Seybolt Trains Diplomats on Genocide Prevention in Auschwitz
12/09/2011
By: Aurora Matthews
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A group of diplomats received a lesson in genocide prevention from Dr. Taylor Seybolt last month in Auschwitz, Poland. Dr. Seybolt led a simulation exercise in putting genocide prevention into practice as part of a week-long seminar organized by the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR).
“It’s not often that academics sitting in a university get to feel like they’ve actually reached people in the real world who are in positions to make decisions,” said Dr. Seybolt. “But I know that this time I was teaching people who might be called upon to prevent a massacre. And that was very rewarding.“
The Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention began four years ago and holds two annual seminars to train and build a network of people who can understand the mechanisms of genocide, why it happens, and what can be done to avert it. U.S. Army officers met earlier this year while the most recent seminar, which began on November 13, 2011 was designed for an audience of a 20 or so diplomats. One of the most striking aspects of the seminar is its location. The week begins with a tour of the Nazi extermination camps at Auschwitz and Birkenau, the most notorious sites of mass killings. “It’s one thing to talk about genocide and genocide prevention when we sit here in Pittsburgh,” said Dr. Seybolt. “It’s quite another thing when you’re literally across the road from gas chambers that were used in the Holocaust.” The AIPR hopes the “power of place” at Auschwitz provides a unique educational setting to teach lessons of early warning assessment, collaboration with humanitarian partners, and preventing genocide and other war crimes.
Dr. Seybolt spent the final day of the seminar running a simulation he commissioned and pilot tested at the United States Institute of Peace. “Military Response Decisions During a Civilian Protection Crisis,” sets up a situation in a fictitious country where there is an imminent attack by a national army on a town occupied by rebels and UN troops stationed there to protect civilians. For two hours participants played the roles of the International Committee of the Red Cross, United Nations forces in country, the UN Security Council, major non-governmental organizations, and local civilian and military actors. Participants were physically separated from each other and had to rely on various forms of communication such as the telephone and Skype in order to contact each other. “It makes a real qualitative difference in how the game plays out because they have to deal with time delays and confusion and communication problems while responding to a very quickly moving scenario that is getting worse as it progresses,” said Dr. Seybolt.
The reaction from both participants and other instructors from the program was very positive. Some had found themselves in similar situations in their careers and remarked on the similarities between the simulation material and the kinds of problems they faced in their relationships with various actors. “You always want a simulation to reflect what really goes on,” said Dr. Seybolt. “So it was great to have that reaction. People said it opened their eyes to basic problems they might face in the future and they found it to be a good way to pull together the themes of the week.”
Although he had participated in this simulation once before, this was Dr. Seybolt’s first time running it. He expects to run it again at another one of AIPR’s seminars, perhaps with a military audience. “I think the military officers will draw different lessons from it than the diplomats. I think they’ll be shocked and astonished by the lack of resources that UN military operations have in the field,” he said. Dr. Seybolt also plans to use a variation of the simulation in his capstone seminar, Understanding and Preventing Mass Violence. When he has the opportunity, he plans to make modifications such as adding additional roles and making it a less linear scenario by developing alternative scenarios at critical decision points. “In the bigger scheme of things, the APIR program and this simulation fit into a recent push by NGOs, some governments and the UN to take seriously the idea that genocide and civilian massacres require a response different from what is usually done,” said Dr. Seybolt. “So if at some point there’s a leadership decision to take action, then those tasked with that won’t be starting from zero. They will have thought about it ahead of time.”
