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While providing a day for friendship and family togetherness, Thanksgiving is a holiday with roots in a dark period of American history that many describe as a genocide, perpetrated by foreign settlers against the Native American people. But while the definition is clear, the application of the term ‘genocide’ can be highly controversial. Those accused of committing genocide often argue that they are engaged in a legitimate political conflict, not the systemic murder of one group of people. The United Nations defines genocide as any 5 specific acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. The acts include forcibly removing children from a group for transfer to another group, imposing measures to prevent births within a group, and killing members of a group. Identifying genocide may be fraught with politics, but the concept of genocide is nearly universally condemned. And in spite of promises to prevent or swiftly act to stop it, the international community has been largely ineffective in recent decades when faced with knowledge of mass murder. A new book titled “Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities” seeks to illuminate what steps nations must take when faced with the horror of genocide.

GUEST: Frank Chalk, lead author of “Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities”