The Development Gateway interviewed Mark Hanis, the Founder & Executive Director of the Genocide Intervention Network (GI-Net), an organization created with the mission to empower citizens and communities with the tools to prevent and stop genocide. Hanis graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Public Policy. He is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors and was raised in Quito, Ecuador. In this interview Hanis discusses how various actors, including the UN, can respond more effectively to prevent genocide.

Development Gateway: How well equipped are we today to respond to the threat of genocide?

Mark Hanis: State actors are almost not really better off today than we were in April of 1994 when hundreds of thousands were killed in Rwanda, or in February 2003 when the Darfur genocide began. While the Responsibility to Protect principle has gained (and lost) some support, the fact remains that if nations acting alone or through the UN must take drastic political actions or set aside their own economic or political interests in order to stop atrocities, few will do so. The UN Security Council is still too often divided when these issues arise and concerted, rapid action eludes them. At the bottom, what we need to produce is the political will that drives the actions governments must take -- and that is the Genocide Intervention Network's work.


DG: What kind of early warning systems are currently in place for genocide prevention and how can they be made more effective?

Hanis: There are quite a few systems in place in different regions and at different levels, at the UN through the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, in civil society through human rights and conflict analysis groups, and in the intelligence communities of some governments. What is needed is improvement in how these systems get the information they produce in front of the right eyes, and greatly improved will to act on this information. For the most part, it is early RESPONSE that is lacking, not early warning.


DG: What kind of institutional reform is needed in the UN to respond quickly to genocide?

Hanis: There are many answers to this question. At the highest level, given the composition of the Security Council, it will always be difficult to take actions in certain places where Security Council members have self-interests in allowing governments to continue their policies of intentionally targeting and killing civilians. The Department of Peacekeeping Operations also needs an enormous boost in funding and support so it has the capacity to not only keep up with the complex logistics involved in missions, but to do better in planning for and successfully implementing the types of missions that can stop the killing rather than just monitor a peace agreement. At present, this is a long way off. The Department of Political Affairs is critical for managing the UN's diplomatic work to end these and other conflicts, and this also requires a boost. There are also problems with the Genocide Convention itself, particular in that it does not protect "political" groups. This was seen as a problem when it was passed in 1948, and some members of the drafting committee even expressed that later generations would fix this problem. While it is an important limitation, however, its also important not to get hung-up on this definition, but to focus on generating the will and tools to effective act when civilians are threatened by large-scale violence intentionally and systematically directed against them.


DG: 1.5 million Armenians died in the hands of Ottoman Turks during WW-I. 1.5 million Bengalis were massacred by the Pakistani army in 1971. However, the perpetrators deny allegations of genocide to this day. What steps can a group or nation take to get acknowledgement from world leaders that a genocide indeed took place and what kind of recourse (if any) can they expect?

Hanis: This is a political issue like many others, in the sense that while this is an extremely important issue, accomplishing a change in policy requires the same basic tactics as getting other policies changes. Groups must marshal clean and clear evidence of past genocides, and rally the support of others in shaming governments that continue to deny such atrocities.


DG: How can groups/nations achieve a balance between peace and justice in the aftermath of genocide?

Hanis: I don't know if there is a generic answer to this. Your question asks about the aftermath of genocide specifically -- rather than addressing the (perhaps more sensitive) issue of balancing peace and justice while the conflict continues. In the aftermath, how justice is pursued relies on many factors, including what has become of the perpetrators and how much power they have. If the genocidaires are largely removed from office (or were never in it), and no longer constitute a serious threat to the state or to the safety of civilians there is a greater chance of achieving justice without jeopardizing the peace. If there is still a tense balance of power and the violence could re-emerge, the way in which justice is pursued ought to depend largely on the civilians who stand both to benefit from seeing justice done and are at threat should violence re-emerge. Ideally, the decision would be left to them.


DG: How is your organization contributing to genocide prevention?

Hanis: We are building the first permanent anti-genocide constituency. Having a base of citizens and communities willing and able to pressure their public officials to take action via positive and negative incentives will ensure that the promise of Never Again will be fulfilled.