Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to shut down the U.S.’s office dedicated to advising his department on issues related to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide, according to a new report by Foreign Policy.
“This sends a strong signal to perpetrators of mass atrocities that the United States is not watching you anymore.”
—David Scheffer, former diplomatA former U.S. official told Foreign Policy that Todd Buchwald, who currently heads the Office of Global Criminal Justice, was recently informed he would be reassigned to the department’s office of legal affairs office, and other office staffers could be sent to the department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. The office closure was first reported on Monday by Just Security, a blog dedicated to examining U.S. national security law and policy.
Northwestern University professor David Scheffer, who was the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, characterized the potential move as deeply troubling. “This is a very harsh signal to the rest of the world that the United States is essentially downgrading the importance of accountability for the commission of atrocity crimes,” Scheffer said. “This sends a strong signal to perpetrators of mass atrocities that the United States is not watching you anymore.”
The office was established two decades ago, in the aftermath of genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda, and according to its State Department’s webpage, “helps formulate U.S. policy on the prevention of, responses to, and accountability for mass atrocities,” by advising U.S. officials and foreign allies “on the appropriate use of a wide range of transitional justice mechanisms, including truth and reconciliation commissions, lustrations, and reparations, in addition to judicial processes.”
The supposed shuttering of this office could offer insight into the Trump administration’s priorities for foreign policy, and follows reports of possible U.S.-backed war crimes committed against civilians in Iraq, during the U.S.-led coalition’s victory over the Islamic State (ISIS) in Mosul, as Common Dreams reported last week.
Regardless of this office’s fate, it is just one piece Tillerson’s plans for department-wide reorganization. As Colum Lynch writes in Foreign Policy:
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