2016 was a very productive year for Genocide Watch. We organized a new Genocide Working Group in Washington, DC to bring together congressional staffers, State Department officials, and NGO’s that seek justice in Iraq and prevention of future genocide there and in Syria.
We testified before Congress and the European Parliament on the genocide of ISIS. We helped lead the coalition that obtained declarations in 2016 by the US Congress, the European Parliament, and the State Department that the acts of ISIS constitute genocide. We had many meetings at the State Department and at the UN. We wrote the Resolution of the International Association of Genocide Scholars concerning the ISIS genocide, which was adopted in 2016. In April 2016, Dr. Stanton traveled to Iraq to interview eyewitnesses to the ISIS genocide and to work with Iraqi organizations to prosecute ISIS. He will travel there again in January 2017.
We are helping to lead a world campaign to stop the genocide in Myanmar against the Rohingya. We will hold hearings in the UK House of Lords and in New York in 2017 about this genocide.
Genocide Watch has maintained the most actively updated and heavily used website on genocide on the internet. Our interns publish contributions to our website from the 65+ member organizations of the Alliance Against Genocide, as a communications site for the Alliance, which we coordinate. Our interns built a dynamic new website at www.genocidewatch.com. They designed an interactive world map of countries at risk or with active mass killing, with embedded videos by experts on each country. We also use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the thousands of people who follow our work.
In the seventeen years since Genocide Watch was founded in 1999, we have spent a total of $85,000. That is $5000 per year. No member of the Genocide Watch staff has ever received a salary. Our low operating costs have been made possible by our affiliation with George Mason University.
Genocide Watch has played a key role in the creation of two international tribunals, proposed and helped to persuade UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to create the Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, and built the Alliance Against Genocide. We have provided early warning to policy makers to prevent or stop genocide in East Timor, Macedonia, Indonesia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Kenya. We are now working with the International Association of Genocide Scholars on a project for genocide prevention in Iraq.
The Alliance Against Genocide, which has grown to over 65 organizations, will become more directly integrated into the activities of Genocide Watch. In the future we will add additional country experts to our distinguished Board of Advisers as resources for our websites and Genocide Alerts. We will increase our connections with policy makers and civil society leaders. We will build a stronger Board of Directors to help us plan and support an effective anti-genocide movement. Our purpose is to be a catalyst to encourage the organization of local, national, and regional anti-genocide organizations around the world, and to coordinate a network of those organizations.
Dr. Stanton will devote time to writing and publishing a short, inexpensive textbook on the stages of genocide for secondary school students, to be used in curricula on genocide in the US, Canada, the UK, and eventually in translation around the world.
Dr. Stanton will remain with Genocide Watch as Founding President and Chair of the Board of Directors. He will devote himself to working with other Directors to raise the money and expert support to build the educational programs of Genocide Watch and the Alliance Against Genocide.
Respectfully submitted
December 30, 2016
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
Founding President
Chair of the Board of Directors
Genocide Watch, Inc.