President Obama on Monday announced new tools in what he called “an achievable goal” to prevent atrocities including the slaughter of innocent people in countries such as Syria and Sudan.
“In short, we need to be doing everything we can to prevent these atrocities, because national sovereignty is never a license to slaughter your people,” he said, speaking at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
“In a sense, ‘never again’ is a challenge to us all to pause and look within,” Obama said. “We have seen it again, madness that can sweep through peoples, sweep through nations.”
The White House announced new tools toward its goal, including an executive order authorizing sanctions and visa bans against those abusing human rights through information technology such as cellphone tracking or Internet monitoring, a new frontier in confronting what the White House called “digital guns for hire.” The order is a new tool provided for the Atrocities Prevention Board (APB) that was created in August 2011 and is designed to collect and analyze information to better anticipate, understand and counter atrocity threats. The board will meet for the first time on Monday at the White House, according to Obama.
The White House also announced that the APB will include representatives at the assistant secretary level or higher of 11 governmental departments. The chairman of the APB will be the National Security Council senior director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights.
For more on Obama's remarks, click here.
