From October 31 through November 25 of 2022, the Auschwitz Institute held the latest global edition of its Conflict-Related Atrocity Crimes Prevention (CRACP) virtual course. Made possible through the generous support of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) of Ireland, the course welcomed 28 participants from Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America for training in the foundational knowledge and proactive tools that security-sector officials can utilize to prevent conflict-related atrocity crimes.
Conflict-related atrocity crimes, including war crimes, continue to be a global challenge. International humanitarian law regulates the conduct of war or armed conflict and is the subject of much traditional compliance training in this sector. However, there is less awareness around war crimes prevention, and the sector suffers from a lack of trainings that goes beyond compliance with international humanitarian law. CRACP’s curriculum aims to complement this by effectively institutionalizing the prevention of conflict-related atrocity crimes across all phases of the conflict cycle.
The CRACP course was developed to equip participants with tools to advance prevention in their work. From 2018 to 2020, the Auschwitz Institute undertook an in-depth curriculum development process to design a training for public officials working in ministries of defense and high-level security forces with foundational knowledge and proactive tools to prevent conflict-related atrocity crimes. The result is a five-week virtual course divided into five thematic focuses, which AIPG currently offers in English, French, German, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The first week focuses on key concepts for the prevention of atrocity crimes, followed by a week on the relevant legal frameworks for prevention, including emphases on international humanitarian law, international human rights law, and international criminal law.
Week three is dedicated to atrocity crimes risk analysis, involving an examination of the processes by which genocide and other atrocity crimes occur and the identification of relevant risk factors in the realms of governance, conflict history, economic conditions, and social fragmentation.
The fourth week of the course focuses on the ways in which ordinary people come to commit atrocity crimes. This segment of the course features an examination of the role of identity in the prevention of atrocity crimes and the impact of cultures of institutional identity as they relate to defense and security forces. The fifth and final week of the course covers conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence.
The next edition of the CRACP course will start on February 13 and will be offered to a global audience. The deadline to apply for this course is January 27, 2023. If you are interested in participating in the course, please submit your application here.