Professional Affiliation

President, Genocide Watch, The International Campaign to End Genocide

Expert Bio

During my first year at Yale Law School, Church World Service called me to become field director of its relief program in Cambodia. I landed in Phnom Penh in June 1980. As I walked through the mass graves and talked with the survivors, I realized that the Khmer Rouge had violated every international humanitarian law on the books, including the Genocide Convention. I knew that law isn't law without authoritative decision plus compliance or enforcement. But the Khmer Rouge had gotten away with murder. There was no political will to capture them in Thailand, and no international court to try them. Such impunity would only allow the Khmer Rouge to plague Cambodia for years. But there was a narrow opening for civil justice, the International Court of Justice. The Khmer Rouge no longer controlled Cambodia because of Vietnam's intervention, so evidence could be gathered against them. If a case were taken against Cambodia to the World Court for violation of the Genocide Convention, the Khmer Rouge would have to respond, because they still held Cambodia's seat in the United Nations. When I came back to Yale, I founded the Cambodian Genocide Project in order to gather the evidence to make that case possible. I thus began my career in public international law while still a student at Yale Law School. And I began my calling: the prevention and punishment of genocide. I became a law professor at Washington and Lee University and gathered a mountain of evidence against the Khmer Rouge. But when it came to finding a government to take the case to the World Court, those of us working on the case struck out. I learned a crucial lesson: human rights are not lost because of the absence of law, but because of the lack of political will to enforce it. We needed to change the political will of crucial nations, notably the United States, which opposed pursuing the case because it might legitimize the Vietnamese-backed government in Phnom Penh. A group of us set out to change the political will of the U.S. government. We formed a coalition called the Campaign to Oppose the Return of the Khmer Rouge, and worked with Senator Robb to pass the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act. That act declared it to be U.S. policy to prosecute the Khmer Rouge leaders and mandated the opening of an Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations in the State Department. By 1994, I had joined the State Department and was assigned to the steering committee for that office. We moved U.S. policy to support creation of a tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge. A joint United Nations/Cambodian tribunal may finally hold trials in the coming year. I joined the U.S. State Department because I wanted to build international human rights institutions. I was fortunate that my assignments allowed me to do that. The director general of the Foreign Service promoted me several grades to positions of responsibility. I arrived in Washington after my initial consular assignment (in Bangkok) at the end of the Rwandan genocide. The director general assigned me to be coordinator for U.S. policy for Africa in the United Nations Security Council. I was immediately lent to the U.N. Commission of Experts that investigated the Rwandan genocide, and helped write their report, which recommended establishing the Rwanda Tribunal. Back at the State Department, I then drafted the U.N. Security Council Resolutions that created the tribunal, and became the liaison and troubleshooter during its difficult start-up. I also initiated and wrote the resolutions that created the Burundi Commission of Inquiry and the UN Commission on Arms Flows in Central Africa. These were all institutional contributions to the punishment and prevention of genocide. It became clear to me, however, that more lasting institutions are necessary to prevent genocide. The 20th century was the bloodiest in world history. A world-wide movement is needed to end genocide in the 21st century. To start that movement, I founded Genocide Watch and the International Campaign to End Genocide that was launched at the Hague Appeal for Peace in May 1999. The Campaign is an international coalition dedicated to creating the international institutions and the political will to prevent genocide. Just as the anti-slavery movement stopped most slavery, we hope to end genocide.

 

Expertise

Genocide, particularly in Cambodia and Rwanda; ethnic and religious conflict; early warning and prevention of conflict; conflict resolution; international justice and tribunals; the International Criminal Court; diplomatic and bureaucratic behavior; Africa, particularly Rwanda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Swaziland; the Ukranian independence movement; constitutional law in India; symbolic analysis of rituals and films; modernization of religion, health, and social beliefs and practices

Wilson Center Project

"The Genocidal Process: How Governments Can Tell When Genocide is Coming and What They Can Do to Prevent It"

Project Summary

Genocide develops in eight predictable stages. At each stage, governments, multilateral organizations, or faith-based institutions can intervene to prevent its further development. This project will test the validity of this structural theory of the genocidal process against the evidence from 20th century genocides. If the theory is inaccurate, it will be adjusted to account for the facts. The resulting theory of the genocidal process will be of great utility to policymakers because it not only gives early warning of genocide, but also designates precisely which policies can be taken at each stage to prevent genocide. The research will include dialogue with African leaders about methods to prevent ethnic conflict in their societies. The project will result in a book.

Major Publications

• "Why the Khmer Rouge Murdered Two Million People." in Turner, ed. The Real Lessons of Vietnam, University of Virginia Press.
  
   
• "The Cambodian Genocide and International Law." in Genocide and Democracy in Cambodia, Edited by Kiernan, B., Yale University Press, 1993.
  
   
• Democratization in Ukraine: Constitutions and the Rule of Law." Demokratizatsiya, The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratization 1, 55-74, Summer, 1992.