Paying Lip Service to R2P and Genocide Prevention: The Muted Response of the US Atrocities Prevention Board and the USHMM’s Committee on Conscience to the Crisis in the Nuba Mountains

Abstract

This article addresses the response of the United States Atrocities Prevention Board and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee on Conscience to the ongoing crisis in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains (2011–present). First, it provides an overview of the genocide by attrition of the Nuba people perpetrated by the government of Sudan during the late 1980s and early to mid-1990s; second, it delineates the causes and impact of the current crisis in the same region; and, third, it discusses the parallels and differences between the two sets of events. It then examines how, and speculates as to why, the responses of both the Atrocities Prevention Board and the Committee on Conscience have been largely nonexistent and sorely ineffectual.