For me, I think, as a starting point, it's really important for any government to have a stated commitment to atrocity prevention and to explain quite clearly to their public that the prevention of mass atrocity crimes is a core national security priority. I think that high-level statement of political will helps to create the space within bureaucracy to allocate necessary political and economic resources toward early warning and early action. It would be useful for there to be a stock-taking, not just by the Canadian government but by like-minded governments, of what is the current decision-making process by which you would go through to determine whether or not crimes are at risk or are occurring, and what happens when you see the early warning signs of genocide and of large-scale crimes against humanity. Where does that information go within the Canadian system, and what type of response does it trigger from whom?
There have been reports done—the Will to Intervene project, the genocide prevention task force, which was conducted by my centre about 10 years ago—that outline how bureaucracies can be better structured to allow for early warning analysis and early action. It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to appoint one particular person who serves as a focal point for atrocity prevention, but I would say that governments that have are better attuned and able to act quickly when they see the warning signs of atrocities.
Not every government has the ability, nor the will, nor should be taking military action, for example, but all governments have some capacity that they can take and some role that they would be able to play in helping to mitigate the risks. More times than not, if it's early engagement, that focuses on using development assistance and different forms of diplomatic engagement to help lower risks and mitigate the risks of mass atrocity crimes.
A number of particular efforts are out there: to create responsibility to protect, R2P, focal points, to help facilitate that; the creation of inter-agency working groups between relevant actors, be that from foreign affairs or defence, to be able to share information better and ensure there's a better flow of information that you're getting from the field up to capital to be able to make those types of decision-making processes.
I think doing a review of Canada's existing capacity for early warning, early analysis, and action is an important step to come out of what we can collectively say has been a failure in the case of Iraq.