UK Civil Society Atrocity Prevention Working Group

The UK Civil Society Atrocity Prevention Working Group exists to cooperate, collaborate, and share knowledge with the aim to improve the UK's prediction and prevention of mass atrocities.

In June of 2017, Protection Approaches began informal coordination with like-minded organisations. We held our first formal meeting in June of  2018, producing a report on the state of UK civil society work contributing to atrocity prevention and setting out a road map for the working group. 

While Protection Approaches convenes the group, it is a collaborative endeavour. We work, both publicly and privately, to increase resource-light, impact-heavy activities such as regular communication, semi-regular meetings, knowledge exchange and best-practice sharing, goal setting, and collective advocacy. 

Our group has long called for the government to set out a national strategy on atrocity prevention. We believe more joined up thinking and coordinated activity could make a significant difference to how government, parliament and the wider human rights movement conceive and implement atrocity prevention. 

Following a period of sustained activity by the Working Group, in 2019 the UK Government published for the first time its multi-departmental approach to atrocity prevention. In doing so Her Majesty’s Government has now set out the cross-cutting nature of how it understands atrocity prevention, underlining it as an issue for the Department for International Development and Ministry of Defence as well as the Foreign Office. The statement also lays out the mechanisms by which HMG will implement its commitments, including early warning, development, and diplomatic means. 

In March 2021 members of the UK Atrocity Prevention Working Group warmly welcome the Government’s commitment to make atrocity prevention a priority in its new strategic framework of international policy. We hope that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and Cabinet Office will take this opportunity to develop a clear-eyed strategy on how the UK’s systems and capabilities will now bring clarity and coherence to the prevention and prediction of, preparedness for, and responses to genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes. The UK's new approach to conflict also now seems to borrow from the principles of atrocity prevention, recognises grievances and political marginalisation as drivers of modern mass violence and understands the need to prioritise prevention. Read the full statement from the Working Group in response to the outcomes of the Integrated Review here.

While these steps demonstrate that the UK is taking atrocity prevention more seriously, neither the 2019 policy paper nor 2021 announcement represent a whole of Government strategy, as called for by our members and the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. Preventing identity-based violence and mass atrocities is a matter that begins at home and extends around the world. It therefore requires all internationally-facing departments –particularly the Department for International Trade– as well as domestic instruments that are responsible for upholding obligations to populations within and at Britain's borders. The Working Group therefore continues to work to secure an integrated and cross-cutting national strategy of identity-based violence and atrocity prevention.