The Genocide Prevention Advisory Network’s report released

by Tetsushi Ogata

The Advanced Workshop of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network (GPANet) was held on March 14-15, 2012 in The Hague, in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, with support from the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland. GPANet convened its members and international experts for the two-day sessions and was concluded by the public plenary session at the end of the program.

At the plenary, H.E. Mr. Uri Rosenthal, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, gave a keynote address, followed by Dr. Francis Deng, the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and Ambassador Liberata Mulamula, Senior Political Adviser to President Kikwe of the United Republic of Tanzania.

GPP at S-CAR is pleased to announce that the report of the conference proceedings was finally released in July 2012.

GPANet 2012: Guiding Principles of Emerging Architecture Aiming at the Prevention of Genocide, War Crimes, Crimes against Humanity, and All Forms of Discrimination is now publicly available online here. Print copies are also available upon request.

GPANet is an “informal-formal network” of individual scholars and experts of the field of genocide prevention. It is not an institution nor does it have an office. It was born in 2000, when Yehuda Bauer, Ted R. Gurr, Barbara Harff served as an academic advisory group to the Swedish government and organized the Stockholm International Conference in 2000. The group subsequently contributed to the gathering of 2004 Stockholm Forum on Genocide Prevention. This group of core members then formed today’s GPANet. The Swiss government supported initial years of GPANet activities. This year, the Dutch government supported the convening of GPANet at The Hague. Andrea Bartoli now serves as the convener of the group, the task which was passed down from Ted R. Gurr.

This year’s conference at The Hague offered a unique “space” for the participants. This space can be characterized by some key elements that reflect the interdisciplinary and political nature of genocide prevention: private-public ownership of the discussions and informal-formal participation of the representatives of States. In many ways, GPANet members have their own independent voice and at the same time some are closely connected to policymakers. By creating such space, this year’s GPANet aimed explicitly at translating academic analysis to policy recommendations. It was also the first time, since the beginning of GPANet, to organize the “public” plenary session where the high-level keynote speakers addressed state representatives and subsequently those state officials engaged in discussions to mainstream genocide prevention in their work.

This private-public, informal-formal space can resonate with other state-led initiatives of genocide prevention. The governments of Switzerland, Argentina and Tanzania have been collaborating to organize a series of Regional Fora, with the recognition that multilateral partnerships and cooperation on a regional basis are key to operationalizing the prevention of atrocity crimes. They convened the first Regional Forum in South America held in Buenos Aires in December 2008; the second Regional Forum in Africa held in Arusha in March 2010; and the third one in Europe held in Bern in April 2011. Now the plan is underway to organize the fourth in Asia.

These initiatives highlight the increasingly reflective awareness of states that they must take their share of responsibility and leadership in preventing genocide and mass atrocities. In this sense, GPANet whose purpose is “to provide analysis and advice to governments” through taking advantage of its unique capacity to offer the analytic-practical oriented “space,” will be increasingly relevant.