The United States State Department sponsored a conference on atrocities prevention and response at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on October 28-29, 1999, drawing representatives from the United Nations, nongovernmental human rights organizations and delegations from the Vatican and ten states-- Argentina, Australia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. It was time, many agreed with the sponsors, to go beyond crisis-management and to build a "culture of prevention" in the field of international security. Credit for this concept was given to the government of Sweden, which has developed a Swedish Action Plan, published in "Preventing Violent Conflict" (1999), involving the United Nations, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union, and governments.

The aim of the conference was to not only recognize atrocities but to consider how to detect warning signs, how to prevent or halt atrocities, and to consider long-term strategies to prevent atrocities and prevent their reoccurence in rebuilding devestated countries. Workshop participants produced programmatic recommendations in all these areas.

Speakers included Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (US Ambassador to the United Nations), Harold Hongju Koh (Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor), Mary Robinson (United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights), Representative Tom Lantos (Co-Chair Congressional Human Rights Caucus), David Scheffer (Ambassador for War Crimes), Eric Schwartz (Special Assistant to the President), representatives of the participating countries and the Vatican, and leaders of human rights nongovernmental organizations, among others. Several speakers in the US administration challenged the conventional division between American values and American interests. It is time, Harold Koh said, to create a "regime" of human rights which will implement the human rights conventions and declarations of the last half-century.

Richard Holbrooke stressed that "rhetoric without resources" -- i.e., paying US dues to the UN, allocating money for staff and programs for prevention-- is useless. Mary Robinson reiterated this, declaring there was an urgent need to resource United Nations human rights mechanisms, such as the rapporteurs, who investigate slavery, extrajudicial executions, torture, etc. The cost-ratio (of prevention to assistance after human-made disasters) is greatly in favor of prevention. Mrs. Robinson also stressed strategic needs to consider underlying causes of atrocities (including economic and social development), how to build in accountability and strengthen demand for rights by human rights education.

David Sheffer spoke of the growth of US recognition of atrocities and viewed the administration response to Rwanda as a learning experience. He decried the obsessive interest in terming crimes as genocide and said that we should focus more on crimes against humanity which do not entail establishing intent. From the US experience there, we learned several lessons, he said, including the need to shut down hate radio inciting to genocide.

Work should also begin in the United States to evoke the political will to get resources, said Julia Taft, Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration in the US State Department. We need to be there at town meetings, to ask candidate for Presidents what they would do in such situations, to get score-cards on them in order to develop political will, she said.

Rep. Lantos said that he was not hopeful about political leadership in Washington and faulted several Presidents for not responding preemptively, declaring that there were situations when the preemptive use of military action or threat of action to deter atrocities is justified-- e.g., in Yugoslavia in the early 1990's. Rep. Lantos recommended creating parallel transnational institutions to the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus among parliamentarians in democratic countries to focus public opinion on their governments who are often accomplices in other states' atrocities, embarassing their governments to do the right thing.

The conference sponsors-- the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, the Office of War Crimes Issues, and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the US Department of State--asked the participating countries to sign on to a nine-item common Declaration of Principles which they had prepared in order to identify patterns of atrocities and take measures to cooperate to deter and stop them. These included:

1. A statement of common intent and citation of basic human rights conventions and documents.
   
   
2. Declaration of the desire of participants "to take all feasible measures to enhance international cooperation and coordinated efforts in the struggle against states, paramilitary groups, or individuals who commit mass acts of murder, wanton violence, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment against civilian populations."
   
   
3. Assertion of need to intensify efforts to identify patterns of atrocities promptly to coordinate effective responses.
   
   
4. Definition: "A pattern of atrocities means an orchestrated campaign of murder, or widespread violence against civilians, or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Patterns of atrocities may also constitute genocide, crimes against humanity, or serious violations of the laws or customs of war."
   
   
5. "Patterns of atrocities often have a transnational dimension that requires regional coordination of economic, military, humanitarian, and/or diplomatic responses."
   
   
6. Governments are asked to designate one person or agency to coordinate information about atrocities in order to create an international network.
   
   
7. Such a network should reach out to nongovernmental organizations and provide information to policy makers in governments and international organizations.
   
   
8. The network should have an "information sharing capability that allows access to international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and government officials."
   
   
9. The network should get together periodically to review coordination mechanisms in order to improve "political, military, economic, and humanitarian responses."
   
   

Both governments and other participants agreed on the need to include the role of media in gathering information about atrocities and arousing public opinion to act. Several governments proposed additions, including specifying support for the International Criminal Court, citing other Conventions (1949 Geneva Conventions, the International Convention an Civil and Political Rights, and the International Convention of Social and Economic Rights. The United States has not endorsed the ICC-- passed in Rome in July 1998 and awaiting the requisite number of ratifications to come into force--because the Pentagon is said to believe that it could compel US peacekeeping forces to answer politically motivated allegations of war crimes before an international court even though the ICC statute provide for "complementarity;" i.e., the ICC would not prosecute cases which competent domestic courts have brought to trial. Nor has the US signed the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

Other amendments one or more governments proposed would add systematic rape and targetting civilians, especially children, to the list of atrocities (although these are already considered crimes against humanity and may be genocide in particular contexts). Ambassador Scheffer explained how all the changes would be incorporated and the revised declaration resubmitted to each government concerned to ratify the declaration yet allow the US to sign, given its position on the ICC.