Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities

On 21 September, the United States Institute of Peace hosted a public event to help launch a new report from the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS), based at Concordia University, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership and Action to Prevent Mass Atrocities.

The report is the product of the Will to Intervene (W2I) Project, a research initiative created by Lieut. General (retired) Roméo Dallaire and Professor Frank Chalk, Director of MIGS, and led by Kyle Matthews, which aims to operationalize the principles of the Responsibility to Protect. More than 80 interviews were conducted with high-level policy makers, members of Congress, NGO representatives, and journalists, some for the first time on record. Drawing on the lessons learned from the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and the 1999 Kosovo crisis, the report makes key recommendations to government officials, legislators, civil society and the media in the United States and Canada to generate the political will to prevent mass atrocities.

After Prof. Chalk briefly introduced the report's findings, the panel with Gen. Dallaire and former senior U.S. government officials discussed the report’s policy proposals and the challenges of mobilizing the domestic will in the U.S. to prevent mass atrocities.

Speakers

• Lieut. General (retired) Roméo Dallaire
  Senior Fellow, Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies; Co-Director, Will to Intervene Project
• Michael Gerson
  Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Global Engagement
• John Prendergast
  Co-founder, the Enough Project
• Tara Sonenshine, Opening Remarks
  Executive Vice President, U.S. Institute of Peace
• James Traub, Moderator
  Contributing Writer, New York Times Magazine

Video Archive

• Part 1
  
• Part 2
• Part 3

For further information on the W2I Project please visit http://migs.concordia.ca.

Copies of the report can be downloaded at http://migs.concordia.ca/W2I/W2I_Project.html.