Allyson Schwartz Quotes

I believe the only time when we can call for intervention is when there is an ongoing genocide.

'Never again' is the rallying cry for all who believe that mankind must speak out against genocide.

Nearly 60 years ago, the international community made a commitment to put an end to the crime of genocide by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

I'm not a politician. I'm not a hero. I'm a messenger. It's very important that we study genocide because it has happened again and again. We made a mistake because we didn't believe Cambodians would kill Cambodians. We didn't believe that one human being would kill another human being. That's why we allowed them to kill us. I want you to know that genocide can happen anywhere on this planet. Together we can prevent genocide from happening again.

Effective intervention ended Sierra Leone’s civil war, while nonintervention condemned Rwanda to genocide.

We tend to think of World War II and all the atrocities that happened, and people say, 'Never again.' But these things are still happening. The Amnesty International files are big.

The Coalition for International Justice estimated that 450,000 people in Darfur have died since the deadly genocide began some three years ago.

Our campaign is powered by college students who are not about to let the first genocide of the 21st century happen on their watch.

There's a great op-ed piece by Kurt Johnson, who runs The List Project, that I recommend everyone read. He was talking about how he's been trying to get out of Iraq who were our allies, who are now subject to torture, and their families are being killed because of their alliance to the United States.

If the history of the western moral imagination is the story of an enduring and unending revolt against human cruelty, there are few more consequential figures than Raphael Lemkin - and few whose achievements have been more ignored by the general public. It was he who coined the word 'genocide.' He was also its victim.

As a Jew I cannot sit idle while genocidal atrocities continue to unfold in Darfur, Sudan.

I have made my living bearing witness to some of the most horrific events of the end of our century, at the end of the 20th century.

If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.

Despite the increase in world attention toward Sudan in the past months, the genocide in Darfur has continued without any serious attempt by the Sudanese government to do what governments primarily exist to do, protect their citizens.

I don't think nations can stand aside for ethnic cleansing and genocide.

The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.

Governments are mandated by international law to protect people from genocide.

The biggest road block to action on genocide and other human rights crimes is ignorance. Most people just don't know that such things are happening, and often, if they have a vague idea they are happening, there is a feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop these crimes.

Countries can’t stand by as a genocide takes place in another country.

The international community could not muster the resources or the will to come to the Rwanda’s aid.

Be careful. Legal at State was worried about this yesterday—Genocide finding could commit the U. S. Government to actually do something.

World leaders always prefer to ignore a genocide, but when forced to face the horrors … they figure out ways of responding. The most acute need is not for policies but for political will.

Saddam Hussein was perhaps the most bloodthirsty dictator after Hitler and Stalin. We can defend the oil of Kuwait, but not the people of Iraq.

National sovereignty is never an excuse for slaughtering your own people