts at non-recurrence. So thank you for just so clearly kind of outlining that in such a meticulous manner. I wanted to talk, Rob, a little bit about this question of what works. As I mentioned, we released a major project earlier this week looking at lessons learned in terms of tools. And we are kind of early into the kind of building of this atrocity prevention field and it is a really important moment to kind of look backwards and see if we can evaluate the efforts that we've been making to monitor them. And so I was hoping that you could talk a little bit about how you plan to kind of adapt the approaches to integrate some of those lessons that are being learned and critically how you overcome some of the bureaucratic and political obstacles that sometimes come into play when trying to assess past cases and lessons learned. Well, thank you very much. You're asking for a lot there, right? How do we overcome the bureaucratic obstacles? How do we make sure things work? How do we monitor and evaluate that? And then how do we change our patterns of behavior? Let me start out just by thanking all of you who have brought us here today. It's always an honor to be on this stage in this beautiful building. And any of you that have worked in government see those five seals on a strategy, that's hard work. It might look like a pretty pamphlet. That's hard work to get the interagency wrestled together to agree on, if you read it, very practical steps but important steps. I want to thank Nidhi and our colleagues at the NSC I often use the Atrocity Prevention Task Force as an example of how it can work, how we can get things together. That's how we start to do things differently. At USAID, we have brought together all the different, I like that you kept saying weaving. That is, it's weaving. We have weaved together the different threads in, the Attorney General said that this is, the challenge is immense and complex as is our government. How do you pull all those things together and put them on target? As was said, it's not new work. But we have a legal, thanks to Congress, a legal imperative but also a moral imperative to be better, to do better, to do this work better. So at AID, what we have done is pulled together what we call the Peace and Security Council. It's humanitarians. It's the Atrocity Prevention Specialists. It's the stabilization experts. It's the women, peace and security people. It's the regional bureaus. It's all of our bureaus, regional and functional. Comes together every two weeks because all of these things are separate, important, but overlapping. And you ask what works? What works is early prevention. As Isabel Coleman, our deputy administrator says, the question isn't whether we can prevent atrocities. We can do that. The question is can we act soon enough when prevention is still possible? One of the things I like about this strategy is we're not identifying one, two, three, four places. We're identifying 30 different countries at risk. Because if we're really gonna have a difference, it's way before it hits the news. By the time it hits the news, by the time it's on the front page, we're into documentation. We're into what can we do for accountability? But our ability to save lives with foreign assistance once the atrocities are happened are very limited. The further you back up, the further upstream you go, the more options we have. And we're not gonna get there with atrocity prevention programming alone. We're gonna get there at how do we do that agriculture program? Where do we do that justice program? Which civil society groups are we working with? And what are we knitting together, weaving together in those communities? By the time they're shutting down the internet, it's a little late. We need to work with governments. We need to work with civil society so that these places don't shut down the internet. So that these groups that are on the margins, literally sometimes on the margins, feel that this government, whatever government that is, speaks for them and they are part of that government. So you asked, what works? Start earlier. Wrestle the bureaucracy, though, to a problem that doesn't exist yet is so much easier said than done. This town runs on the front page. This town runs on how many people can sit in the situation room all day long on, they can only do on so many things at once, right? So it's really hard to get attention and that means money for a problem that doesn't exist yet. This, at least, says we're gonna try. And if we wanna hold ourselves accountable, we can try to do that, we're not good at that. That's where we need civil society. That's where we need all of you. But most importantly, that's where we need our local partners in country. Because all of this comes down to local partners, the localization agenda. It's, we can think we're changing the world, but if folks in that country don't think so, then we're not. They are the ones that are gonna be able to say, this is a stupid idea, or you said you were going to do this and you did not. That's how we do it. Because one source, two sources, three sources, the risks are so high in these places. Everyone's biased. There's disinformation throwing all over the place. Security is a threat. We can't rely on ourselves. We can't rely on our donor partners. We can't rely on local organizations. We need to be talking to all of them in constant dialogue, assessing each other and coming at this from all directions where we're not gonna get anywhere. Thanks. Thank you, Rob. I really appreciate just your frankness and also articulating how the city works, which is quite frustrating for those of us who are working on. Well, but it did make me think about what Nithi said when you said that the task force convenes but without a lot of fanfare. And if you think about this agenda and you think about the years and decades and the amount of time that it's taken to get, for example, even as you said, the different agencies and departments that are on the outside of the strategy together, if we do this work well, it's work that's done without a lot of fanfare. If we don't do it well, that's when we see it on the front pages and that's when we see the kind of ramping up in the conversations. And our aim is really to try to make sure that this is integrated much earlier into the thinking and the lifeblood of everyone who's working on this, both inside government and outside. And I will note that one thing the strategy does talk a lot about and USAID and state both have specifically kind of earmarked programs around this is on training. Training people that are going to be sent to countries where these crimes are at risk or are occurring to help empower officials to be able to report back and to be able to have that more contextually based understanding of what may work, test, calibrate, change the responses. So thank you for that. Michelle, really fortunate to have you participate in a way because sometimes DOD is the least understood partner when it comes to atrocity prevention when we think about early action. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the efforts that DOD takes forward to advance atrocity prevention. Sure, thank you so much. And I just wanted to say again what an honor it is to be here echoing my colleagues same statements. And just as I was telling Rob right before we started this is actually the reason that I decided to join international affairs as a career because when I was a kid I was eight years old and I first learned about the Holocaust through acting. I was a child actress and I played Anne Frank when I was 12 and I was absolutely horrified by the fact that this could ever have happened to humanity. And then I learned that even though I was 12 in my own lifetime it happened again and again. And I couldn't believe that that as the most powerful country in the world I was thinking what good is this power if we don't use this power for good, if we don't use this power to protect people. So for me it was a motivating factor to even get into this field. And certainly throughout my career working on human rights issues, humanitarian assistance issues and responding to the effects of atrocities. I think prevention really stood out and is one of the reasons that I wanted to join the Department of Defense to look at the ways that as we work to protect our country's interests and to protect our people we also are playing an important role around the world in modeling the behavior and the values that are core to America that are core to of course my identity and I think a lot of our identities about protecting human rights and certainly central to the president and to make sure that I see that in the department's work. So at the Department of Defense I'm the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Global Partnerships and in that capacity have a very intersectional portfolio. It includes humanitarian assistance. It includes international humanitarian policy which has in it democracy, rule of law, anti-corruption, women peace and security and civilian harm mitigation. All of these intersectional things that we've talked about and it also includes security cooperation. So to share a bit about the department's role in atrocity prevention I think the prevention piece is very key to us. As we know the security and defense sectors can play a role in either preventing atrocities and civilian harm or in horrible cases in actually perpetrating it themselves. And that means that the defense and security institutions in countries are critical partners that we simply can't overlook again as early as possible in getting everyone on the same page about the way that when they in the case they have to conduct hostilities they're conducting them in a way that is not committing these atrocities and they're certainly not using their institutions in ways that are counter to these values because when they do that they erode trust with their populations, they harm their credibility and they hurt their military effectiveness when they are trying to do their jobs in a military context. And so we understand that security cooperation I'm so excited to see the strong role of global partners in this strategy because these global partners and particularly for DOD the defense institutions are those that we when we are providing them with security cooperation we're ensuring that a requisite piece of that is that we're training them specifically on human rights on the rule of law on civilian control of the military which is absolutely critical and also in the protection and upholding of human rights and international humanitarian law. And so what that means is that the United States military with our footprint all around the world we're able to connect with partners to show them how does the United States conduct itself as a civilian led military? How do we follow the rules? Follow the processes. We get made fun of a bit for how much we follow the rules for those for those here when they see us adhering to these strict processes but it's because we have rule of law and we take it very, very seriously. And so we model that for our partners and when we provide them with security cooperation and we conduct these activities we're ensuring that this plays an important role. We also are integrating women, peace and security into our efforts because of course gender identity is a key factor in making populations more vulnerable to atrocities and increases in gender-based violence often indicate impending conflict on a broader scale. So ensuring that we are integrating our department's efforts around women, peace and security into security cooperation is something that is deeply interlinked and supporting the strategy. We also play an important role in supporting the Global Fragility Act. For example, in February 2022 the Department of Defense published the joint publication 307 on joint stabilization activities. And this is a manual and we are a department with many manuals that we follow to plan, conduct and assess the military contribution to stabilization efforts across the competition continuum and it addresses atrocity prevention through a protection of civilians lens which as we all know must have a gender perspective. We also have efforts in the department to broadly look at our secretaries directed us to look at civilian harm mitigation and response and a part of the action plan that's being developed right now in the department includes elements of allies and partners and how we work in security cooperation to ensure civilian harm is mitigated. And again, our partners are learning through their interactions with us because we take these issues very seriously. So I would say that prevention overall and continually being accountable, following the rule of law and working to build and support security sectors and partners that uphold human rights and uphold the important principles of international law are some of the primary powerful ways that the Department of Defense is contributing to atrocity prevention. So much for that and for just outlining so clearly kind of the training efforts, the criteria around security cooperation, the effort on trying to better understand what stabilization operations could look like if they kind of prioritize protection of civilians and harm mitigation efforts and how important it is to work with partners in that regard. And also the role that exists to look for indicators of potential crimes that are occurring. Sometimes your folks are able to see trends that others elsewhere in the government haven't been able to. And we've seen that in the context of Iraq and elsewhere with some of the most horrific atrocity crimes that were committed against the Yazidi community and others. I wanted to just kind of pick up just a little bit on your personal commitment because I think one of the things that we've seen all too often is just how incredibly important individuals are. And there are so many unsung heroes that exist within the US and other governments who've been championing these particular issues and have helped us get to this point and will continue to work to implement the strategy going forward. It made me think of the other people that we as a museum often regard as heroes and those are our remarkable partners within civil society, especially those within communities that are facing the risks of atrocity crimes. And it's a theme that many of you have brought up in the course of your comments. And I thought maybe I would start first with Rob, but I'd love to hear also Beth and Rob from you about how you work with, intend to work with civil society to help inform your activities, especially with those who are facing the reality of these crimes every day. I mean, we are now over a decade into the conflict in Syria. We do an anniversary event every year on the Hill. It is our goal and our hope that we do not have to do that this year. But our Syrian partners have such remarkable courage, resilience, and we're truly in awe of them as we are of so many of the survivors that we work with. So I was just curious, Rob, if you could speak a little bit to that. Sure, just really briefly. Throughout the process, since the LAVSL Genocide and Trusty Prevention Act has been in law, we have been working closely here in Washington, especially with civil society elements, to learn from them and what are their concerns, what do they think about what we're doing and how we can do it better. And this has been hugely helpful. It's been really enriching for us to think about the positions they're holding, what they point out about what we're doing and not doing, and how we perhaps could do better. And frankly, as a result of a lot of that discussion, we have the strategy today. Because they really showed us that this is necessary, even though it wasn't mandated by the law, it is necessary for the US government to develop that. So we're going to continue with those sort of consultations here in Washington. But I think most importantly, and as Rob was saying, we need to take those consultations to a higher degree and a more intensive and frequent level in the areas and the countries that we're really concerned about to hear from the marginalized communities about what are your concerns, to have the really difficult conversations with community leaders and including government leaders about what we see and what we're concerned about in terms of developing a strategy in those countries to prevent atrocity or to disrupt the process toward atrocity. And so we'll be intensifying our efforts under the strategy and under our efforts over the year ahead in terms of consultations both here in Washington and in the field on all of these issues. So thank you. Thanks for that, Rob. Beth, I was wondering if you could share your experiences. Sure, I agree with all of what Rob was saying. It's incredibly important that civil society actors as representatives of the most impacted communities are central to any decision making around atrocities prevention, response, mitigation, et cetera. And any transitional justice system that's ultimately adopted by a particular community has to be locally driven. There just are not sort of things we can take off the shelf and just drop into societies. They have to be bespoke. They have to be tailored, adapted to the local conditions. And the only way to do that really is to work very closely with local leaders who are genuinely representing the interests, preferences, et cetera, of folks that are the most close to these patterns of violence. And so the US government can do this in a number of ways. Rob mentioned many of them. It's consultations. It's using our convening power, using our programming, funding to be able to empower groups to do this sort of work. One other thing that I think has been really helpful, and I know the Holocaust Museum has been really central to this, is bringing together communities that have experienced violence from different parts of the world so that they can share their experience in both how they've dealt with violence, how they've responded to it, how they've shaped a justice response, how they've built a truth commission or a truth-telling process, how they've dealt with psychosocial and economic rehabilitation of communities, and other communities can learn from those experiences and think about how to adapt them to their own contexts. And I think that's something that we can do just through the power of our programming money. My office has a tiny bit of money. We're trying to do this in very discrete ways. Our budget pales in comparison to what you're able to do, and some of the other offices and bureaus are able to do. And we all are working in concert to try and identify areas where this sort of capacitation can be helpful and might be able to jump start or empower local leaders to then do the work politically that has to be done at the local level to convey to the leadership that this is important, it needs to be done, and here are the ideas as to how it should be done. Thanks so much for that, Beth. Rob, Beth, just, oh, thank you. Could I just say one thing? Yes, of course. It just thought of, what are the things that is so important? We will be talking, as we said before, locally, but it's also with our partners, other countries, who have access to communities that we don't have access to. And I think it's also important that we're sharing data with them, information with them, and feeding that information into our efforts. And that's what we see developing now through the work of the International Atrocity Prevention Working Group and others. And I think that's gonna be a really important element going forward that will increase. That's a great point. So this is a difficult one for me to answer because I get very emotional. Someone on my team just wanna bet, what do you cry? It's all local voices. And I mentioned the localization agenda, which our administrator, Samantha Power, is putting a lot of energy into. How do we do a better job of working directly with local organizations and individuals? We are very bad as a government putting small amounts of money on small targets quickly. We know how to do it. We just don't do it at scale. A big part of what our Bureau for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization is trying to do is spread out these lessons learned around the rest of a rather large agency that is a bureaucracy and is slow to move. But how do you give those 16 women under a tree in Darfur a grant? We know how to do that. Because every time those women go out to get firewood to make charcoal so they can sell it and feed their children, they put themselves at risk of rape. So they come together and say, if we only had a little bit of capital, we can start a business. We can give them that capital. We have done that. When an organization in Syria volunteers, later it becomes the white helmets, we can give them $45 million over time. They've never been audited. They can't fill out the forms. They don't have all the legal structure. They certainly aren't a legal entity in Syria. But we know how to do this. And if we're doing anything right in any of these countries, it's because we're working with local people listening to the only voices that matter, which are theirs. They're the ones that are risk of being victims or have been victims. They're the ones that know the perpetrators and they know the things that are gonna work and what doesn't work. So if we forget to listen, as Americans, we often do that, if we forget to listen, we're failing. Thank you, Rob, for that. And thank you also just for crying and for showing just how incredibly important and personal this issue is. We all have the privilege to sit here on this stage and to sit here in this audience and talk about these issues. And they're not abstract issues. They are people who every single day are facing a threat of whether or not they will be able to feed their families, live through the night, not injure sexual violence. So for them, this is not a non-negotiable. It has to be a priority. We often talk at the museum about how we're trying to climb Mount Everest, the slow, steady steps that you just have to keep taking forward and how we're trying to move this from priority number 200 up to, if we're lucky, priority 20 or higher. And so this strategy is one step in that process. It has to be implemented and it has to require a whole of government and a whole of society effort to do it. So I just wanted to thank you just for, again, just underscoring just how critically important it is, what we're actually here to talk about and what we're endeavoring to try to do. And maybe just in that regard, kind of going back to the role of the White House and thinking about how we integrate these critically important endeavors that you mentioned before, women, peace and security, the Global Fertility Act, Ali Wiesau, trying to address the most pressing issues that many of us feel exist right now alongside a whole host of complex geopolitical realities unfolding in the world. How do you center atrocity prevention when you're trying to kind of navigate creating this broader architecture for prevention? No, thanks for that Naomi. And I think the key is in the how. As I mentioned earlier with immense thanks to Congress, we have this solid foundation of legal frameworks, this family of these three laws. And we've taken steps to articulate strategies behind each of those laws, but that's the strength and the challenge for the US government is that we have three strategies. So we have to work in what I was saying is weaving, this constant effort of weaving together to look at how we don't just bring efforts that follow on from those three laws, but also how we look at some of the country and regional specific efforts, which some of my colleagues have talked about, to really ensure that there are some core principles and concrete actions that are integrated across all those efforts, and that they're mutually reinforcing. Again, that we kind of are working, a lot of I think what we do is making sure that the bureaucracy actually functions in a way to move towards action. And so while it sounds cumbersome, it's very important because it's how we get to the how, the actual action component. I do think that there are some specific things that we, it kind of helps that atone for. And the one thing I would note first, one thing that is new in this administration, which has never been done before, is to have a directorate of the National Security Council have a standalone focus on these issues. The NSC has always looked at a development agenda, which I'll use that as a very broad term. But it was with a lot of intention that there was a standalone directorate that puts a trustee prevention work with development at large and humanitarian response in an effort to kind of have a cross cutting way of looking at how we set policy. And I'm proud to say that the people who set the policy and convene the interagency to form are all practitioners. So they're all people who have actually done this work directly and now we're sitting in the White House to help craft policy. And I note that because it helps us reset the tone that we work with the interagency so that as they bring together the experts and practitioners within the State Department and DOD and USAID, they are working off of an umbrella that we are setting that sets a new tone for then how we work and kind of a more refreshed approach as the US government. And I think one of the things that many of my colleagues have commented on, which I very much agree with, the importance of early warning is of course core to our national security and moral imperative of savings people's lives. It also allows us to be smarter with how we use taxpayer dollars in what is a continuously resource-contrained environment because of a lot of those challenges that I was outlining at the top. And it, you know, therefore it's that policy framing that we set that allows us to identify where we really need new resources and where we just need to be smarter with the resources that we have. I think one area that the US government has underway which has been successful is also then kind of merging our localization agenda that we have at large for this work in our own practice within the US government and really looking at training of staff that goes down to what our colleagues do at the embassy level and admissions to ensure that staff who work on a range of areas that might not be kind of exclusively labeled in the atrocity prevention or conflict prevention world have a baseline understanding and understand how to mobilize the resources within the US government so that they can actually be helpful in bringing eyes and ears and the voices of the information and expertise that we get from communities to influence both our programmatic and I think policy formulation agenda. Thank you so much for that. There was so much in there and just picking up on that last point around the fact that more often than not some of this work is not going to be labeled as atrocity prevention. The early on work, especially the work that was mentioned by both Robbs, it will come in under other kind of auspices but the goal is the same and that's why it's so important to ensure that people are actually trained but also to the points that were made that when you're engaging with local civil society it's not just the people that are getting access to the consulates, to the embassies, it's the people who won't be able to make that trip for a whole host of reasons or don't have the social capital to be able to get in the door to a certain degree. So I appreciate also just how localized you're thinking about these particular issues. I wanted to kind of go back to that question around kind of concrete examples and Beth, your office has done so much in regards to responding to specific situations, including ones where the US government has made, for example, a determination of genocide such as the context of Burma. I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about kind of what are some of those streams of work? What does that look like? Yeah, thanks so much. A lot of it depends on where we are in a particular crisis. Burma, as you mentioned, we're still in an atrocity situation that has evolved considerably. It started out being a genocide against the Rohingya and now we have an anti-democratic movement attacks on protesters at extremely high levels. So we're beyond the upstream phase of prevention. We're in a mitigation world and also in preparing for a response. But there are still things that we can do at this phase and they're being done. And one of them is something that Rob mentioned, which is the importance of documentation. Documentation in and of itself is not necessarily a justice response, but any justice response is gonna depend on good documentation. And so, capacitating organizations that are doing that, that are collecting digital artifacts, that are working with survivor groups in a trauma-informed way, that are saving and preserving information for future justice processes, that's something that could be done now. So the U.S. government is supporting the double I double M, which is an international investigative mechanism devoted to Myanmar created by the United Nations in order to be this sort of centralized hub, to collect information, to prepare dossiers, to refine that information in complex ways to understand, for example, the chain of command or why particular villages were targeted, et cetera, and then share that with future justice processes. We then see the Gambia stepping up and bringing litigation against Myanmar under the Genocide Convention before the International Court of Justice. The United States has shared information with the Gambia and is working to help ensure that it has the resources it needs to pursue this litigation. And so that's another line of effort focused on state responsibility before the world court, the International Court of Justice. And there are also a number of states around the world that have opened cases and investigations because they have laws that enable them to do that. They have what's called universal jurisdiction, which allows for any nation to bring criminal charges against individuals, potentially individuals in their custody or potentially in absentia trials, depending on whatever their local legal framework is. But some of these states have opened investigations to determine whether or not they might have a situation in which they could bring charges. And we can support those efforts. Unfortunately, the US does not have a robust legal framework when it comes to international crimes, so we can't contribute in the same way that these other nations can, including many of our closest friends and allies in NATO and the EU, et cetera, who have a much more robust legal framework. But there are efforts afoot at Congress to be able to do that. So looking for these pathways to justice, whether it be in national courts, outside of the nation in question, international courts or hybrid courts. In a situation like Ukraine, we have a national system that actually is quite sophisticated. They have war crimes units. They had started doing cases prior to the relaunch of the Russian invasion in February. And so the US government is supporting the Office of the Prosecutor General and the field offices that are initiating these investigations. So one of our implementing partners was able to go to the shopping center hours after that attack happened, working side by side with Ukrainian counterparts in order to examine that crime base, lock it down, take whatever information needed to be had, do trauma-informed screening interviews with survivors and witnesses, collect whatever physical evidence needed to be collected, photograph to a criminal law standard, et cetera. So these are the kinds of things that we can be doing even while we have atrocities ongoing. And before we've had a full transition or a consolidation of peace, where the society itself can be thinking about what transitional justice looks like. That's fantastic. And you were talking about also just the non-recurrence component. And I was wondering, Michelle, when you think about the human rights training, the security cooperation, those are opportunities both signaled to governments where there's a concern that there might be a risk of atrocities to dissuade the military from being perpetrators. There are also opportunities to potentially help strengthen the capacity of the military to avert crimes in the long run. I was wondering if you've talked just a little bit more in detail about what those programs look like and how you prioritize various elements you talked about, the importance of gender within those, so I'd love to hear more about that. Thank you. Sure, thank you. So definitely institutional capacity building and human rights training are a requirement of any of our security cooperation programs. So every single one that we support has to have those. We have a couple of defense institutions that specifically lead them. And we have incredible dedicated staff at the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies, for example, and through DSCA, which is the Defense Security Cooperation Agency who does the program management of these kinds of programs to help and build the capacity specifically of foreign security forces. And I think that another element of what we do too that's relevant is that upfront we also make sure that we're not working with anyone to give security assistance who has been a perpetrator of gross violations of human rights. So we also have vetting that we work on with the State Department to specifically make sure that we're not working with units that have committed gross violations of human rights. The, one of the elements of this administration is that as we're looking at security cooperation, we're also working on ways to increase assessment monitoring and evaluation, and to increase our institutional capacity building efforts. So we've shown a spotlight on those efforts. We just launched our first ever learning agenda for security cooperation, which you can find in our website. It's the first time we've done something like that. And in these efforts to specifically look at how effective we are, we're making sure that we're learning lessons from the past because of course there's many lessons in this field to improve and highlight the role that institutional capacity building plays. And a big part of that is specifically human rights training and making sure that the defense forces that we partner with are accountable and that they follow the rule of law and they follow the civilian control of the military and they follow IHL. With Women, Peace and Security, what we are doing is we are specifically using our incredible network of gender advisors that we've been building over the past few years to build capabilities into the different combatant commands. Our combatant commands around the world, you might have heard of SENTCOM or UCOM or INDOPACOM, they are the ones that are actually doing security cooperation. They're implementing it with partner nations. And so each of those combatant commands now has a gender advisor and gender focal points and are able to specifically build that in to their programming and our Defense Department engagement with partner nations. So specifically in security cooperation, we're working now to make sure that gender analysis is built into security cooperation and that gender analysis, gender sensitive analysis by nature would consider elements of disproportionate power and the ways that things like conflict related sexual or gender-based violence could be part of one of the concerns that they're looking at on the ground. So many ways, I think, and I really see this strategy and these series of laws as a tipping point, a really important inflection point for the U.S. government to be able to push these efforts and focus them just as my colleague said, as we weave together the things that we are doing, the things that we're required to do, to look at them and make sure that they make sense toward that ultimate goal of preventing and anticipating preventing atrocities. So for us, I think that building in our important efforts with allies and partners that are central to defense effectiveness to make sure that they are reaching this goal of prevention through the efforts we're doing is the way that the Defense Department is looking at it. Thanks so much for that. And it's fascinating just to look at when we consider the countries at risk, when we look at our own museum early warning system and the countries that you've identified where there is overlap as it pertains to human rights training, security cooperation and just how to think in a more rigorous way as you're outlining right there about what are the tools that DOD has at their disposal to play an early action role there. Just as we close out, I thought I would end with kind of one of the most vexing questions and maybe I'll pose it to both our co-host and to Nithi because of just the importance of it. I'm wondering about how the strategy is going to help when we are confronted with other security and political interests in a particular country that at times have historically in the past resulted in people kind of sidelining or downgrading some of the atrocity prevention concerns that may exist in a country. How would you respond to that and how do you see the strategy helping to address that challenge? Well, thank you. That is a great question and that is what we, I mean that is our daily struggle at the State Department is how do we balance this with all our other priorities and equities with other countries around the world? I think one of the keys to point out, both to internally in the United States as well as to our partner governments or the governments we're dealing with is our thrust, the ideas behind the strategy the ideas behind our work to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocity. This is a reflection of core fundamental values that are critical to the United States and to the world. This is not just U.S. values, these are universal values and this is something that will always be part of our conversation with other countries. Now, if countries work with us to address our concerns about what we see in those countries, we will have a much stronger and a better relationship with them than if they go down the road and actually get involved in atrocity events. It will be much worse and I can give a good example of this, early in my career, I served in a small South American country called Suriname and when I was there, they were coming out of a post coup kind of period and there was a rebellion in the interior. The government at that time under Colonel Dizzy Boucher decided that one way they would push back on this rebellion, it was among Maroon communities in the interior, was to go to a village called Moewana. They landed a helicopter there and they mowed down every villager with machine guns. Women, children and men, everyone. It was dozens of people were murdered. This atrocity brought international outrage and made that country and that country's leadership pariah and made it very much more difficult for them to get anything done that they were hoping to get done as a young country. This country then, through the next following years, moved more towards democratic values, more towards an emerging kind of democratic state as a government and it was the international response that I think helped push that forward. So this sort of work is hugely important, diplomatic work. It is difficult. It can cause problems in bilateral relations but you have to address those problems and take them on and work with these governments to address what we're hoping to achieve. Thank you. Thank you for that and for that very painful example too. Nithi. Thanks for the question, but the one thing I'd say is it's not an either or. We will do this work because we have to. I mean, as Rob said, it's a moral imperative. It is so central to the values that drive our policy agenda, irrespective of administration, that is the core to what the United States government intends to promote and I think there are a few things to I would just point to. One is you asked about the strategy specifically. The strategy is one part of our toolkit. So it's not the only thing that we're doing and there was a reason it was released publicly and as Rob noted with all the different seals and all the time it takes to get a document printed but the reason it is public is that it is a way that we are held accountable. You know, we rely on the consultations with civil society, not just for early warning but to tell us what we are doing well and the US government can do more of and to tell us what we are not doing so that we can continuously have a effort of kind of learning within the US government to go forward too. And I think then the second thing that I would note is related to our approach, this is where the task force and other structures that we have set up become important because it provides forums within the US government to do this analysis and convene and facilitate discussions around what we will do with the information that we get from these different channels through the work that the strategy is trying to promote. And then the last thing I'd say building off of what Rob shared, you know, we have so many different tools, diplomacy, defense development, the 3Ds as we call it in the US government, but they all really do play a function and it is a very large priority for us to also just as we work as part of prevention in response to early warning to also work to promote good governance, particularly in the countries that are not democracies but have the capability to be democracies. And as we continue to not just protect existing democracies to help countries like Ukraine defend the democracies that they have, but to really support countries where civil society has the ability to thrive, where the principles of democratic governance have the ability to flourish. And that's very core to our work too. And I would say it is really pretty central to advancing atrocity prevention. Thank you so much for that answer and for just squarely taking on the idea that there isn't either or, which I think we all feel very strongly that there isn't. And I thank you for articulating the US government's position. It's been a real honor and privilege to be able to moderate this conversation and to share the floor with all of you. And I thank you on behalf of the museum and USIP for the work that you have been doing. We endeavor to continue to work with you and others to help ensure that we are living up to the values that have been articulated and espoused. We're now turning to the second panel, which is going to be moderated by Dr. David Yang. David is the Vice President of the Center for Thematic Excellence and the Gandhi King Global Academy here at the US Institute of Peace. The conversation is gonna focus on operationalizing atrocity prevention. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to our second panel on taking a look on the new US strategy to anticipate, prevent, and respond to atrocities. This second panel is entitled Operationalizing Atrocity Prevention, as opposed to the title of the first, which was to institutionalize atrocity prevention. I'm David Yang. I'm one of the Vice Presidents at the US Institute of Peace. I supervise two new parts of the Institute. The first is the Gandhi King Global Academy, and the second is the Center on Thematic Excellence. So first things first, thank you to Congress for passing the LA Visile Act. Thank you to our colleagues in the US government for producing this new strategy. I'm excited to moderate this second panel, excited because when I served in the US government in the 2010s, I had the opportunity to support the creation of the then Atrocity Prevention Board, which as we've heard this morning has been succeeded by the Atrocity Prevention Test Force at the National Security Council. I'm also excited because I was honored to serve on that Atrocity Prevention Board as a representative of the US Agency for International Development. Thirdly, I'm excited to chair this panel because I now have the privilege at USIP of advancing USIP's historic work on Atrocity Prevention. And finally, I'm excited to be reunited with so many great colleagues with whom I've worked on these very issues. So thank you to Naomi from the Holocaust Museum for chairing the first panel. Thank you to her panelists for that great discussion on how to institutionalize Atrocity Prevention. This one focuses, as I said, on operationalization, or in other words, we're talking about policy versus programs and partnerships. Now, it's in my view in the eye of the beholder what's a policy and what's a program and a partnership. I say that in advance to excuse us if we tread some of the same ground, that very important ground that was tread during the first panel. But we have different voices here with different experiences and certainly with much more nitty gritty, programmatic and partnership experience. So I'm excited about that. So our panel will talk about how do these new US government institutions translate into operationalization? How does architecture become action, especially through programs and partnerships? And how does a new strategy enable lifesaving action in conflict zones far from this lofty building we sit in this morning? To address these topics, we have a very, very expert and experienced panel of US government officials. Let me introduce them now. To my immediate right, Ro Tucci is the director of the Center for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance at USAID's Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation. Welcome. Next is Scott Busby, who is the principal deputy assistant secretary at the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Welcome, Scott. Next we have Toby Bradley, who is a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department's Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Welcome. Next is Kat Photovat, who is the senior official in the Secretary of State's Office of Global Women's Issues. Welcome, Kat. And welcome, Allison Lombardo, who is a deputy assistant secretary also at the State Department in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs. Welcome to all of you. Thank you very much for your work on a trustee prevention and response, and thank you for joining us today. We have just about an hour for this panel, so I'm going to ask some initial questions to each of our panelists. I ask you to be fairly brief so we can save some time for our second round of more interactive questioning. I'm going to start off with Ro, a longtime colleague of mine, both at USAID and at USIP. Now she's back in an important leadership position at USAID. So Ro, of course prevention is a big part of the new strategy. In recent years, USAID has made a lot of progress in carrying out programs to mitigate to prevent risks of atrocities. Can you tell us a little bit about the impacts to date of such risk mitigating programs, prevention programs? What lessons has the agency been learning? How are you applying the lessons? And we talked a lot earlier this morning about the importance of consultations with local communities. Rob Jenkins, as is normal, was quite eloquent and passionate about local voices. So can you talk about how you're co-designing these important programs with local communities, how you're integrating the voices of local communities into these important programs? Thank you, Ro. Great, thank you. Let me just first say it's an honor to be here from the, we call it the DRG Center. I think obviously it's all hands on deck on this issue and each of us has an important role to play. And just to underscore what our deputy administrator said that when atrocities occurs, it's a result of bigger issues at play, right? And that's human rights violations, rule of law that's not respected, no means for people to have meaningful voice in their governments, corruptions, rampant. These are all typical democracy rights and governance issues that we're really trying to get ahead of. And as many of you know, and we don't always want to hear, I think Rob said this quite directly, these efforts take a long time efforts, right? That require deep analysis and learning and sustained investments and sustained partnerships, right? And so I think that's where the DRG Center plays a critical role in all of this. And specifically using programs like our human rights grant program which is in its 10th year and enhancing the rapid response capabilities that we've had and really working, and I'll talk about this later in a Ukraine example, to provide that technical assistance to the missions, to develop these human rights programs in the moment but also over the long term. So just to give you a few examples of the types of programming we do because I think one of the lessons learned is really that you need to tackle this issue from multiple angles, right? And so obviously you want to provide targeted support to at-risk communities. We do that a lot with religious and ethnic minorities, identifying the unique risks, working with the governments, advocating for their rights and increasing services to them. But also looking at how we integrate these efforts into broader development programming and I think that's gonna be a trend that you see more and more, right? We could have a targeted program, targeted analysis but then how do you use that to influence the other development programs and I think you're gonna see more of that over the coming years. We're also looking at our other DRG programming, right? Media programming, critically important as we look to tackle disinformation and hate speech. So how are we taking advantage of that type of programming and adjusting it? For example, in one program, you're working with the government media regulatory body to both promote freedom of expression while also considering the sensitivities to conflict dynamics in addressing, again, hate speech and disinformation. And we saw some really good results there. You know, some drops in on-air defamation cases but it's also, it's not just working with the government, it's also working with the communities and I think that dual approach too is a key lesson that we've been learning. How do you build the resilience of these communities, train them, provide capacity building such that they have the ability to identify rumors and disinformation? That's another best practice we've learned. And then in our typical human rights monitoring, documentation and advocacy work, I think again, how you integrate that work into the other development work is critically important. How we're expanding to work with other partners and I'll talk a little bit more about that as well. But in Sudan, we were working with new and nascent organizations outside the capitol to do human rights monitoring and documentation. And then of course in Afghanistan, mobilizing when the dynamics change there to support human rights defenders and journalists. So again, really just being ready to jump in with that support. And then again, using for example, CPS did an atrocity risk assessment or analysis in Afghanistan. Again, how do we use that to influence other programming? I think is the next chapter. Just on some lessons learned, if you put it in three buckets, we're really looking at ensuring effective capturing and sharing of the information. So that's working with our partners, making sure they have the resources to do ongoing analysis. And then having multiple outlets to share the information. I think that's why the task force is such a great platform to share this information. And then of course, second, is improving the application back into our work. And David, as you know, this is some of the hardest. We can capture lessons quite well. How you incorporate that back into the work is really devil's in the details there. And I think what you're seeing is our ability to use the learning and analysis to right size our programs. And recognize that some responses need nimble quick interventions. Some need more comprehensive large awards. Some need narrow targeted approaches. Others need broader integration. And so using that learning to really identify what is the right program. And then of course, incorporating it into our training. Let me just quickly take a quick stab at the localization one. I think this one's particularly near and dear to my heart for those who know me. Really the word I use is authentic localization. What does it mean to really include partner and empower our local actors? And I think you see a lot of the, what I call now standard ways of incorporating local voices, consulting them with them before and after assessments and design. We can talk about some examples there, co-creation and co-design. You mentioned that, you know, avoiding retraumatizing, instrumentalizing our partners, considering diversity. I don't mean to run through these like a list, but it does feel like those are very, they're quite standard now. They're good practices. But I think, you know, it's funny because we thought, is this a softball question? And then I was like, no, maybe it's really trying to challenge us and push us to think like, what is that next chapter of localization? What does it mean to really strengthen resilience in our communities to build off of the existing systems and processes, the cultural and contextual dynamics? And here's I think the key to truly let local actors lead. And how do we move into a facilitator role? And I think that's what we're digging much deeper into these days. And so I'll just end on that, looking into, you know, procurement mechanisms that really put the partner in the local partners in a leadership position and that really think about what is locally led development look like when, like for example, people centered justice, it's more than building courts. What does it mean to lead with the experience of the local actors and partners? So let me pause there. Talk about this much more, but we'll see if we come back to it. Thanks. Thanks very much, Ro. Thanks for adding with great detail to Rob's earlier points about the important of local voices and AID's localization initiatives. And thanks for joining this morning's conversation about how a lot of the programming work is not new. A lot of the great work that USAID has done for decades now on human rights work with human rights defenders is not new, but how can it be harnessed and coordinated from a lens of atrocity prevention? So thank you for those insights as well. Next, I'm gonna turn to my long-time colleague, Scott Busby. Scott's from the Human Rights Bureau of the State Department as I introduced him. So Scott, the new strategy, it talks a lot about the important need to adapt quickly to changing risk on the ground. And it's a key to early warning to prevention. Your bureau, the Bureau for Human Rights Democracy and Labor, is perhaps in my view a leading supporter of human rights defenders in the US government in countries at high risk of atrocities. In such situations, Scott, where the risks are getting more and more dire as we speak, how do your programs adapt? And can you give us examples of them? I know you're pioneering a lot of the rapid response. And like for my question with Roe, how are you working with local communities to make these pivots or adaptations? And finally, I know DRL, your bureau, is pioneering also training of State Department officers across the board, across the bureaus. And so can you give us a sense of what your bureau's atrocity prevention trainings are like for foreign service officers, for civil servants, and what impact it's had to date? Thanks, Scott. Thanks, David. Great to be here. Lots of questions there, but I'll try to answer each and every one. Let me know if I don't. Adaptation to changes in the environment is obviously key. Not only in terms of rising risk, but also in terms of how to respond to atrocities, if and when they occur, and then how to help communities recover. So we think we need to think about adapting or provide the ability for programs to adapt across the full spectrum of actions we might take to both prevent and respond to atrocities. One program where we put in place atrocity prevention efforts is in the Central African Republic. The program there is multifaceted, including community-based early warning, risk mitigation planning, integrating both governmental and non-governmental response efforts, including conflict mediation, alternative dispute resolution processes, providing income generation for populations at risk and encouraging social cohesion. So it's a multi-pronged effort. There we have seen an increase in risk to some of the target communities, including women and girls, and so that program has adapted by changing the medium for communicating the risk to that population, altering the frequency of reporting that's done as well as putting in additional risk mitigation measures. When it comes to human rights defenders, David, you're absolutely right, they can be most at risk in these situations. So what we've done in our atrocity prevention programs is urged our grantees to incorporate risk-related elements to their proposals so that if and when a human rights defender or other community leader is put at greater risk due to these programs and due to the rise in risk of atrocities themselves, the programs include escape vows, if you will, money either to purchase additional protection for people on the ground or to actually help facilitate their departure if that's what they need. And as you know, David, we have a broader human rights defenders program which provides those sorts of things globally. So it's easy for us to encourage folks to include those elements in atrocity prevention programs. Another area where we have programs is Syria. And here, the program has adapted to the unique needs of Syrians to recover from atrocities. And this includes programs that heal trauma through workshops, torture rehabilitation and trauma healing counseling, tele-mental health, therapeutic documentation and self-care for activists. Last, let me say that when we see a risk of rising atrocities, one of the key things that needs to be done is to document those atrocities as they're occurring and encouraging the publication, the dissemination of that documentation. So in a lot of our programs, as the risk has gone up, we have funded groups to do the hard work of documenting the atrocities. Thus, for instance, in Ethiopia, we've done all we can to sort of capture whatever evidence there may be of atrocities and get that information out both to our policymakers inside the US government and to the international community. So that's another key way in which we've tried to adapt. Trainings, yes, under the Elie Wiesel Act, we are required to do trainings. We were able to do a first in-person training in South Africa, I guess it's almost three years ago now, which pulled together our human rights officers in throughout Africa, locally employed staff and then a number of key people in Washington. And those folks came together, they talked about sort of definitions of atrocities, common strategies for response, et cetera. And I think the value of that was to kind of establish a common vocabulary and a common sense of prioritization of these issues throughout Africa. And as a consequence of that, we've seen a better reporting, more consistent analysis of these sorts of risks. Unfortunately, due to COVID, we haven't been able to do any other in-person training since then, but we've done a number of virtual trainings based on the same curriculum. And again, trying to bring the key people together in our embassies and here in Washington to establish that common vocabulary and that common sense of prioritization. And I think as a consequence, we are seeing improved analysis, improved reporting, and improved response to risks of atrocities where we see them. Thank you, Scott. Thanks for answering all of my questions. I know there were a lot. And thank you for underlining the importance of building into your grant or cooperative agreements with frontline atrocity prevention workers in conflict countries, the importance of entering their security and anticipating all contingencies. USIP has the privilege of working with Scott's Bureau Rose Center and others on a lot of these programs. And we partner with them to support a lot of peace builders around the world in coupling countries. And I say that because I can attest firsthand to the care that Scott Rowe and their colleagues bring to the importance of safeguarding our local partners under any circumstances, good or dire. So thank you. I apologize as a old US government hand, I can lapse into the acronyms, DRG, Democracy, Human Rights and Governance for Rowe, DRL, Democracy, Human Rights and Labor for Scott. And next, I know who's a close partner, International Narcotics and Legal Enforcement Affairs, Law Enforcement and International Cardics and Law Enforcement Affairs. And so Toby, you're a key player in this field of atrocity prevention and response. This morning we had quite in depth discussion with our Defense Department colleague from the Secretary's office who was speaking at Naomi's urging about how DOD training programs can be used to prevent abuse through security cooperation programs with foreign militaries, how those trainings can be so key and instrumental in preventing abuse committed by those forces. Similarly, INL, your bureau, works very closely with criminal justice officials in governments around the world. You do a lot of training. So my question is similar to Naomi's for our DOD colleague and that is in your trainings with criminal justice actors and officials throughout the world, particularly in conflict countries, how are you using your trainings to really both prevent atrocities, train to prevent and also sensitize criminal justice officials about the interconnections between criminal justice work and atrocity prevention work. Thank you, David. Certainly we know that police and other criminal justice actors can be a force for prevention, mitigation and a response to mass atrocities that can also unfortunately be promulgators of mass atrocities and when they are involved it's particularly disturbing and dangerous. INL, as you said, International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, where others of our colleagues work a lot with civil society, we often work directly with host nation governments and who are asking us for support to professionalize their law enforcement and justice sector actors. And so I thought in this question to really focus in, while we work across that prevention, mitigation and response, this question, I thought I focused on the prevention as you've raised. And I think we're looking at it in a couple of ways. First, there is what should we be doing generally to support the professionalization of criminal justice actors, particularly police and then what are some of the target of things we can do? So on the general approach, we're really looking at how to help countries see their criminal justice actors as professionals. What does it mean to be a professional? What does it mean to be proud of what you do? And what are the things that we all hope for as a human rights and democracy promotion community, what do we hope that they learn in their basic skills courses and their leadership courses that as they go through the system, these are just themes that are constantly being reinforced. And so we're looking at that in how we inject lessons learned from the past into these standard things that we tend to do so that it's part of the DNA of what we, as an international community or as INL does. So if you're getting a basic skills course, what does it mean to be a police officer? What does it mean to be proud of protecting the human beings within your jurisdiction? Whether, regardless of what the laws say about something that may make somebody a minority or are vulnerable in any particular country, that a justice sector operator needs to see that they are protecting the people, the human beings under their charge. And so how can we do that, whether it's bias and discrimination, whether it's atrocity prevention and so really getting that into the bloodstream so it gets better over time. But there are some times where, of course, as you mentioned, they're conflict states or they're places where we're particularly concerned with the level of violence that occurs and among those human beings that they're meant to protect. And we realize as INL that we need to do better on that front. And so a few years ago, we started partnering with the U.S. Holocaust Museum and looking at ways that we can do targeted training as well for leaders, for people who are in positions of power and seeing how can we deconstruct the past to understand where things might have gone wrong so that we helped fuel their research into looking in past atrocities, seeing what actually happened. And we now know, thanks to the museum's research, quite a bit about the role of police during the Holocaust. And we know how the Nazis slowly transformed the traditional police forces into an instrument of state repression. The museum's research helped us understand how this transformation took place and how we in INL can work to develop leadership guides and tools to ensure police and law enforcement never repeat this pattern. There were warning signs, social exclusion, attacks on civil rights, state sanctioned violence, and killing operations. Police participated in killings organized, ordered by their leaders, and they stood by while houses were ransacked and destroyed. A change in the police oath from sworn loyalty to the Constitution and protecting those human beings became a sworn oath to the Fuhrer, one person in the SS. In addition to those early warning signs of those who committed atrocities, and maybe not so early, there were clear warning signs, the museum also researched those situations in which a police officer refused to conduct an atrocity. And they found that if the police officer could actually rely on another part of the law and say, you want me to burn down that synagogue, but I also have a duty to protect the historic nature of that building. And so they faced only in Breppermans versus committing an atrocity. So there is choice. And I think that's, I have to say, I also participated in the museum training as a diplomat. They have a course where they say, this is what diplomats were doing during the time. And if should you be faced with this situation, what would you do? And I think that's really important for more leaders to get that training. And us too, because we never know where it might occur. So those are the ways we're looking at generalize. How can we get in the DNA of everything? How can we be more targeted when we think there's a particular concern? And we're already seeing the pilots run and we're getting some good feedback where police officers are seeing that they are more professional, that they're protecting more people under their care. And those people are helping them do their job better because they want to communicate with them. And we're seeing fewer and fewer complaints against police that have engaged in these training. So I'll stop there, but that's how we're beginning to approach this really important issue. Thank you so much, Toby. And thanks for underscoring your important partnership with the Holocaust Museum. Also, I want to thank Naomi and her team at the Holocaust Museum for partnering with USIP and Toby's Bureau. I want to give a shout out to one of Toby's colleagues, Kathleen Cougan at the INL Bureau and my USIP colleague, Lauren Bailey, who is working on the projects that Toby's talking about. And thanks also to Lauren for organizing and coordinating today's event. So next in the acronym SUP is what we used to call, or I think still called G-WI, not Kiwi, but G-WI in the US government, stands for Global Women's Issues. Cat is an alum of the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, and we all work closely with her then as she was deputy director of the program office there. Now she has the importance of the lead official in Secretary Blinken's office on Global Women's Issues in the Secretary's office to illustrate the importance of those issues. So Cat, my questions for you are that in reading the strategy, it makes clear particularly almost in a last section or appendix it cites all the important related initiatives to this strategy, including the Biden administration's gender, equity and equality strategy, including the women, peace and security strategy, the national US strategy in that area which was prompted by Congress. So what is the G-WI office doing to link this new atrocity prevention strategy with these existing strategies related to gender equality? And how are you ensuring as a lead official that the implementation of this new atrocity prevention response strategy has a gender lens to it? And then more broadly, at the intersection of women, peace and security, that important two decade now long global movement, at the intersection of that movement and atrocity prevention work in this new strategy, in countries like Ukraine, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Burma and others in the headlines, how are you seeking through this new strategy to protect women and girls from atrocities? And what are your highest gender priorities in these crisis countries? Thanks, Cat. Just a few questions. First of all, I wanna say thank you, so great to see you again, David. And my sincere thanks to USIP and the Holocaust Museum for hosting us here today and all of you for coming. And I know there's so many civil society organizations, activists in the audience as well as my USG colleagues and these amazing panelists. I think I've worked for every single entity here. So it's so great to be here again. Yesterday we actually had a women peace and security event with our secure future. I see Hans up there on the hill. So many of these issues, especially around Ukraine and Afghanistan came up as well. First, I wanna say women and girls are affected by conflict in unique ways. And they also have unique contributions to these issues. So this isn't just a question of what's the right thing to do, to quote the late great secretary Albright, inclusion of women isn't just the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do. This is an effectiveness issue. It's taken us a while, but we've started to actually be able to make people understand if you want to be able to promote peace, if you want to be able to quell and stop atrocities, you must include women and women's issues in what you're doing. So gender issues and honestly, we are also taking a very, very intersectional approach, making sure that we're looking at intersectional challenges and barriers, not just for women, looking at LGBTQI populations, looking at racial issues, what are all these intersecting concerns that we need to be addressing when addressing issues facing atrocities? So gender-based violence certainly is a harbinger of broader atrocities. And so when systems show that there are increases of gender-based violence, that's something that obviously is an alarm towards making sure to look at and see what those issues are on the ground. So we addressed this in several ways. One, as you've heard, there's many strategies right now, and certainly the Atrocities Prevention Strategy named after Ellie Weisel. So let's remember who this is named after. This is about never again, making sure that the atrocities that have happened in the past never again happen. And I think that's something that certainly civil society organizations, women leaders, when we talk about atrocities prevention, that mantra, that dedication is something that comes up frequently. I actually also participated in the diplomatic course at Holocaust Museum. And I will say I was with Ambassador Kozak, who was formerly with DRL and WHA, very long career as an incredible statesman. And every time someone did something in the State Department that was contrary to the policy at the time, he always looked at me and would say, that's you. So I said, thank you, Ambassador Kozak. I want to take this as a compliment. But making sure that I think the lesson from that in particular was make sure to speak up, to use the voices of the activists, of the civil society of the women on the ground. Every single time there has been a conflict, we have made sure nothing about them without them. So we have several strategies that we are working with. Certainly atrocities prevention strategy is a strategy that we incorporate the broader gender strategies within. The Biden-Harris administration last October released a national gender strategy, and that's kind of an umbrella strategy that we work under. And within that, we also work on gender-based violence. There's been an update to our 2016 strategy, and of course, the women, peace, and security strategy. These strategies provide principles of operation. So they include things like making sure that gender analysis is done across the board. So when we start talking about atrocity prevention policies, we look at making sure that gender analysis incorporated into that. How are we making sure to include the voices of the women? How are we looking at power structures? How are we looking at making sure that those issues that are being addressed are incorporating those perspectives? Because we know peace building and peace processes are more likely to last 15 years or more if women are included. Again, this is an effectiveness issue. I have to give our DOD colleagues a lot of credit. That's something that yesterday, I know D Dasstruck was here as well, but something that we had been talking about certainly with many of their, we had IndoPaycom and some of the COCOMs discussing. They have gender advisors on there. And they are very mission oriented and they have all indicated and made sure that the data supports making sure to include gender perspectives and gender into all of DOD's work as well. So in order for us to effectuate preventing and responding to atrocities, same concerns. We have to make sure that we're incorporating the perspectives of women and girls into the work that we're doing. In addition to the strategies and policies that we're implementing, which includes, and I wanna make sure to highlight this for all of our civil society organizations, consultations with civil society organizations, activists. I know there's been a lot of talk about co-design. I will note that many of the, and this is for the civil society organizations, many of the women activists that we've talked to about co-design and things of that nature as a best practice have said, you're asking me for my time and then I do not get compensated until maybe I'm incorporated into the project after. So we are looking at better ways of doing that without being exploitative in our inclusion of them. It's something certainly across the board right now, many of the Afghan women, you asked about Afghanistan. So many of the Afghan women who have made it out of Afghanistan, who we are constantly seeking consultation with, they are refugees. They are living on nothing in many cases and we are asking them for their time. We are asking them for their commitment and their expertise. They are members of parliament. They are judges. So making sure that we are compensating them, making sure that we are advocating for the fact that these are experts that we are utilizing the information from them and recognizing their leadership. The secretary recently appointed in our office special envoy, Reena Amiri, who is a special envoy on Afghan women, girls and human rights. And she attends all the negotiations with the Taliban. She is an Afghan-American woman who sits at the table with the Taliban. And in that regard, she is constantly negotiating on girls' education, women's rights. We talk to, on a constant basis, making sure that access is provided so that the voices of the women can be heard by policy makers. So as we are making policies, as we are having these discussions, that is built back into the work that we are doing. On Ukraine as well, I think Ukraine is a particular example of where a lot of the vulnerabilities that we are seeing really need to be addressed. 90% of the people leaving Ukraine in refugee status are women and children. So it really has changed the scope. We've talked to UNHCR and other entities working on the humanitarian front. It's really changed how they are operating and how they are prioritizing, making sure that they are addressing gender issues across the board. So in terms of programming as well, one of the ways that we do our trainings, and we have doubled the training in the last year, again, that was one of the results of our Women, Peace, and Security Report, we were able to double our gender-based trainings across the board and the department just in the last year, and making sure that people understand how to, and we're providing tools to be able to do it. Because the key is how do I do my job? How do I make sure to do this? We are at least past the point of gender is something that is somebody's pet rock as it was a decade or two ago. It is now something everyone understands is necessary, is about effectiveness, and it is something that we are incorporating. We are very lucky that I have great leaders that I am working with who recognize the importance of this. I have to also give CSO Assistant Secretary Ann Wachowski a lot of credit. Certainly just such an expert and leader on Women, Peace, and Security issues. We know that this is something that is incorporated into all of the work that CSO does as well. In general, also on Ukraine, going back to that issue, we have heard from them when it comes to efforts like documentation efforts, making sure that when we're talking about documentation, it's trauma-informed, it's gender-centered, and not exploitative, making sure that those documentation efforts are connected to resources. That has been a gap that has been pointed out to us time and time again, so our office is looking at ways to make sure that those connections are made, that they are not exploited, that the documentation efforts, though important, and making sure that justice is defined by survivors. It's not always going to be the justice as defined by the powers that be. Different individuals have justice as defined by them, giving them the options. We know that when we've looked at countries like Kosovo, sometimes it's been 20 years before survivors of gender-based violence, sexual gender-based violence, or conflict-related sexual gender-based violence, are able to even talk about what they've been through. We've worked with organizations such as ICMP, International Center for Missing Persons, and so when they were doing DNA analysis, one of the things that came out was people were not willing to talk about the sexual violence they endured during the conflict until people had passed away, until time had gone that they could process it. So understanding cycles of violence, trauma, finding innovative ways to address trauma. We're hearing from Ukrainian women right now that they don't want to go to psychosocial support. So what are better ways to get them to be provided with psychosocial support, whether it be group therapy, or things like we've seen in, I think CAR had some innovative ways of doing singing circles, but bringing women together to be able to support and provide that support to each other for psychosocial support in ways that are community-focused and contextual to the countries that we're working in. Thank you so much, Kat. Thanks for all those vivid examples of the work you're doing, and thanks for your bringing such a can-do attitude to this important work. I was sitting here reminiscing that, oh yeah, I remember why I used to call up Kat for that whenever I had a problem that I need to figure out how to solve, and so thank you, Kat. And so finally in our acronym list is I.O. International Organization Affairs of the State Department. I'm gonna embarrass our guest, Alison Lombardo, a bit. Her presence here today as the youngest member of our panel proves there is justice in the U.S. government. That is, less than 10 years ago, I believe Alison was a colleague of mine at USAID as in our young professionals program called the Presidential Management Fellowship and anybody who worked for her at the time said, wow, she is the future. And so the future is now, she was appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary of International Organization Affairs as the leading human rights official in the State Department. So congratulations and welcome, Alison. So I'm a wonk in reading strategies, as you know, and I note that it talks not only about partnerships with civil society, but partnerships with like-minded governments, formal multilateral organizations. So on the informal side first, I know your administration as other administrations before you are seeking to work on a trustee prevention with informal groups of governments like we used to call the coffee group, but it was formally, informally called the International Trustee Prevention Working Group. So how in this administration are you working with that group and other groups like that to coordinate your agenda? And Rob Fourchet this morning, one of your State Department colleagues was talking so excitedly in a powerful way about how important the LA Vizel Act was and the strategy is and because you can bring it to governments like these to say, hey, copy us, you know, let's have a race to the top. In more formal settings, the work gets much harder. The Biden administration has rejoined the Human Rights Council. There are obstacles there on this and other agendas. There are obvious obstacles in the very realist setting of the Security Council. So how do you pursue trustee prevention as a senior American human rights diplomat in these more formal, more difficult settings, particularly working on difficult problems like Ukraine and the Uyghurs in China? Thanks so much for that, David. I really appreciate that and the introduction, still working hard at this many years later. You know, we are all as the US government part of the atrocity prevention working group that we work with our international partners, other governments who are interested in doing this work and who we have, what was the coffee group and now a more formalized structure to share our concerns, countries that we're watching, trends that we're seeing and identify additional steps for both individual but also collective action. And I think that kind of sharing at the bilateral level as a collective helps spur what Naomi said this morning was really important for atrocity response and prevention is multilateral action. So any action that we see in the kind of international organizations world and in the UN is spurred by member states taking action to make things happen collectively. And that's why I think in part that kind of informal chat that has now formalized is so important and because it allows us with our partners around the globe to get out ahead of things that we see. So again, not just waiting for the crisis and the reaction that often spurs international outrage and action but really trying to be preventative, looking early and looking down the road about what we can do collectively. So I think the early partnership and the foundation that this group has built is very useful. I will say that Elaine Wiesel Act and US leadership on there and the structure that we have built in our interagency has provided a useful example to others whose bureaucracies are not always as big or who bring different tools and connections to the table from different regions, different strengths and having that dialogue and figuring out where each of us has comparative advantages very, very useful. So then to tackle what I focus on which is really the multilateral side of it, the early action and collective action in the multilateral arena, there's lots of ways that this happens and I won't touch on all of them today because the kind of breadth and the range of it is too large but in early action I think there are a number of forums that hit the news that we can bring attention to situations about which we are concerned. So that is the Human Rights Council, interactive dialogues with special rapporteurs who are looking at trends across the globe. It is the action by the council itself to draw attention to particular situations. Just last month we had an urgent debate in the council where we focused on the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and the uptick in violence there. There's also of course the UN Security Council which I'll touch on in a little bit. We've got special rapporteurs focused on the prevention of genocide on other kind of early action issues as well as the UN capabilities across the board of the different UN agencies and programs that do both early warning and reporting. OHCHR has their own kind of prevention and assessment approach but also the programatics on the ground that get at some of the issues that Roan's gotten others we're talking about. So the US engagement with those and partners engagement with those to make sure that UN programs and capabilities are focused on prevention is really important. Of course then there's action and so how do you use multilateral action to impact what's happening on the ground? So in addition to the dialogues and the various formal chambers, we use different tools like joint statements to raise attention and awareness. We use different UN board meetings to direct resources in certain ways and help steer the agencies where we have a particular concern. And then of course there's security council resolutions or resolutions in the general assembly that put some of the tools of the UN as directed by those member states to use. So whether that's peacekeeping, sanctions, courts and transitional justice, there's of course a lot of tools that we could delve into. I think one of the questions we get asked most that you're alluding to David is that geopolitics has determined that we have a P5 member sitting on the security council who has acted aggressively towards another state and this breaking of norms and the UN charter is really outrageous. And so what does that difficult context do for the work that we're doing on atrocity prevention around the world? So the question we kind of get asked is if the UN security council is jammed up, what hope is there for getting work done and what can we do in the multilateral arena? And first I wanna say, I think even when things are difficult, the security council and UN bodies play an incredibly critical role to spurring multilateral action. So even when it is difficult, you see the United States working in those bodies with like-minded partners to get action. Whether it be incremental or not, I think there's still a lot of value there. So using the security council and UN platforms to highlight areas and atrocity risks is incredibly important. Forcing other countries to take a position on those situations can also be politically useful. And looking at the different unique authorities where we think we may get some traction is still incredibly powerful. So let's not count it out. I also wanna highlight there are several areas where we still see the security council working that I think are very relevant to this work. So most recently, the renewal of the UN mandate in Haiti is really important, particularly with the trends of violence there. We just renewed BNU, which is the special mission, special UN integrated office there for 12 months. We added elements on arms trafficking and illicit financial flows, which often kind of spur greater violence and atrocities. And I think despite some other efforts to reduce the time of that mandate due to other geopolitical issues, the security council was able to do that and we have placed an incredible amount of energy and time getting that done with our other like-minded partners. Something that hasn't hit the headlines also is last May we worked with Ghana and Ireland on a resolution on maritime security in the Gulf of Guinea. So working with our partners in West Africa and hearing kind of African requests about how do we look at the links between piracy and terrorism and violence in West Africa. This is an early action and prevention effort to get UN reporting and focus on that issue in hopes of heading off further violence. So even though that's not something that is as high profile, I think it's an example worth spending time on because the UN is still in the security council and the member states are still doing that work. And I finally want to note, when things are not working, there is still a lot we can do. So in the security council, when vetoes are used, just this year it was decided that member states would need to go and explain to the general assembly of why you are vetoing. For example, a resolution on cross-border humanitarian aid in Syria. And so calling countries to task to explain their positions can be very useful. And we've also used the UN General Assembly as an atrocity prevention and response tool, most notably in most high profile I would say in the situation in Ukraine, where we had very dramatic votes on the Russian aggression this March. And also the General Assembly suspended Russia for its egregious behavior from the Human Rights Council. And so I think you can see that the other bodies of the UN do also participate in this work. Thanks, David. Thank you, Alison. And thanks for really detailing how the United States government can continue to work through multilateral bodies, even as they often appear jammed up, as you put it. So thank you for your creativity and commitment to doing so. I'm just gonna check with our timekeepers and stage managers on timing. I know that we can run till noon, but is that, do we wanna end before that? Or I just wouldn't know how much time we have for further round of questions. Okay, good. So we have another 10 minutes. So I'm gonna ask a few more of my questions based on some of my specific experience of working on these issues in previous years. One of my interests, well, to tell a brief story, I would be handed these briefing papers to go to the Monthly Atrocity Prevention Board meetings in the 2010s. And then next week I'd be handed another sheaf of paper to attend the NSE's monthly meeting on fragility and conflict. And so, often my head was spinning because the two meetings, even though many of us attended both, and even though the agenda seemed so similar, it seemed almost redundant. We were meeting separately. And so, I scratched my head off, and when I came in the ensuing years has been the Global Fragility Act, now the LA Vizel Act. But in 2017, when I left government, I scratched my head and Naomi and her colleagues at the museum said, David, why are you scratching your head? And I said, I wanna try and bridge the fragility and atrocity prevention agendas and really say why they need to be working more closely together. So this morning we talked a little bit about the GFA, the GFA Priority Countries, GFA's Global Fragility Act, the new Vizel Act, its Priority Countries 30, it's short list. So, and I know there are set answers about how coordination occurs, but particularly at your levels where you're handed these sheafs of paper all the time, I'm curious how you, if you care to answer my question, how you ensure that there's a common agenda across at least these two very important, in the case of cat three very important agendas. And I'm just curious how you do it and whether you scratch your heads also or whether there's ways not to have a itchy head. So anybody who wants to jump in and share their experience, please Toby. The thanks for the question, David. And I think, yes, sometimes we do scratch your head about those things. I think going back to my earlier comments, when I talked about the general approach, these are the same police officers we train for sensitivity about different issues. We can only train the same person so many times. And if it's that important of training, why can't we get it into a national policy for an academy level or continue education? So that's part, in part where I think the more we can talk about certain actors that are really critical in atrocity prevention or hate crime or any of the other concerns that we have, gender promotion, what are the things that we'd like as an international community, as citizens, as civil society, what are the things we hope that are the protectors the peace are gonna know and be sensitive to? And the more that we can have an international conversation about that and internationalize these standards, then I think it's easier for us because we just say that's what the international standard is and don't you wanna be part of the international community on those standards. So that requires us to think a little bit more. And then at the same time, the second part of my comments earlier were there are certain times where it is targeted. And when we're doing targeted things, because atrocity is something that's specific and can create, while we could potentially do prevention with hitting many birds with one stone or feeding many birds with one scone. We can, you know, there are other times where we have to go in and if a country's asking or if we really think we need to do something, do it specific. And that's where INL is fueling the research with USIP to understand the nexus between things like the Gulf of Guinea and how piracy could actually start affecting violence in the communities or how other transnational crime creates violence because the bad actors like that and they want to destabilize communities and how that affects the vulnerable populations most. And so understanding how that works, I think that's research. We all have to get better at understanding that. But then when we do our actual activities, that's where I'm learning today too. There are a number of things that I think we do do intuitively from on the international organization side. For example, we support investigative mechanisms and we support the research that helps them promote these policies. And with gender, we look to incorporate women in everything we do and understanding that you don't make a victim, further victimized when a police officer is asking really tough questions and how can we get them to be a part of the solution. So I think the more we understand where we are particular comparative advantage as a bureau, as an agency is in this, it helps. So for example, on atrocity response, which I didn't talk about earlier, there are a lot of programs that my colleagues around the table have about working with the victims and documenting crimes. And I think where we on the INL side is we can work with whether it's the people they're coming to in the moment to not victimize them or if it's years afterwards, it's the forensics part of it and how does law enforcement do that type of work. So really understanding where is our comparative advantage? Where do we understand that we're doing, should we focus in specific countries, should we focus more generally? But these are all things that we have to get better at and I'm really pleased to look around the table today and see all the wonderful things my colleagues are doing and I for one would love to continue this conversation to see how we can continue to compliment. Thanks so much, Toby. Scott and then bro. Yeah, David, so specifically on Global Fragility Act and Atrocity Prevention, fortunately, and I don't know whether this is, by happenstance or was intentional, the CSO Bureau has been assigned lead responsibility on both. So the fact though they have to integrate the two. David, as you probably recall, the CSO Bureau from its inception has been sort of in search of a mission and I think the fact that it has been given the lead on these two distinct but related things has very much helped to integrate the two. Additionally, our Undersecretary for Civilian Security, Democracy, Human Rights, Azrazea has really sought to bring together the different bureaus, offices, and entities within the J family to ensure that sort of coordination and alignment. So I think that too has helped to ensure that where we encounter these situations, the three of us here can all bring our information and programs to bear on that problem. Great, thank you Scott. Roe. Oh yeah. Yeah, I don't wanna speak for our CPS Bureau, but I think there was also some similar scratching of heads early on and trying to think about how to bring these agendas together and where's the coherence there. And I think a lot of common language or where we landed on is the common language, prevention and resilience. And if you're focusing on those two things, I mean that's the overlap between the fragility and atrocity and so I think, and to add to the complexity, then where does democracy, rights, and governance fit into that and it's key to prevention and resilience. So that's another element to build in, but I think you're seeing that coherence, that common language is starting to develop and so maybe that's where you'll see more of these agendas merge as you see the similar components throughout and the similar, you know, what's underlying them all. Just to give one example, in the conflict assessment framework, you know, atrocity prevention components are built into that, right? And so you're seeing that merging happening practically, but it'll probably just take a little bit more time before that coherence is fully there. Great, thank you Roe for our non-U.S. government audience. Couple acronyms, CSO is State Department's Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations, the lead conflict bureau in the State Department. CPS is the USAID's Peacebuilding Bureau as I call it. It stands for Conflict Prevention and Stabilization and so they're two key players so thank you for signing that. Allison knows a lot about fragility so I'm gonna tap her and then I'm gonna ask a final question just to cat, cause she's a Green Ant Shades fellow person like me and I wanna ask her a budget question. So Allison, please. Sure, I think, you know, Roe said it right about the link between fragility with particularly with prevention and resilience. I'll say, you know, as the U.S. government gets better at this and getting kind of earlier in the chain of violence instead of just reactive and we're working to bring others along. So I think you'll increasingly see us have this conversation with our partners in the International Trassee Prevention Working Group on how do we get kind of earlier interventions that maybe don't make the headlines but are really gonna head off something and making the case for that can often be difficult but is really a core part of these two strategies. Similarly, I think in the multilateral arena, attacking and getting at kind of fragile states is very difficult because who calls themselves fragile and how are member states representing in the multilateral arena but getting at some of these early problems through programs, through raising awareness, through investigations and reporting and documentation is absolutely gonna be essential so we're less reactive to atrocities. Great, thank you. So the real truth about people sitting around the semi-circles that the how you go up in the policy world or programming world, the last time you actually can deal with important issues like this but you have to deal with budgets, return to office, keeping morale up during COVID, all those really important leadership roles and budgets are supremely important. So Kat used to be deputy director of Scott's Bureau's program office so she had to handle her budget very closely and they have a lot of money to do a lot of important work. So Kat, I was reading the report last night, the first annual US government report to Congress on reporting on progress on the implementation of the LA Vizel Act and it had a paragraph about the budget. It said from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2021, the budget rose ninefold from 6 million to 54 million and it did explain that despite a $5 million earmark by Congress for atrocity prevention, the dramatic rise in that one year increase was due to better reporting for atrocity prevention. So my final question is, does that relatively small number matter as Roe and panelists this morning said, this is about harnessing a lot of existing programs across many sectors to bear as Rob Jenkins put way upstream on prevention. So should a congressperson, a congressional staff care about that number? What number does that tell you and how on the inside do you construct worry about a sufficient budget to drive this agenda? You're talking about budget, so. I mean, President Biden said show me your budget, I'll show you your priorities. So in terms of that small number, I think that's indicative of a couple of things, once there has been an increase in conflict and so I think that's reflective of that as well. Certainly and I'm gonna give my USAID colleagues and some credit on this, but on the gender space, we managed, Secretary Blinken announced this last March that we have doubled our gender attribution request from $1.3 billion to $2.6 billion. And this isn't existing money, this isn't new money. So the requirement to integrate gender into what everyone is doing has now doubled. I have to give Toby a lot of credit and I and I'll immediately request that GUI come in and brief their entire bureau on gender issues and make sure that was incorporated and we have great collaboration with our bureaus. But in terms of does that small number matter, it absolutely matters. Precedent matters, what we're learning matters. Training, certainly that's something that we garnered from our women's peace and security report as well. How important training and training on how to do the work to make sure that's integrated to then do the data collection. We have to celebrate our wins, but we also have to address what the gaps are that we're not getting to. So data across the board is so important. One of the issues with collecting that is staffing. You know, one of the things I think and Scott will appreciate this, but we increased the staffing in the opposite global programs in DRL substantially to make sure that we were able to track and collect that data that we were actually being able to implement and accurately report. And that we had a cadre of experts that were able to provide the support to civil society organizations and that they need to get through the crazy procurement regulations that don't inhibit the actual great work and programs that you're doing. So that small number is really important. So we can make the case for why either more needs to be provided, what other areas are necessary. But again, data is huge and so is the training. That's something that's gonna get us to the point where we can actually compare apples to apples and see how things are progressing and truly where are the gaps that we are not addressing. Thank you so much, Kat. So with that, I bring to a close panel two on operationalizing atrocity prevention. Thank you, dear colleagues and panelists for all the experience and expertise you brought to this topic. Now I'm going to introduce our closing speaker who's appearing by video. One of the important seats occupied at the monthly atrocity prevention task force meetings is occupied by a senior official from the Department of Homeland Security this morning. We're honored to have with us Under Secretary for Strategy, Policy and Plans, Robert Silvers. And now we'll hear from Under Secretary Silvers. Hello, and it's great to be with you today. My name is Robert Silvers. I'm the Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Mass atrocities are tragically all too common in this world. They break our heart. They offend our values. They also endanger international peace, stability and prosperity. Atrocity prevention and respect for human rights are critical pillars of U.S. national security and foreign policy, full stop. This has recently been enshrined in the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act. The administration's accompanying strategy, which we dedicate today, articulates how the United States will coordinate whole of government authority and expertise to reach its goals. DHS plays a crucial role in the White House's strategy to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocities effort by supporting justice and accountability for human rights abuses. Homeland Security Investigations operates the Human Rights Violators and War Crime Center. This team of special agents, attorneys, intelligence analysts and historians brings a whole of government approach to identifying, investigating and prosecuting those who commit human rights violations. Working with partners from other agencies, DHS coordinates law enforcement action and information sharing to investigate and support the prosecution of individuals for relevant federal crimes including genocide, torture and war crimes. The Human Rights Violators and War Crime Center is the only government entity entirely focused on investigating global atrocities and the perpetrators of human rights violations and war crimes. Such actions make it a crucial partner in the larger United States effort to prevent, respond to and recover from mass atrocities. Beyond providing accountability for these crimes and preventing the United States from being a safe haven for war criminals, DHS also plays a role in preventing atrocities through its international partnerships. Establishing relationships and building new ties with allies and partners is vital to protecting the homeland. DHS also supports foreign partners through capacity building programs and sharing of best practices in areas such as aviation security, border security, investigation techniques and biometric collection. This work supports atrocities prevention by strengthening the rule of law and enhancing law enforcement professionalization. A strong security sector also improves stability, prevents impunity and increases the chances of catching bad actors before they act. As articulated in the strategy released by the White House today, our efforts will be comprehensive and unyielding. It takes concrete actions from all of us across the U.S. government, but also alongside those outside of government to eradicate mass atrocities and bring perpetrators to justice. The Department of Homeland Security is proud to be a crucial partner in these efforts. Thank you on behalf of the task force for joining us today. Thank you under Secretary Silvers and thank you to you and your colleagues at the Department of Homeland Security for your contributions to this work. We've had a full morning. Thanks for being with us. The U.S. strategy to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocities is indeed duly launched. Thanks to everybody who participated this morning. Thanks to the actors who got us to this day, those in Congress, those in the executive branch, those in civil society around the world, those at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and museums like that around the world. And those who bear witness to atrocities. As we go forward together, let us remember the testimony of Dora Klayman. Let us remember that strategies are in the end, just words on a piece of paper. For words to become action, political will is needed. And not just collective will, but individual will. When I represented USAID at the Atrocity Prevention Board in the 2010s, I was always a little nervous and, if truth be told, scared at the start of each meeting. Scared at the enormity of the topics. Scared because I represented a non-cabinet agency amidst a sea of cabinet agencies. Scared because I represented a thematic bureau amidst a sea of geographic bureaus. Scared whether I would be able to muster that day the courage to speak truth to power. I always tried to cinch up my courage by reminding myself that I was there only because I was representing the voices of the powerless. And that gave me, in those moments, clarity and a bit of courage. So to my successors on the Atrocity Prevention Task Force and to all of us working in this critical field, I wish us clarity and courage. Let us remember the bearing witness of Dora Klayman and Ellie Vizel. Let us make their clarity our clarity, their courage our courage. Their words are words and their actions are actions. In that way we can fulfill the only important words, never again. Thank you and good day.