Jewish World Watch (JWW) commends the House of Representatives for passing the Global Fragility Act of 2019 (H.R. 2116) on May 20. This marks an important victory for the field of mass atrocity and genocide prevention, sending a strong bipartisan message that investing in the underlying structural causes of violence and conflict is in the best political, security, and economic interests of the United States and the world.
JWW applauds the leadership of the Global Fragility Act’s lead sponsors, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Ranking Member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX). A special thanks also to our California Representatives Karen Bass (D-CA-37), Ted Lieu (D-CA-33) and Brad Sherman (D-CA-30), who co-sponsored this important piece of legislation, which will provide a testing ground and implementation opportunity for many of the goals enshrined in the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocity Prevention Act signed into law this January.
Now, onto the Senate! Companion legislation in the Senate is already up and running. Introduced by Sen. Christopher Coons (D-DE), Co-chair of the Senate Human Rights Caucus, S. 727 needs to pass next in order to ensure this crucial legislation becomes law. We need a massive push from you to get more Senators onboard. So far, S. 727 has 11 cosponsors, none of whom are from California. By clicking below, you can easily reach out to your local senators and tell them you want genocide and mass atrocity prevention to be a priority of their foreign policy portfolios.
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The Global Fragility Act aims to create a coordinated interagency approach to preventing violence from erupting in fragile states. If enacted, it would establish a whole-of-government initiative — the Global Initiative to Reduce Fragility and Violence — through which streamlined interagency strategies for conflict prevention could be piloted for 10 years in priority countries around the world. The result would be research-based and tested best practices the United States could implement moving forward to prevent the start of violence where indicators point to an imminent outbreak.
Global violence is at a 25 year high, undercutting global stability, reversing development gains, and driving record levels of forced displacement — currently 68.5 million people worldwide. Containment of such pervasive and increasing violence costs the global economy $14.7 trillion a year — the equivalent of 12.4% of global GDP. The Global Fragility Act would give key U.S. agencies, including the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and others, the tools they need to effectively assess and implement strategies to stabilize at-risk areas before they devolve into mass atrocity-level situations. Such prophylactic interventions will reduce global violence, curb extremism, and save immense amounts of taxpayer dollars currently expended on costly and far less efficient post-eruption containment efforts.
The Senate should vote as soon as possible on this common-sense legislation. It’s time Washington truly prioritizes prevention and begins to streamline U.S. government coordination when it comes to addressing the world’s unprecedented levels of instability and fragility. Piecemeal, uncoordinated, and after-the-fact efforts by the U.S.’s various agencies will only increase costs and decrease effectiveness. A government working in lockstep via harmonized prevention is the only way to move forward in today’s increasingly unstable global climate.
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