One of the themes of the book is repetitive disappointment. Time and time again, humans worldwide have fallen victim to heinous crimes that were committed without much international resistance. Atrocities were allowed to proceed in Cambodia, Iraq, and Bosnia (among other places) for many reasons, not the least of which was political convenience.

In most cases, perpetrators of genocide, atrocities, and chemical weapons attacks conducted these acts with the knowledge that the world had neither the willpower nor the mechanisms to deliver justice. In almost all cases, we were reluctant to believe, slow to listen, late to mobilize, and horrified by the magnitude of suffering that had occurred. Our world has changed immeasurably since politically uncomfortable reports of Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on Iranian soldiers and Iraqi Kurds fell on unlistening ears in the late ‘80s. If it happened today, we wouldn’t just listen – we would act. Wouldn’t we?

The conflict in Syria has been riddled by allegations of chemical weapons attacks by the Assad regime since at least late 2012. A cursory Google search of allegations unearths a Wikipedia page dedicated to the use of chemical weapons in Syria which notes almost 60 incidents where chemical weapons were reported as being used. Although UN investigators actually responded to allegations with a report in a somewhat timely manner (compared to Iraq in the 80s), the investigators were careful not to assign blame to any party – even when it was determined that missiles carrying chemical weapons were launched from government-controlled territory.

Any form of military intervention in Syria was avoided when the Syrian government agreed to eliminate its entire chemical weapon stockpile. I have issues with what seems to be the conceptual equivalent of a murderer avoiding jail time by turning in his gun, but at least it was progress. Almost a year ago to date, Syria’s declared chemical weapons stockpile was announced to be completely destroyed. Of course, there were always suspicions that the Assad regime was hiding undeclared caches of chemicals, but at least it was progress.

Marking the success, President Obama commented the collective “we” had sent “a clear message that the use of these abhorrent weapons has consequences and will not be tolerated by the international community.” But really, were the consequences so severe?

The Assad regime seems to think not. In early May, US officials accused the regime of continued use of chlorine gas on civilians. In July, The Wall Street Journal published a story headlined “Mission to Purge Syria of Chemical Weapons Comes Up Short”, which was exactly what it sounds like. Two weeks ago, the UN adopted a measure to finally identify the party(s) responsible for chemical weapons attacks in Syria. Even after perpetrators are officially identified after years of essentially unimpeded use, prosecution could be “years or more than a decade away.” It doesn’t take an expert to see the similarities between the atrocities occurring and Syria and those that occurred in Iraq, Bosnia, and many other places before.

I think there is value in reflecting on the failures of our conventions and red lines, just as there is value in considering that we are likely underestimating the number of casualties caused by chemical weapons in Syria – just as we have in conflicts before. In “A Problem From Hell” (2002), Ambassador Power notes her fear that the “Kosovo intervention and the Milosevic trial, once thought to mark important precedents, may come to represent high-water marks in genocide prevention and punishment”. Thirteen years later, the water level is mostly unchanged. We have grown better at believing (mostly), and the international community does a whole lot of listening now. Still, that’s not enough.

We have the evidence, and we have the responsibility to act on it. If we choose to forget past lessons and drag our feet even more in Syria, we’ll again be horrified by the magnitude of suffering we inevitably uncover.

With the confirmation hearings of Samantha Power to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations imminent, it is a good time to take a look at one of her signature projects from her tenure at the National Security Staff: the Atrocities Prevention Board.

A little more than a year ago, President Barack Obama announced the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board during an address at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, saying that this initiative would make the deterrence of genocide and mass atrocities “a core national security interest and core moral responsibility.”

Both the president and Power seemed acutely aware of the challenges and risks of trying to develop an inter-agency atrocities prevention mechanism while the humanitarian tragedy continued to unfold in Syria — a conflict into which this administration has been reluctant to wade. Indeed, in many ways, the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board, or APB, has felt a bit like trying to build a fire department in the middle of a three-alarm fire.

The roots of the APB come from a bipartisan belief that the United States, in places like Rwanda and Bosnia, simply did not do enough to counter genocides and mass atrocities as they gathered force. The 2008 report from the Genocide Prevention Task Force, co-chaired by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Secretary of Defense William Cohen, recommended the creation of a new high-level interagency body — what they called an Atrocities Prevention Committee — to improve U.S. government crisis-response systems and better equip Washington to mount coherent preventive responses.

As Obama’s special advisor for multilateral affairs, an outspoken champion for human rights and genocide prevention, and the author of a Pulitzer Prize winning book on the U.S. government and genocide, Power was a natural fit to breathe life into the Genocide Prevention Task Force’s concept while at the National Security Staff (NSS).

Power secured support for the APB through the August 2011 release of the Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocity Prevention, or PSD-10, of which she was the lead author. The directive called for the establishment of an interagency atrocities prevention mechanism, the APB, which would “coordinate a whole of government approach to preventing mass atrocities and genocide.”

However, when the formation of the APB was formally announced in 2012 by the president, a number of Republican critics used it as an opportunity to lacerate the president for inaction in Syria. Commentator Charles Krauthammer, at best an episodic voice on the importance of human rights, called the board an embarrassment, and bemoaned, “The liberal faith in the power of bureaucracy and flowcharts, of committees and reports, is legend. But this is parody.”

So what does the APB actually do? And what does the situation in Syria say about its work? The APB consists of high-ranking representatives, all originally hand-picked by Power, from 11 agencies, including State, Defense, Treasury, Justice, the CIA and others. The board has essentially split its functions between looking at long-term structural issues — such as sanctions regimes and how government personnel are trained — and a geographic focus on countries at risk of mass atrocities, usually over the medium term.

On a weekly basis, a sub-APB made up of working-level staff from the participating agencies meets to discuss the structural atrocity issues, with the State Department and USAID having the largest numbers of personnel involved. Once a month, the APB meets at the assistant-secretary level, with each agency’s representative reporting on important issues raised during the weekly discussions and following up regarding assigned activities. Quarterly, deputy principals gather for what has been termed a “deep-dive analysis,” with the assistance of an intelligence community briefing, designed to drive a substantial policy conversation regarding a country of potential concern. To date, some of the countries featured in these discussions have included Kenya, Burma, and Bangladesh. These conversations are designed to mobilize attention and resources within the respective agencies in an effort to avert atrocities in the countries under discussion, and to pre-position resources and analysis so that each agency can be better prepared.  One imagines that most ambassadors don’t particularly enjoy such a review, but such country-specific discussions certainly help sensitize diplomats to the risk factors associated with mass atrocities, and likely encourage more energetic efforts to avert such crisis.

Finally, the nine principals involved at the assistant secretary level also meet annually, and the APB presents an annual report on its activities and successes to the president in January of each year. Somewhat bafflingly, the APB has no signature public product, such as the State Department’s annualhuman rights report, and one of the most justified knocks on the board’s work to date has been the fact that it has been almost invisible from public view — a strategic decision within the administration that has one almost has to conclude has been driven by the situation in Syria. As a result of its lack of outreach, support for the APB remains very thin, particularly in Congress. As one congressional staffer told me, its activities to date are a “complete black hole.”

Perhaps the board’s most notable successes have come in getting agencies that have traditionally paid little attention to atrocity prevention, such as the departments of Treasury and Justice, to develop new tools to pursue major human rights abusers. Directly as a result of the APB’s work, the Department of Treasury has managed to place sanctions on suspected human rights abusers in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Iran, and Myanmar, and notably on 41 entities or individuals in Syria or with ties to the embattled Assad regime. The Department of Justice now has prosecutors working on human-rights abuse cases; a fraud team is assisting in seizing assets of human-rights abusers; and U.S. officials are helping train counterparts in other countries on how best to prosecute human rights cases. These are useful wins, as has been the improved coordination between agencies and improved training on these issues at State and USAID. Making the U.S. government better at atrocity prevention, by its very nature, includes some stuff that is not very sexy.

This brings us back to the elephant in the room: Syria. Since the uprising began in February 2011, the United Nations estimates that at least 80,000 Syrians have been killed, roughly 4 million are internally displaced, and at least 1.5 million have fled the country entirely. It is exactly the kind of carnage for which the APB was created to help prevent or diffuse.

Lanny Breuer, who represented the Justice Department on the APB until recently, argued that it was “unrealistic for a new entity that has no real authority to galvanize the government on Syria,” and added, “But what it can do is to raise awareness.” Breuer’s comments may be accurate, but if so, the administration surely oversold the APB’s potential when it was rolled out.

On background, those affiliated with the APB argue that it has functioned largely as it should during the crisis. They point out that the APB was created to push decisionmaking and policymaking on mass atrocities to the highest levels in government, and that the decisions on how to respond to the situation in Syria have been rigorously debated by the president and his core national security team. No board can force a president’s hand, and most agree that the policy choices in Syria run the gamut from bad to awful. Perhaps the APB is better positioned to deal with crises that are over the horizon or for which there are warning signs rather than ones that are directly unfolding. But, all that said, the APB was created with the express intent to prevent the next Rwanda or Bosnia, and Syria is looking an awful lot like one of those tragedies for which the phrase “never again” keeps getting repeated.

Much of Power’s career as an author and an activist was absolutely illuminated by her incandescent willingness to speak truth to power — which helps explain why the APB’s sotto voce approach has felt so dissatisfying with regard to Syria. The APB is doing good, important, and long-overdue work, but that legacy will surely be obscured if Syria continues to burn.

9. Burma’s Martyrs Day honors pro-democracy activists

8. Cambodian opposition leader Rainsy returns from exile

7. UN envoy warns of risk to Syrian children

6. Peacekeepers killed in Darfur

5. Fighting in South Sudan has cut off aid access

4. Congolese refugees in Uganda reach 60,000

3. Burma vows to free all political prisoners

2. Samantha Power calls UN inaction in Syria a “disgrace”

1. Momentum in Syria shifts toward Assad

Barack Obama’s appointment of Samantha Power to lead the United States Mission to the United Nations pleased atrocity prevention advocates across the country, including those of us at STAND.  Power brings new energy to the post and her history as a lifelong champion of civilian protection likely bodes well for Western advocates.  While her appointment is a step forward for the atrocity prevention movement, we must remain more vigilant than ever as violence rages on in Syria, Sudan, Burma, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and elsewhere.  It’s important to remember that Samantha Power represents us and we must hold her accountable.

To welcome her, we gathered and sent pictures of students from across the country holding some of her most salient words.  Even though school’s out for summer, dozens of students replied to our call because they care about the 100,000 people slaughtered in Syria, Rohingya targeted in Burma, and civilians killed everyday in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

We invite you to join us as we being a new year of mass atrocity prevention.  Look out for our exciting Fall campaigns and be sure to follow our ongoing #Syriasly blog series.  If you’d like to learn more about #AccountablePower or how you can get involved, please email info@standnow.org.

Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, is Obama’s pick as the new US Ambassador to the United Nations. Her book, which details US knowledge but subsequent inaction during episodes of genocides such as Rwanda, inspired Georgetown students to create STAND and guide our mission. Power has been a leading advocate in increasing public awareness of genocide and human rights abuses.  STAND is excited about Power’s nomination considering her history as a leading advocate of human rights, and we hope she works with her colleagues at the United Nations to protect civilians and pursue nonviolent solutions to conflict.  Check out this brief bio of Power below!

Power began her career as a journalist, covering the Bosnian genocide among other topics during the Yugoslav Wars. She then served as the Founding Executive Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Power was Obama’s senior foreign policy advisor during his presidential campaign until 2008, when she resigned amid controversy, after she referred to Hillary Clinton as a “monster.” That same year, she joined the Obama State Department transition team, was named Special Assistant to President Obama, and became the Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights on the National Security Council. In 2012, she was chosen by Obama to chair the newly created Atrocities Prevention Board.

During her career, Power has focused on UN reform, the promotion of women and LGBT rights, and the protection of religious freedoms. She has campaigned against human trafficking and worked to promote human rights and democracy in the Middle East, North Africa, Sudan, and Burma. She was considered key in persuading President Obama to intervene in Libya in 2011.

Power’s history of advocating for more international action in cases of mass atrocities has led to speculation on whether the Obama administration will now pursue a more active, interventionist foreign policy. However, she has also referred to the “toolbox” of foreign policy options for the US government, including economic sanctions, ICC referrals, and bans on travel for human rights abusers instead of intervention. Her main task will be to face the crisis in Syria. While some predict that Power, an outspoken woman who started her career observing genocide in Bosnia, will advocate for increased intervention, others are skeptical that her appointment will inspire more action, citing Obama’s resistance to intervention. Power’s previous calls for intervention have also been for multilateral, international coalitions, which appear unlikely in the case of Syria. The story will unfold as her career as UN Ambassador begins in July (after Senate confirmation) – stay tuned!

“With great Power comes great responsibility.” We want to hold Samantha Power, the new US Ambassador to the UN, accountable for making atrocities prevention and response a priority. Join us in showing Samantha Power that we are paying attention by using her own words as a call to ACTION!

It’s simple: pick out a quote, take a picture, and tweet, email or post the picture to us with#AccountablePower. We’ll put all the pictures together and get them to her with our list of policy demands once she takes her position in July. Head to http://bit.ly/14oEVQd to find out more details & choose a quote. We can’t wait to see your faces!