Abstract

The recent selection of a new leader of government in the United Kingdom has created both the opportunity and a responsibility for Her Majesty’s Government (HMG) to improve and restructure its approach to atrocity prevention, particularly in light of the ongoing atrocities in Ukraine, as well as in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar and countless other situations. More specifically, it has placed new urgency on the need for HMG to develop a government-wide strategy to anticipate, prevent and respond to atrocities, similarly to what other countries have already done.1 Although atrocity prevention and response are already implicit in both HMG’s national security strategy and its foreign policy priorities,2 and while HMG has made notable recent commitments with respect to atrocity prevention and response, we believe there are a number of ways in which HMG can yet strengthen this approach. This policy brief—which draws insight from the Oxford Programme on International Peace and Security (IPS)’s original written evidence submission to the International Development Committee (IDC) inquiry Promoting Dialogue and Preventing Atrocities: The UK Government Approach and from the work of other civil society organisations active on this topic, most notably members of the UK Civil Society Atrocity Prevention Working Group—will set out what we consider the ideal blueprint for how this can be achieved. First and foremost, we recommend HMG clearly distinguish its atrocity prevention strategy from its conflict prevention workstream. To do so, we recommend the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) develop a national, cross-departmental mass atrocity prevention strategy alongside HMG’s conflict prevention workstream. We also recommend the FCDO develop and institutionalise an integrated architecture that coordinates the implementation of such new capabilities across government. Furthermore, we advance the view that more research is needed to help policymakers understand how atrocity prevention interacts with other government policies and areas of work. For this reason, we recommend HMG commissions and commits to funding further research on the intersection between atrocity prevention and contiguous workstreams. Finally, we propose a broader set of tools and strategies we believe should be pursued alongside internal bureaucratic restructuring and strategic planning to further strengthen UK commitments to and leadership on atrocity prevention on the global stage.