Council Special Report

Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities

Teaching Notes

By Lee Feinstein
Former Senior Fellow for U.S. Foreign Policy and International Law,
Council on Foreign Relations;
Author, Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities

The Council Special Report, Darfur and Beyond: What Is Needed to Prevent Mass Atrocities, is
suitable for general courses on U.S. foreign policy or international affairs and specialized courses in
international law, humanitarian intervention, or contemporary issues in U.S. foreign policy.

This report addresses the gaps in the international system that have hindered effective responses to
prevent or stop mass atrocities that occur within the borders of a state. The report identifies two sets of
issues: gaps in the rules or laws that govern international responses and gaps in the capacity to enforce
those rules. The report argues that the normative gap is closing; the UN’s adoption in 2005 of the
responsibility to protect begins to remove formal barriers to outside intervention to prevent mass
killings. However, the capacity to respond continues to lag and a deficit of capacity reinforces an
international lack of political will to take action.

The report makes recommendations to improve the capacity of the United Nations, the United States,
NATO and the European Union, and the African Union. The final chapter applies the theory and
recommendations to the case of the Darfur conflict.

These teaching notes suggest discussion questions for the following types of courses:

• Courses on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs

• Courses on sovereignty and international law
• Courses on genocide and humanitarian intervention
• Courses on current problems in U.S. foreign policy

They also include suggestions for further projects, including class debates, memoranda to the
president, and op-eds, which may be useful for students in any of the courses above.

Instructors in specialized or advanced-level courses may wish to supplement this report with additional
readings. The “Further Reading” section at the end of the report is a good place to start; additional
relevant publications and websites are listed in the module.

Discussion Questions

Courses on U.S. Foreign Policy and International Affairs

1. How would you characterize current U.S. policy on prevention of mass atrocities? What are the
similarities and differences in the approaches of the Clinton and Bush administrations? How, if
at all, has U.S. policy on the question of humanitarian intervention changed since 9/11, and
why? How has the experience in Iraq complicated the equation?
 2. What role should the United States play in stopping and preventing atrocities? What is the role
of force or the threat of force? Are there steps short of force that can be effective? Should the
use of coercive force be held out only as a last resort? Is there a unilateral right to intervene in
cases of mass atrocity even without the Security Council’s approval?

3. What role should the United Nations, or the African Union, play in preventing genocide?

4. What are the lessons of the experience in Darfur? What earlier measures, including steps short
of force, might have been contemplated, and would they have made a difference?

Courses on Sovereignty and International Law

1. Do you agree that the 1999 NATO intervention in Kosovo was illegal, even if justified? If you
had to make the case that the Kosovo war was legal, how would you make that case? Is
intervention to prevent or stop mass atrocities without Security Council approval ever justified?

2. In what ways does adoption of the responsibility to protect depart from the traditional
conception of state sovereignty? What are some of the weaknesses and problems that arise in
establishing an obligation to compromise state sovereignty to avert mass killings?

3. Should international interference be limited only to preventing mass atrocities? What about
intervention to prevent proliferation, terrorism, or state failure?

Courses on Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention

1. How have the norms and rules governing humanitarian intervention evolved since the 1994
Rwandan genocide?

2. What, if any, is the relevance of the responsibility to protect to the conflict in Darfur? Does
sectarian fighting in Iraq trigger the responsibility to protect?

3. This report recommends steps to build peacekeeping capacity at the United Nations and
elsewhere. What are some of the objections to creating greater readiness at the United Nations?

4. Some have argued that outside intervention creates a “moral hazard” because it rewards
provocation, and reduces incentives for reaching political agreement. Does this risk outweigh
the imperative to take action?

5. Why has support for the responsibility to protect not translated into effective action in Darfur?

Further Projects

Debate

Divide students into small teams and organize a debate on some of the issues raised in the report, for
example:
• The NATO war in Kosovo was illegal.
• Preventing mass atrocities is an important national security interest of the United States.
• The United States should support the establishment of a strategic reserve of forces to be
available for rapid deployment in peacekeeping operations authorized by the UN Security
Council.
 • The United States should send troops to participate in UN peacekeeping operations.

Memorandum to the President

Assign students to write a memorandum to the president on possible courses of action in the event that
warning signs of severe human rights violations begin to appear in another country. The memorandum
should give an overview of the situation, discuss the pros and cons of each policy option, and
recommend a course of action.

Op-eds

Assign students to write an op-ed on some aspect of U.S. relations with the United Nations. The
assignments should be evaluated based on the importance of the topic selected, the clarity and brevity
with which the author presents a specific point of view. Because the op-ed is short, it requires different
writing skills from a conventional term paper—the point must be made in the first or second
paragraph, the writing style is usually more argumentative than in term papers, and the writing style
must be simple even as the ideas advanced are sophisticated. These guidelines will help in focusing the
argument—which is best done before writing—because more students choose arguments that are either
too sprawling or esoteric for good op-eds.