Vision

If we don’t have a vision of a better future can we really create one? Leaders as diverse as The Dalai Lama and Martin Luther King have shown us the need for vision to build a path to lasting peace and progress. Yet since the Holocaust and United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, civil society has promised “never again” and still genocide and appalling atrocities have continued into the 21st century.We don’t have a vision for how to build a world free from atrocity. We need one. Help us share these visions: become part of the movement: imagine the end of atrocity.     More

John Prendergast, Co-Founder of the ENOUGH Project, on holding the military and politicians accountable for their conduct in war.   "A world without genocide would remove, frankly speaking, much of the death and destruction of innocent civilian life from war. We don’t want war that doesn’t affect us perhaps in the US, or Canada, or Great Britain. But for a very large per... More

Luis Moreno Ocampo: Prosecutor, International Criminal Court, on the need for global institutions that create involved, accountable global communities.   "A world with no genocide would be a world where humanity learns that we are a global community. We need institutions, global institutions. We need The International Criminal Court. Thomas Lubanga was abducting children and transforming the... More

Kathy Freston, New York Times best-selling author, on the need to expand our empathy from the simplest of our daily actions.   "Well, you have to have a vision. If you don’t--if you can’t visualize something better, there’s nothing to follow. Martin Luther King gave that famous speech for a reason. Because he had that vision and then he was able to sort-of give th... More

Ann Curry, Award-winning NBC broadcast journalist, on combating atrocity through the power of acknowledging the significance of every individual.   "Once we realize the value of our human family, that every one of us is as valuable as the other, and that no one is more valuable than anyone else-- whether you’re the president of the United States or whether you’re scrubbing kitchen floors... More

Stephen Smith, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation, on the need for a collective ethical code based on individual speech, collective voice and reformed institutional leadership. "A world without genocide would be a very different world to the one we live in now. The way in which individuals think, and behave, and respond to what’s happening around them politically, culturally, socially-- would be different. The way in which... More

Jerry Fowler, senior analyst for the Open Society Policy Center and Founding Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, on the need for mass empathy to trump mass atrocity.   "We know from history that human beings are capable of mass murder. It’s not a new thing. Rafael Limpkin put a new name to it when he created the word “genocide”, but the practice of mass murder extends back through history. It’s something t... More

Brian Steidle, Frmr Captain, USMC, and author of The Devil Came on Horseback: Bearing Witness to the Genocide in Darfur, on the need to obey the rules of war and look at the economic advantages of recommitting money from genocide prevention to development efforts.     "It would be an amazing place. If people could respect human rights, if they would respect the law of war even in times of conflict; destroying villages, targeting certain people, using rape as a tool of war; if these things did not occur I ... More