Spring 2023 Atrocity Prevention Simulation

Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention
Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention

Simulation Dates: March 4-5, 2023


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Overview:

Welcome to I-GMAP's 2023 Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise. The Exercise is a multiplayer event simulating an international response to an emerging major atrocity threat. The simulation offers students the opportunity to experience the challenges facing international actors as they struggle, in real time, to interpret and assess a cascade of information, and adjust and adapt their policies in response. It is designed to give a realistic glimpse into the way that international actors - diplomats, political leadership, and influential civil society actors - structure their decision-making processes under the pressure of time and the unpredictable nature of unfolding events.

The Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise consists of a highly realistic, hypothetical scenario. Student players are divided randomly into teams, each of which represents one prominent international actor, such as the United States, the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, or an international Non-Governmental Organization. Over several rounds of play, each team receives new injects of information in a range of different formats: breaking news stories, intercepted diplomatic cables and emails, official statements from foreign ministries, consular officials and UN offices, and more. In real time, each round challenges teams to assess and adjust their range of preferred policy options, and to engage via formal and informal diplomatic channels with one another.

Between rounds of play, teams convene for a group discussion. At each of these plenary rounds, one team briefly presents its current policy posture, interests and goals to the group, and answers their peers' questions.

Each team is assigned an Expert Advisor, a deeply experienced veteran of international conflict resolution and atrocity prevention, who is on hand to offer advice, suggestions, and insights from their own diplomatic, civil service, academic, and/or NGO-based career.

The 2023 Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise is set in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this near-future event, a range of international actors contend with a legacy of war and genocide, a history of intensely violent identity-based conflict, and a fragile, complex post-conflict political arrangement that risks collapsing under the pressure of resurgent nationalism.

Requirements:

The 2023 Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise is open to interested students, without cost. However, the following are the requirements for participation:

  • To participate, you must REGISTER for the event. To register, please click here or on the Registration link below to fill out a very brief registration form, and look out for an email from I-GMAP confirming your registration.
  • Since the Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise is a team event, with each round building on the previous rounds, it is essential that you commit to the full exercise, including the Orientation Round on the evening of Saturday March 4, and Rounds 1-4 and the Concluding Discussion on Sunday, March 5. Do not register unless you are prepared to participate fully in the complete course of the exercise.
  • You must provide your own laptop computer
  • You must read a background packet with basic historical and political information on Bosnia-Herzegovina, which you will receive as an email attachment approximately one week before the event.

Registration:

Please register for the 2023 Atrocity Intervention Simulation Exercise here.

Schedule:

Date Time Event

Saturday, March 4

7:00 PM - 8:00 PM Orientation
  8:00 PM - 8:45 PM Team Meetings
  8:45 PM - 9:15 PM Q&A and Instructions for Round 1-4

Sunday, March 5

8:45 AM - 9:00 AM Login
  9:00 AM - 10:15 AM ROUND 1
  10:15 AM - 10:45 AM Plenary/Presentation
  10:45 AM - 11:00 AM Break
  11:00 AM - 12:15 PM ROUND 2
  12:15 PM - 12:45 PM Plenary/Presentation
  12:45 PM - 1:30 PM Lunch
  1:30 PM - 2:45 PM ROUND 3
  2:45 PM - 3:15 PM Plenary/Presentation
  3:15 PM - 3:30 PM Break
  3:30 PM - 4:45 PM ROUND 4
  4:45 PM - 6:00 PM Plenary/Presentation and Conclusion

Expert Advisors:

Jared Bell
Jared Bell

Dr. Jared O. Bell is a post-conflict development expert with extensive experience in designing and managing international human rights, democratization, and rule of law and justice sector programs. He recently joined the ranks of USAID’s Foreign Service. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he managed ABA ROLI's Central Asia Portfolio, implementing USG funded programs across four countries. Before that, Jared worked in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina in USAID's Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Program and Democracy Offices. He has also worked on various human rights, peacebuilding, and development projects with a variety of organizations such as Peace Direct,the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Human Rights Council, the American Red Cross, and the Maryland Office of Refugees and Asylees. Jared has also taught, presented, and lectured across the globe in such places as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, Poland, The Gambia, and the United States. 

A prolific writer, Jared has published numerous articles on human rights, transitional justice, reconciliation and peace building, and is the author of the book “Frozen Justice: Lessons from Bosnia Herzegovina's Failed Transitional Justice Strategy” published with Vernon Press in 2018. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Duquesne University in International Relations, a Master of Science Degree from the University of Baltimore in Negotiation and Conflict Management, and a PhD from Nova Southeastern University in Conflict Analysis and Resolution with a focus in International Peace and Conflict. In addition to his formal education, Jared has also studied and received professional training at the University of Leiden’s Grotius Centre for International Legal Studies’ Summer School for Human Rights and Transitional Justice,the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights studies, the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratization’s Venice Academy of Human Rights, the Universities of Groningen and Rijeka’s Cres Summer on “Transitional Justice and the Politics of Memory”, and Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. He is a recognized UNESCO Policy Lab Expert and has served as a Visiting Non-Resident Fellow at Western University's Center for Transitional Justice and Post-Conflict Reconstruction. 


Valerie Fowler
Valerie Fowler
Valerie Crites Fowler served as a Foreign Service Officer for nearly 30 years, retiring in 2018 with the rank of Minister Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service. Her last assignment was as Consul General in Sydney, Australia, from 2016-2018. From 2012-15, she served in the Bureau of Public Affairs as Deputy Assistant Secretary, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, and Acting Assistant Secretary of State. Prior to her arrival in Sydney in September 2016, Valerie served as Senior Advisor to the Director General of the Foreign Service.  

From 2009-12, Ms. Fowler served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Colombo, overseeing U.S. bilateral relations with Sri Lanka and Maldives. In 2008-09, Ms. Fowler served as Director of the Provincial Reconstruction Team and Sub-National Governance Office at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, leading the U.S. civilian presence across the country. From 1989 to 2008, Ms. Fowler served in a number of positions specializing in public diplomacy and public affairs, including overseas assignments in Singapore, Pretoria, Thessaloniki, Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Her assignments in Washington include three years in the State Department Operations Center, including as Director of Crisis Management Support from 2002-04.

She is a graduate of Stanford University and a distinguished graduate of the National War College. Her awards include the U.S. Department of the Army Superior Civilian Service Award (2009) and multiple State Department Superior Honor awards.  

After retirement, Valerie and her husband, retired U.S. Navy Captain Chip Fowler, established a vineyard in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington State, with 16 acres of organically-grown wine grapes.


Jeff Sizemore
Jeff Sizemore
Jeffrey Sizemore serves in the Office of Security and Human Rights, leading and coordinating his bureau’s atrocity prevention efforts.  He manages atrocity prevention training for the Department as well as works with interagency colleagues as part of the Atrocity Prevention Task Force.  Additionally, he manages the Fragility and Gender portfolios.  Prior to joining the State Department, Jeff served for over 20 years in the United States Navy as a Surface Warfare Officer, retiring as a commander in 2020. 

Jeff received a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from the George Washington University in 2001 and a master’s degree in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College in 2012.


Tanya Domi
Tanya Domi
Tanya Domi is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and is an affiliate faculty member of the Harriman Institute where she has taught in the Balkan Studies program since 2008.

Prior to her faculty appointment at Columbia, Domi worked as a Congressional aide and military policy advisor to the late Congressman Frank McCloskey, a leading champion for US intervention in the Bosnian war. She also worked internationally for more than a decade on issues related to democratic transitional development, including political and media development, human rights, gender and sexual identity issues and human trafficking. Domi was seconded by the U.S. State Department to the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1996 where she served as counsel to former Ambassador Robert Barry. She has since expanded her research  to genocide, conflict related sexual violence and the prevention of atrocity crimes. 


Toby Vogel
Toby Vogel

Toby Vogel writes about international affairs from Brussels and is a co-founder and senior associate of the Democratization Policy Council (DPC), a think tank in Berlin that critically follows Western policies toward democratizing countries. He has published widely on the Balkans and on European Union policies and politics, with recent bylines in Foreign Affairs, EUobserver, and Balkan Insight. He is also a regular non-fiction reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. 

Vogel served as penholder of the UN’s 2019 Common Country Analysis on Bosnia and Herzegovina and contributed Conflict and Development Analyses in 2019 and 2022. As an independent policy analyst he has worked with UNDP, UNICEF, UNODC, the EU, and the Swiss government, as well as with the International Rescue Committee, where he was a staff member in New York and Sarajevo in 1998-2002. 

He holds degrees in philosophy (from the University of Zurich) and political science (from the New School for Social Research), and was an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation research fellow on security and humanitarian action at City University of New York.