It’s not all about Donald Trump. That’s a statement more easily written than believed, given the U.S. president’s erratic comportment on the world stage — his tweets and taunts, his cavalier disregard of international accords, his readiness to undercut his own diplomats, his odd choice of foes, and his even odder choice of friends. And yet, a more inward-looking United States and a greater international diffusion of power, increasingly militarized foreign policy, and shrinking space for multilateralism and diplomacy are features of the international order that predate the current occupant of the White House and look set to outlast him. The first trend — U.S. retrenchment — has been in the making for years, hastened by the 2003 Iraq War that, intended to showcase American power, did more to demonstrate its limitations. Overreach abroad, fatigue at home, and a natural rebalancing after the relatively brief period of largely uncontested U.S. supremacy in the 1990s mean the decline was likely inevitable. Trump’s signature “America First” slogan harbors a toxic nativist, exclusionary, and intolerant worldview. His failure to appreciate the value of alliances to U.S. interests and his occasional disparagement of traditional partners is particularly self-defeating. His lamentations about the cost of U.S. overseas intervention lack any introspection regarding the price paid by peoples subjected to that intervention, focusing solely on that paid by those perpetrating it. But one ought not forget that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the same election season, and Barack Obama, as a candidate in the preceding ones, both rejected foreign entanglements and belittled nation building. Trump wasn’t shaping the public mood. He was reflecting it. The retrenchment is a matter of degree, of course, given the approximately 200,000 active-duty U.S. troops deployed worldwide. But in terms of ability to manipulate or mold events around the globe, U.S. influence has been waning as power spreads to the east and south, creating a more multipolar world in which armed nonstate actors are playing a much larger role. The second trend, the growing militarization of foreign policy, also represents continuity as much as departure. Trump exhibits a taste for generals and disdain for diplomats; his secretary of state has an even more curious penchant to dismember the institution from which he derives his power. But they are magnifying a wider and older pattern. The space for diplomacy was shrinking long before Trump’s administration took an ax to the State Department. Throughout conflict zones, leaders increasingly appear prone to fight more than to talk — and to fight by violating international norms rather than respecting them. This owes much to how the rhetoric of counterterrorism has come to dominate foreign policy in theory and in practice. It has given license to governments to first label their armed opponents as terrorists and then treat them as such. Over a decade of intensive Western military operations has contributed to a more permissive environment for the use of force. Many recent conflicts have involved valuable geopolitical real estate, escalating regional and major power rivalries, more outside involvement in conflicts, and the fragmentation and proliferation of armed groups. There is more to play for, more players in the game, and less overlap among their core interests. All of these developments present obstacles to negotiated settlements. The third trend is the erosion of multilateralism. Whereas former President Obama sought (with mixed success) to manage and cushion America’s relative decline by bolstering international agreements — such as trade deals, the Paris climate accord, and the Iran nuclear negotiations — President Trump recoils from all that. Where Obama opted for burden-sharing, Trump’s instinct is for burden-shedding. Even this dynamic, however, has deeper roots. On matters of international peace and security in particular, multilateralism has been manhandled for years. Animosity between Russia and Western powers has rendered the United Nations Security Council impotent on major conflicts since at least the 2011 Libya intervention; that animosity now infects debates on most crises on the council’s agenda. Trump is not the only leader emphasizing bilateral arrangements and ad hoc alliances above multilateral diplomacy and intergovernmental institutions. Then again, much of it is about Trump, inescapably. The most ominous threats in 2018 — nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula and a spiraling confrontation pitting the United States and its allies against Iran — could both be aggravated by Trump’s actions, inactions, and idiosyncrasies. U.S. demands (in the North Korean case, denuclearization; in Iran’s, unilateral renegotiation of the nuclear deal or Tehran’s regional retreat) are unrealistic without serious diplomatic engagement or reciprocal concessions. In the former, Washington could face the prospect of provoking a nuclear war in order to avoid one, and in the latter, there is the possibility of jeopardizing a nuclear deal that is succeeding for the sake of a confrontation with Iran that almost certainly will not. (A third potential flashpoint that didn’t make it into our top 10 — because it came so late and was so unexpected and gratuitous — is the Jerusalem powder keg. At the time of writing, it has not yet exploded, perhaps because when one is as hopeless as the Palestinians there is little hope left to be dashed. Still, the Trump administration’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel for purely domestic political reasons, with no conceivable foreign-policy gain and a risk of explosion, must rank as a prime example of diplomatic malpractice.) As with all trends, there are countervailing ones often propelled by discomfort that the dominant trends provoke. Europeans are defending the Iranian nuclear deal and may end up deepening their own common security and strategic independence, President Emmanuel Macron is testing the reach of French diplomacy, and international consensus on action against climate change has held. Perhaps African states, already leading efforts to manage crises on the continent, will step up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or another of the continent’s major conflicts. Perhaps they or another assortment of actors could make the case for more engagement and dialogue and for defusing crises rather than exacerbating them. These may seem slender reeds on which to rest our hopes. But, as the following list of the International Crisis Group’s top 10 conflicts to watch in 2018 unhappily illustrates, and for now at least, they may well be the only reeds we have. 1. North Korea North Korea’s nuclear and missile testing coupled with the White House’s bellicose rhetoric make the threat of war on the Korean Peninsula — even a catastrophic nuclear confrontation — higher now than at any time in recent history. Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test in September 2017 and the increasing range of its missiles clearly demonstrate its determination to advance its nuclear program and intercontinental strike capability. From the United States, meanwhile, comes careless saber-rattling and confusing signals about diplomacy. Kim Jong Un’s push for nuclear arms is driven partly by fear that without such deterrence he risks being deposed by outside powers and partly by perceived threats inside North Korea, notably elite rivalries, the tightly managed but still unpredictable impact of economic reform, and his difficulty in controlling information flow — including from foreign media channels. The aggressive tone from Washington reflects equal urgency in the opposite direction. At least some senior officials believe North Korea must be prevented at all costs from advancing its nuclear program, in particular from being able to strike the continental United States with a missile carrying a nuclear payload. After crossing that threshold, they believe, Kim Jong Un will conclude that he can deter Washington from protecting its allies and thus impose demands — from lifting trade restrictions to expelling U.S. troops, all the way to Korean reunification on his terms. Those same officials appear convinced that he can be dissuaded from retaliating in the event of limited, targeted military action. For now, the United States is implementing a “maximum pressure strategy”: corralling the Security Council into tougher sanctions, pressing China to do more to strangle its neighbor’s economy, conducting large Air Force and Navy drills, and signaling directly or through congressional allies that it does not fear military confrontation. Despite conflicting messages from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the Trump administration is making clear that it is not interested in talks whose goal would be anything short of North Korea’s denuclearization, an objective as worthy as it is delusional. As the White House sees it, the approach is working: U.S. military action is no longer unimaginable for either North Korea or China. It hopes the former will be compelled to back down and the latter will get them there. But this approach means a race against time — with Washington almost certainly on the losing side. Restrictive measures will not bite immediately, and they will bite the North Korean leadership last; ordinary citizens will suffer sooner and worse. Feeling threatened, Pyongyang is more likely to accelerate weapons development than halt or slow it. Both China and South Korea support tighter sanctions and are as frustrated with Pyongyang as they are alarmed by the prospect of U.S. military action. But South Korea has little power to alter the situation, China’s willingness to pressure North Korea may be reaching its limit, and its influence over a fiercely independent neighbor resentful of its reliance on Beijing is easily overstated. While Chinese President Xi Jinping fears the prospect of war on the peninsula bringing chaos, a possibly U.S.-aligned regime, and U.S. troops to his doorstep, he also fears that squeezing Pyongyang could precipitate turmoil that could spill over into China. Without a viable diplomatic offramp, Washington risks cornering itself into military action. Even a precisely targeted attack would likely provoke a North Korean response. While Pyongyang would think twice before initiating a conventional strike on Seoul, it could take other steps: an attack on a soft South Korean target; an asymmetric strike against U.S. assets on or around the peninsula; or crippling cyberattacks. These might not immediately trigger regional conflict, but they would provoke an unpredictable escalation. A successful diplomatic initiative ultimately will need to address two competing preoccupations: U.S. and wider international fears of what the Pyongyang regime would do with an advanced nuclear capacity, and the regime’s fear of what might happen to it without one. The U.S. government should marry its sanctions and those of the U.N. to a clear and realistic political goal. An incremental solution could include pauses on North Korean testing of its missile system or weapons, before Pyongyang crosses what the White House sees as a red line; the United States agreeing to less provocative military exercises; and consensus on humanitarian support even as sanctions kick in. That might not satisfy anyone. But at least it would provide the space needed to explore a more durable resolution. 2. U.S.-Saudi-Iran Rivalry This rivalry will likely eclipse other Middle Eastern fault lines in 2018. It is enabled and exacerbated by three parallel developments: the consolidation of the authority of Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s assertive crown prince; the Trump administration’s more aggressive strategy toward Iran; and the end of the Islamic State’s territorial control in Iraq and Syria, which allows Washington and Riyadh to aim the spotlight more firmly on Iran. The contours of a U.S./Saudi strategy (with an important Israeli assist) are becoming clear. It is based on an overriding assumption that Iran has exploited passive regional and international actors to bolster its position in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon. Washington and Riyadh seek to re-establish a sense of deterrence by convincing Tehran that it will pay at least as high a price for its actions as it can inflict on its adversaries. The strategy seems to involve multiple forms of pressure to contain, squeeze, exhaust, and ultimately push back Iran. It has an economic dimension (via U.S. sanctions); a diplomatic one (witness vocal U.S. and Saudi denunciations of Iran’s regional behavior and Riyadh’s ham-handed attempt to force Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s resignation); and a military one (so far exerted principally by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and by Israel in Syria). Whether it will work is another question. Although recent protests in Iran have introduced a new and unpredictable variable, Tehran and its partners still appear to be in a strong position. The Bashar al-Assad regime, backed by Russian air power, is prevailing in Syria. Across Iraq, Iran-linked Shiite militias are entrenching themselves in state institutions. In Yemen, Tehran’s relatively small investment in backing the Houthis has helped them weather the Saudi-led campaign and even launch missiles of unprecedented range and accuracy into Saudi territory. Despite demonstrating its resolve to confront Iran and its partners, Riyadh has been unable to alter the balance of power. Forcing Hariri’s resignation backfired, not just because he later withdrew it, but also because all of Lebanon united against the move and Hariri then inched closer to Lebanese President Michel Aoun and Hezbollah. In Yemen, Riyadh turned the Houthis and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh against each other, but in doing so further fragmented the country and complicated the search for a settlement and a face-saving Saudi exit from a war that is enormously costly not only to Yemenis but also to Riyadh’s international standing. The Trump administration confronts similar obstacles. Thus far its belligerence, refusal to certify the nuclear deal, threats of new sanctions, and launching of several strikes at and near regime targets in Syria have done little to reverse Tehran’s reach. With so many flashpoints, and so little diplomacy, the risk of an escalatory cycle is great: Any move — new U.S. sanctions that Iran would see as violating the nuclear deal; a Houthi missile strike hitting Riyadh or Abu Dhabi, for which Washington and Riyadh would hold Tehran responsible; or an Israeli strike in Syria that kills Iranians — could trigger a broader confrontation. 3. The Rohingya Crisis: Myanmar and Bangladesh Myanmar’s Rohingya crisis has entered a dangerous new phase, threatening Myanmar’s hard-won democratic transition, its stability, and that of Bangladesh and the region as a whole. An August attack by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a militant group in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, prompted a brutal and indiscriminate military response targeting the long-mistreated Muslim Rohingya community. That assault led to a massive refugee exodus, with at least 655,000 Rohingya fleeing for Bangladesh. The U.N. called the operation a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing. The government has heavily restricted humanitarian aid to the area, and international goodwill toward Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning state counsellor, has dissipated. Her government retains its hard-line stance toward the Rohingya and resists concessions on even immediate humanitarian issues. In this, it has the support of the population, which has embraced the Buddhist nationalist and anti-Rohingya rhetoric disseminated through state and social media. Pressure from the U.N. Security Council is critical, and Western governments are moving toward targeted sanctions, which are a key signal that such actions cannot go unpunished. Unfortunately, these sanctions are unlikely to have a significant positive impact on Myanmar’s policies. The focus is rightly on the right of refugees to return in a voluntary, safe and, dignified manner. In reality, however, and notwithstanding a late-November Bangladesh/Myanmar repatriation agreement, the refugees will not return unless Myanmar restores security for all communities, grants the Rohingya freedom of movement as well as access to services and other rights, and allows humanitarian and refugee agencies unfettered access. While publicly, Bangladesh’s government is trying to persuade Myanmar to take the refugees back, privately it acknowledges the hopelessness of that endeavor. It has neither defined policies nor taken operational decisions on how to manage more than a million Rohingya in its southeast, along the Myanmar border, in the medium- to long-term. International funding for an under-resourced emergency operation will run out in February. All this — indeed, the very presence of a large population of stateless refugees — creates enormous dangers for Bangladesh. Conflict between refugees and a host community that is heavily outnumbered in parts of the southeast and faces rising prices and falling wages is an immediate risk. The refugees’ presence also could be used to stoke communal conflict or aggravate political divisions ahead of elections expected in late 2018. There are risks, too, for Myanmar. ARSA could regroup. It or even transnational groups exploiting the Rohingya cause or recruiting among the displaced could launch cross-border attacks, escalating both Muslim-Buddhist tension in Rakhine state and friction between Myanmar and Bangladesh. Any attack outside Rakhine would provoke broader Buddhist-Muslim tension and violence across the country. Acknowledging the crisis, implementing recommendations of the Kofi Annan-led Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, and disavowing divisive narratives would put the Myanmar government — and its people — on a better path. 4. Yemen With 8 million people on the brink of famine, 1 million declared cholera cases, and over 3 million internally displaced persons, the Yemen war could escalate further in 2018. After a period of rising tensions, dueling rallies, and armed assaults, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh announced in December that his General People’s Congress was abandoning its partnership with the Houthis in favor of the Saudi-led coalition. Saleh paid for it with his life; he was killed immediately by his erstwhile partners. Saudi Arabia and its allies — believing that the Houthi/General People’s Congress split opens new opportunities and still convinced a military solution exists — will likely intensify their campaign at a huge cost to civilians. Iran will keep finding ample opportunity to keep the Saudis bogged down, and the more anarchic Yemen’s north becomes, the more likely that violence is to bleed across the border. The Houthis will continue to take the fight to the Saudi homefront, firing missiles toward Riyadh and threatening other Gulf states. Negotiations, already a distant prospect, have become more complicated. The Houthis, feeling simultaneously emboldened and embattled, could adopt a more uncompromising stance. The General People’s Congress, a pragmatic centrist party, could fragment further. The south is divided, owing partly to the widening rift between forces loyal to Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and southern separatists backed by the United Arab Emirates. There are signs of mounting U.S. discomfort with the indiscriminate Saudi bombardment and the blockade of Houthi-controlled territories. But the Trump administration’s belligerent rhetoric toward Iran encourages all the wrong tendencies in Riyadh. Saudi Arabia and its allies should instead lift the blockade of Yemen and reopen civilian airports. Politically, there should be a new Security Council resolution providing for a balanced settlement. The Saudis are loath to concede anything to a group they consider an Iranian proxy, but were they to embrace a realistic peace initiative, the onus would shift to the Houthis to accept it. 5. Afghanistan The War in Afghanistan looks set to intensify in 2018. The United States’ new Afghanistan strategy raises the tempo of operations against the Taliban insurgency, with more U.S. forces, fiercer U.S. airstrikes, and more aggressive ground offensives by Afghan forces. The aim, according to senior officials, is to halt the Taliban’s momentum and, eventually, force it into a political settlement. For now, though, the strategy is almost exclusively military. This strategy faces serious obstacles. While hitting the Taliban harder might bring tactical gains, it is unlikely to change the war’s course or the incentives of a locally rooted and potent insurgency. The Taliban currently controls or is contesting more territory than at any time since 2001; it is better equipped and, even if pressured through conventional fighting, it would retain the ability to mount spectacular urban attacks that erode confidence in the government. Besides, between 2009 and 2012, the Taliban withstood more than 100,000 U.S. troops. Military leaders contend that this time will be different because Trump, unlike Obama, has not set a withdrawal date. That argument holds little water. It also misreads the insurgency: Battlefield losses in the past have not impacted Taliban leaders’ willingness to negotiate. Forthcoming Afghan elections (a parliamentary poll is slated for July 2018; a presidential vote is due in 2019) will suck oxygen from the military campaign. Every vote since 2004 has ignited some form of crisis, and political discord today is particularly severe, with President Ashraf Ghani accused by his critics of monopolizing power in the hands of a few advisors. The strategy also underplays regional shifts. Thus far, U.S. regional diplomacy has centered on pressuring Pakistan; yet the calculations that motivate Islamabad’s support for the insurgency are unlikely to change. The Taliban also now enjoys ties to Iran and Russia, which claim to view it as a bulwark against an Islamic State branch in Afghanistan that is small but resilient—and also capable of mounting high-profile attacks. Washington’s militarized approach and diminished diplomacy risk signaling to those countries that it seeks not to stabilize and leave Afghanistan but to maintain a military presence. Given that they are likely to perceive such a presence as a threat to their own interests, it could lead them to increase support for insurgents. Nor does U.S. diplomacy on Afghanistan currently involve China, whose increasing clout in parts of South Asia will make it critical to any settlement. It is true that demonstrating sustained U.S. support might reinforce the morale of the Afghan Army; a precipitous withdrawal, in contrast, could trigger chaos. But as the battlefield tempo increases, the Trump administration should keep lines of communication to the insurgency open and explore the contours of a settlement with Afghanistan’s neighbors and other regional powers, however slim prospects currently appear. U.S. allies in Afghanistan should push for a greater diplomatic political component to the U.S. strategy. As it stands, that strategy sets the stage for more violence while closing avenues for de-escalation. Afghan civilians will pay the price. 6. Syria After nearly seven years of war, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has the upper hand, thanks largely to Iranian and Russian backing. But the fighting is not over. Large swaths of the country remain outside regime control, regional and international powers disagree on a settlement, and Syria is an arena for the rivalry between Iran and its enemies. As the Islamic State is ousted from the east, prospects for escalation elsewhere will increase. In eastern Syria, rival campaigns by pro-regime forces (supported by Iran-backed militias and Russian airpower) and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (the SDF, backed by the U.S.-led anti-Islamic State coalition), have forced an Islamic State retreat. In Syria and Iraq, Islamic State remnants have retreated into the desert to await new opportunities. For the regime and the SDF, the fight against the Islamic State was a means to an end. The two aimed to capture territory and resources, but also to build on those gains — the regime by consolidating control; the Kurds by pressing for maximal autonomy. Thus far, the two sides mostly have avoided confrontation. With the Islamic State gone, the risks will increase. The east is also perilous due to wider U.S.-Iran rivalry and the close proximity of these rival forces. Iranian gains, particularly the corridor linking regime-held parts of Syria to government-controlled Iraq, could provoke the U.S. to attempt to block what it views as a dangerous land bridge from Iran to the Mediterranean. Iran might target U.S. forces to retaliate against U.S. actions elsewhere or to push the United States out altogether. In the southwest, Israel could view Iran-backed militias operating on and near the Golan Heights as a direct threat and take military action to push them back. Whether Moscow can prevent any Iranian or Hezbollah presence there, as it has pledged to do, is unclear. Israel may take matters into its own hands, striking Iran-allied forces. That pattern — prodding by Iran, pushback by Israel — could last for some time. But a wider confrontation is only one miscalculation away and could quickly spread beyond Syria, to Lebanon. One of the gravest immediate dangers, however, is the possibility of an offensive by the Assad regime in Syria’s northwest, where rebel-held areas are home to some 2 million Syrians and into which Turkey has deployed military observers as part of a de-escalation deal with Iran and Russia. Regime and allied forces appear to have shifted some attention from the east to those areas, placing that deal under stress. A regime offensive in the northwest could provoke massive destruction and displacement. 7. The Sahel Weak states across the Sahel region are struggling to manage an overlapping mix of intercommunal conflict, jihadi violence, and fighting over smuggling routes. Their leaders’ predation and militarized responses often make things worse. Mali’s 2012 crisis — which saw the Malian army routed from the country’s north, a coup that overthrew the government, and jihadis holding northern towns for almost a year — illustrates how quickly things can unravel. Since then, implementation of a peace deal that aimed to end that crisis has stalled, while instability has spread from the north to Mali’s central region as well as parts of neighboring Niger and Burkina Faso. Dynamics in each place are local, but governments’ lack of authority and their inability to stem — and, at times, their frequent contribution to — violence is a common theme. Weapons that flooded the region as Libya collapsed after Muammar al-Qaddafi’s overthrow have made local quarrels deadlier. The instability has opened a rich vein for jihadis, who piggyback on intercommunal conflict or use Islam to frame struggles against traditional authorities. As the situation has degenerated, the regional and international response has focused excessively on military solutions. Europeans in particular view the region as a threat to their own safety and a source of migration and terrorism. In late 2017, a new French-backed force known as the G5 Sahel — comprising troops from Mali, Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania — prepared to deploy into a field already crowded by France’s own counterterrorism operations, U.S. Special Forces, and U.N. peacekeepers. While military action must play a part in reducing jihadis’ influence, the G5 force raises more questions than it answers. It lacks a clear definition of the enemy, instead envisaging operations against an array of jihadis, traffickers, and other criminals. Disrupting smuggling in regions where that business represents the backbone of local economies could alienate communities. Regional leaders also appear likely to misuse military aid to shore up their own power. To avoid further deterioration, military efforts must be accompanied by a political strategy that rests on winning the support of local populations and defusing rather than aggravating local disputes. Opening or restoring lines of communication with some militant leaders should not be ruled out, if doing so can help diminish violence. 8. Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila’s determination to hold on to power threatens to escalate the crisis in Congo and a humanitarian emergency that is already among the world’s worst. At the end of 2016, the Saint Sylvester agreement appeared to offer a way out, requiring elections by the end of 2017, after which Kabila would leave power (his second and, according to the Congolese Constitution, final term in office should have ended December 2016). Over the past year, however, his regime has backtracked, exploiting the Congolese opposition’s disarray and waning international attention and reneging on a power-sharing deal. In November, the election commission announced a new calendar — with a vote at the end of 2018, extending Kabila’s rule for at least another year. The most likely course in 2018 is gradual deterioration. But there are worse scenarios. As the regime clamps down, fails to secure parts of the country, and stokes instability in others, the risk of a steeper descent into chaos remains — with grave regional implications. There are already troubling signs. Popular discontent raises the risk of unrest in urban centers; in recent days, the violent dispersal of protesters in Kinshasa and other towns has left several people dead. Elsewhere, local militias plague several provinces. Fighting over the past year in the Kasai region has reportedly left more than 3,000 dead, and the conflict in the country’s east claims dozens of lives each month. International engagement has been lackluster. Disagreements between Africa and the West do not help: Western powers are more critical and have sanctioned some of Kabila’s entourage, and African leaders and regional organizations are reluctant to criticize the regime openly, even as some recognize the dangers behind closed doors. Only more active, forceful, and united diplomacy — and ideally a more engaged Congolese opposition — stand a chance of nudging Kabila toward a peaceful transition. The Saint Sylvester principles (credible elections, no third term for Kabila, an opening of political space, and respect for human rights) still offer the best route out of the crisis. 9. Ukraine The conflict in eastern Ukraine has claimed over 10,000 lives and constitutes a grave ongoing humanitarian crisis. While it persists, relations between Russia and the West are unlikely to improve. Separatist-held areas are dysfunctional and dependent on Moscow. In other areas of Ukraine, mounting anger at corruption and the 2015 Minsk II agreement, which Russia and Ukraine’s Western allies insist is the path to resolve the conflict, creates new challenges. Implementation of that agreement has stalled: Moscow points to Kiev’s failure to carry out the Minsk agreement’s political provisions, including devolving power to separatist-held areas once they are reintegrated into Ukraine; Kiev argues it cannot do so while Russian interference and insecurity in those areas persist. Both sides continue to exchange fire across the line dividing Ukrainian troops from separatist and Russian forces. Yet the east is not the whole story. The Ukrainian state remains fragile even outside areas where Moscow interferes directly. President Petro Poroshenko’s government has not addressed the systemic corruption at the root of many of the country’s problems. Many Ukrainians are losing faith in laws, institutions, and elites. Anger at the Minsk agreement, which Ukrainians see as a concession to separatists and Moscow, is growing, even among reformists. Given the diplomatic deadlock, Russia’s circulation of a draft U.N. Security Council resolution proposing peacekeepers for Ukraine in September 2017 came as a surprise. There are good reasons to suspect Russia’s intentions. Despite the high costs of its entanglement, little suggests it intends to loosen its grip on eastern Ukraine. The lightly armed force it proposed, whose mandate would include only providing security to Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors, would more likely freeze the conflict than resolve it. Yet Moscow’s proposal opens a window for Kiev and its Western allies to explore how peacekeepers might secure not only the line of separation but also the Ukraine-Russia border, and to create conditions for local elections and the reintegration of separatist-held areas. They should, however, factor in growing animosity toward the Minsk agreement. Europe’s involvement is essential for progress on peacekeeping negotiations and to promote a more measured debate in Ukraine that can halt the nationalist backlash against the Minsk agreement. 10. Venezuela Venezuela took yet another turn for the worse in 2017, as President Nicolás Maduro’s government ran the country further into the ground while strengthening its political grip. The opposition has imploded. Prospects for a peaceful restoration of democracy appear ever slimmer. But with the economy in free fall, Maduro faces enormous challenges. Expect the humanitarian crisis to deepen in 2018 as GDP continues to contract. In late November, Venezuela defaulted on part of its international debt. Sanctions will make debt restructuring nearly impossible. Increasing Russian support is unlikely to suffice, while China appears reluctant to bail Maduro out. A default could provoke the seizure of Venezuelan assets abroad, crippling the oil trade that accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings. Street demonstrations and clashes that killed over 120 people between April and July subsided after the July election of a National Constituent Assembly composed entirely of government allies. Subsequent polls for state governors and mayors led to major opposition losses amid disputes over whether to participate. But food shortages, a collapsed health system, and spiraling violent crime mean conditions for unrest persist. While opposition politicians look to the presidential vote, due by late 2018, as an opportunity and entry point for foreign engagement, the government is unlikely to permit a credible vote. It might call early polls, catch its opponents unprepared, and deploy the same voter suppression tactics it has used to win local and regional elections. If the opposition begins to show signs of recovery, Maduro might seek to avoid elections altogether by claiming that external threats warrant a state of emergency. A less probable scenario is that the ruling party splits over who will succeed Maduro; without a formal mechanism, the military would be the likely arbiter. Meanwhile, the weak Venezuelan state will continue to provide a haven for criminal networks and opportunities for money laundering, drug trafficking, and people smuggling, further disquieting Venezuela’s neighbors. The prognosis for 2018 is further deterioration, humanitarian emergency, and an increased exodus of Venezuelans. Sustained domestic and international pressure — as well as guarantees of future immunity — will be required to push the government toward credible presidential elections. https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2018?utm_source=Sign+Up+to+Crisis+Group%27s+Email+Updates&utm_campaign=8b47b8f112-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_01_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1dab8c11ea-8b47b8f112-359909997 (c) 2018 International Crisis Group

In July 2017, video of a naked child found in the ruins of Mosul circulated widely online. The boy, pointing to an Iraqi flag on one of the buildings, told the Iraqi soldiers it belonged to the unbelievers. The 4-year-old, later identified as Bilal Tagirov, was a Chechen who had been brought by his father to join the Islamic State. News of his impending return to Chechnya was widely reported in Chechen and Russian media. And no one was more enthusiastic about the boy’s return than Ramzan Kadyrov, the Kremlin-backed president of Chechnya, known for his love of social media and frequent Instagram postings. Russian television showed Kadyrov talking by videoconference with the four-year-old, who was still in Iraq. Bilal was reportedly discovered along with his father, an Islamic State fighter found injured in the ruins of Mosul. Upon learning about the father and son, Chechnya’s leader immediately ordered assistance to ensure their quick return to Russia. On his Instagram account, Kadyrov announced that Bilal would soon embrace his mother (the father took his son to Iraq without her permission). On Aug. 2, at the airport in Grozny, the highest officials of Kadyrov’s regime welcomed home a terrified Bilal. Kadyrov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, aspires to be the leader of Muslims throughout Russia. Rescuing innocent victims from Islamic radicalism in the Middle East allows the Chechen president to play that role, as well as that of a man ready to forgive his enemies. But according to Russian-speaking fighters and sources in the Syrian opposition, there’s another explanation for Kadyrov’s seeming concern about orphans: He’s also collecting Chechens who were allegedly sent to infiltrate the Islamic State. The Chechen leader has claimed there are between 70 and 120 children from the former Soviet republics still in orphanages around Mosul. Authorities in Moscow claim that up to 400 children, Russian citizens, may still be in Syria and Iraq, according to Anna Kuznetsova, Russia’s children’s rights commissioner. Identifying them, especially the youngest ones, is difficult or impossible. Some speak only Chechen and may not even be from Russia, since many Chechens live in diaspora around the world. Many don’t know their parents’ names or know only the aliases they used during the fighting. Unidentifiable, the children remain in orphanages in Iraq and Syria, one legacy of what the end of the caliphate has left behind. In mid-September 2017, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that after the liberation of Mosul and Tal Afar, about more than 1,000 Islamist jihadis and their family members surrendered to the Kurdish Peshmerga. The men were supposed to be imprisoned, but according to a former Russian-speaking leader from the Islamic State, those captured were shot, and the women and children were placed in camps controlled by the United Nations. The former Islamic State leader told me there were several dozen more fighters who fled from the Islamic State, along with their families, but were scared to give up for fear of being killed. “If the Kurds would agree to negotiations, anything is possible, and [the fighters] would give up without a battle, and no one from either side would die,” he said. “These people don’t have any ties to the Islamic State anymore.” Abadi said that half of the families detained after Mosul fell were Turks. The rest came from a dozen other nations, including Chechnya, Dagestan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, France, and Tunisia. The goal, Abadi said, is to return those women and children to their home countries. In case of extradition to Turkey, women and children over 14 years old are interrogated by the authorities. Those who took part in hostilities are regarded as members of the terrorist organization and will be tried and possibly sentenced. The others, even if they are found not guilty, will be kept under surveillance. Only the youngest children of the Islamic State are treated as innocents. They will go to relatives, if their families can be located. It’s impossible to know just how many orphans of the Islamic State are in Syria and Iraq. In addition to young children who were brought over by their parents, there are possibly thousands more who were born to foreigners who joined the Islamic State. What will happen to those children is still unknown. In Western Europe, officials have already said while the children may be innocent, the mothers may be held responsible. “They are usually very young, but they can have been radicalised and need to be watched. The challenge for us is to turn them into citizens again,” she said. Florence Parly, France’s defense minister, has said that returning children “are usually very young, but they can have been radicalized and need to be watched. The challenge for us is to turn them into citizens again.” For those returning to Chechnya, repatriation is even more fraught. Kadyrov is collecting not only children, but also men and women. Women can be useful sources of information on the Islamic State once Russian security services interrogate them. And men are an even bigger target of the Chechen humanitarian operation. At the end of October 2017, a special Russian military aircraft picked up seven women and 14 children from Qamishli, Syria, to take them back to Chechnya. According to Kadyrov’s representative in the Middle East, Ziyad Sabsabi, the women and children managed to break free from prison during a Russian military operation. Kurdish sources quoted by local radio tell a different story. Russia didn’t conduct any military operations to free anyone around Qamishli. Instead, a large Russian cargo aircraft landed unexpectedly at the airport carrying a Russian delegation. The aircraft, which was purportedly there to pick up the 21 women and children, was capable of holding more than 100 passengers. According to Kurdish media, on Oct. 17, on the eve of the evacuation of the women and children, Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special representative for the Middle East, met with Kurdish authorities in Qamishli. The talks were supposed to cover the transfer of Islamic State fighters and commanders of Chechen origin who were captured by the Syrian Democratic Forces during the battle for Raqqa, the onetime capital of the Islamic State. According to local media, and confirmed to me by a source in the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Russians sent the plane to pick up Chechens operating undercover in the ranks of the Islamic State. In the fall of 2015, just as Russia leaped headfirst into the Syrian conflict, Kadyrov had announced his willingness to send Chechens to the Middle East, saying he was just waiting on permission from Putin. It’s unclear if that permission was received, since the Kremlin never admitted to conducting covert operations on the territory of the Islamic State. Less than three months after Kadyrov’s offer, however, Furat, a Russian-language media effort started by the Islamic State, posted photos online showing the execution of a Chechen named Magomed Khasiev. In the propaganda film, Khasiev confesses his guilt just moments before his death. He says he worked for the FSB, the Russian intelligence service. Kadyrov said he didn’t believe the killed Chechen worked for anyone. But just two months later in February 2016, on a major Russian state television program, Kadyrov announced that Chechnya had trained special agents who were sent to the Middle East to collect intelligence on Islamic militants. Those fighting in Syria and Iraq doubt Kadyrov’s sudden interest in rescuing Chechens from the Islamic State. More likely, they say, he wants to rescue spies who worked for him. The former Islamic State commander I spoke with expressed doubt that the Russian government, which did little to stanch the flow of its citizens to the Islamic State, would now be so interested in rescuing them. “Not so long ago, [the Russian authorities] allowed many to leave the country even though they knew that they were going to join the Islamic State, because they preferred to get them out of Russia,” he said. “Why would they want to take them and take care of them now?” Yet the Russian government continues to insist its concern is for the Russian children left behind by the Islamic State. In a written statement to Foreign Policy, the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C. strongly denied allegations that its efforts to return women and children were intended for anything other than humanitarian purposes. “This is a tragedy for the families and for our society. We all want the Russian children to return home, to their Russian families, where it is possible,” they wrote. “The head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov plays a positive role in resolving this issue. He does it responsibly, dignified and as transparently as possible. It is hard to come up with anything more absurd than this attempt to present such a noble work as a secret operation.” In Moscow, the government has even created a special committee to collect information on orphans of Islamic State fighters, and 4-year-old Bilal Tagirov’s return to Chechnya gave hope to families trying to recover children. “In the last few days [since Tagirov’s arrival] we’ve received more than 30 letters with photos and descriptions of missing children,” said Kuznetsova, the children’s rights commissioner. The local Dagestani office of the commission has received more than 240 reports, but even that number is far from final. Many families are afraid to report cases to the police or to seek the help of the authorities, for fear of being labeled Islamic State supporters. Instead, they look for missing children on their own, often placing messages on Russian-language internet boards. Kadyrov, who was recently banned from Instagram because he was added to the list of people under U.S. sanctions, continued to claim great success in recovering children. On Sept. 14, 2017, Kadyrov posted about another case on Instagram. “Friends!” he wrote. “Today in the republic yet another joyful event — two children — Khadija and Adlan — returned to their native land from Iraq.” According to Kadyrov, the two children both went to the Middle East over a year earlier with their families and are the only survivors. “Do children forgive their parents for hell on earth that they inflicted?!” Kadyrov wrote in his post. “We will continue the humanitarian operation until we bring all the Russian children back from Syria and Iraq.” https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/01/02/the-lost-children-of-isis/ (c) 2018 Foreign Policy

Myanmar Systematically Destroyed the Physical Foundation of Rohingya Community, in substantial part. 1) 354 villages, 110 kilometer or 68 miles (that's an area stretching from the British Parliament to Oxford or even longer); 2) nearly 700,000 survived in Bangladesh, after having fled the genocidal terror by Myanmar in a span of 90 days (from 26 Aug till 31 Dec 2017); 3) besides, the estimated 80,000 already fled in the period between Oct 2015-Aug 2016); 4) this exodus follows the pattern of genocide-&-terror-flight -5 altogether - since 12 Feb 1978; 5) 6,700 Rohingya massacred in 31 days of the first month of 2017 killings by Myanmar, according to a very limited survey carried out by MSF or Doctors Without Borders; 6) out of the estimated 700,000 Rohingya survivors, about 300,000 are children of whom 20,000 lost their parents (that is, they are orphans); 7) in the first months, again the MSF's limited survey shows, about 750 killed were children under the age of 5; 8) unknown number of Rohingya women - surely by the thousands- raped and slaughtered by Myanmar Government troops; 9) but, even prior to the physical destruction of their villages and direct killings by Myanmar troops of their community members, the Rohingyas were living in conditioned designed as a matter of policy and strategy by Myanmar to destroy their biological foundations of life - their bodies as 150,000 Rohingyas had access to only 1 - ONE - doctor in the two combined urban areas of Maungdaw and Buthidaung, according to a Lancet review article on public health conditions of the Rohingyas, while 80,500 children under the age of 5 are made to suffer by Myanmar sub-Saharan like semi-famine (or "severe acute malnutrition" and "acute malnutrition", according to the World Food Program's limited survey); 10) none of this includes 120,000 Rohingyas that have been placed in camps since the two bouts of mass and organized violence against them in June and Oct 2012, the camps that could only be described as semi-concentration camps; 11) there may be about 500,000 Rohingyas left inside Myanmar in areas that are heavily monitored as "security grids" by Myanmar inter-agency securit units - mainly around Buthidaung and they will face future waves of genocidal terror, when - not if - Myanmar gov and Rakhine local decide to finish off their Joint Genocidal Project; 12) last but not last, there may be an upward of about 500,000 Rohingyas in total who have fled the previous waves of Myanmar genocidal attacks since 1978, who are scattered in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and to a far lesser extent in Australia, Scandinavia, Western Europe, USA and Canada. If you fight to end this genocide - like I do, albeit to no avail - you would understand why I didn't have an appetite for joining those who popped champagne last night. http://www.maungzarni.net/2018/01/putting-354-burned-rohingya-villages-in.html (c ) 2018 Maung Zari

A Canadian ambassador praised the beaches in Myanmar in a New Year's Day tweet, despite the country being engaged in what the United Nations has described as ethnic cleansing against its Rohingya minority. The Canadian ambassador to Indonesia welcomed 2018 by tweeting about great snorkelling from a beach in Myanmar, the same country whose military is leading a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya people there. In a tweet posted Jan. 1 — and quickly deleted — Ambassador Peter MacArthursaid that his “first day of 2018 unfolded on a Myanmar beach where the great surf is pleasingly turquoise coloured, warm, clean and clear — perfect for snorkelling to visit with nature and the fish.” A screenshot of the tweet was captured by a Canadian reporter who shared it on her own account shortly after along with a comment that it is surprising a Canadian official would tout the scenery of the country given the violence forcing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees to flee rape and systemic killings over the last six months. Roughly 600,000 Rohingya refugees have fled what United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a “humanitarian and human rights nightmare” late last summer, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appointed former Liberal leader Bob Rae as Canada’s special envoy to Myanmar amid the violence. Trudeau also met with Aung Sung Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar and an honourary Canadian citizen, at the APEC summit in November amid a chorus of calls for him to revoke her citizenship for failing to stop or mitigate the attacks by the country’s military against the Rohingya. The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim minority group of about one million people living largely in the western Rakhine state of Myanmar. Most have now fled into refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh, which Rae has described as “deplorably overcrowded.” READ MORE: Rohingya refugee camps ‘deplorably overcrowded’: Bob Rae The military began its sweeping campaign of rapes, killings and destruction of Rohingya villages after a militant group known as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked police and army posts. “What happens when there is an insurgent attack by this group called ARSA [Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army], the [Myanmar] army really overdoes it,” said Rae in an interview with CBC’s The Current in November. “You know the army just responds with — to put it mildly — a very very heavy hand and a great deal of brutality.” Global Affairs Canada confirmed the tweet was made by MacArthur and said he was advised to take it down shortly after posting. Canadian officials also told Global News that MacArthur had not been on government business in Myanmar but that he was on a private visit to the country to visit a family member who works for the Canadian government there https://globalnews.ca/news/3941424/myanmar-rohingya-canadian-ambassador-human-rights-tweet/ (c) 2018 Global News

THE year 2017 will be remembered for many reasons but the most significant of these is perhaps the Rohingya crisis. Because of its enormous impact on Bangladesh, 2017 can easily be divided into pre-Rohingya and post-Rohingya periods. The latter began on August 25, when multiple security posts in Rakhine State in western Myanmar were attacked by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). The Myanmar military and Buddhist nationalists retaliated by mounting a brutal campaign against the ethnic Muslim minority, triggering a massive exodus that brought renewed attention to what the UN called a “textbook example” of ethnic cleansing leading to genocide. Bangladesh, as a host to the over 600,000 refugees that fled Myanmar since August 25—more than half of the estimated Rohingya population in the country—and the several lakhs that were already there, found itself in a precarious position. It had to shelter this large refugee population as a neighbouring country, a hapless bystander in a drama played at its own expense, and now it has to negotiate their return even though it has no control over its outcome either. Four months and a much-compromised repatriation deal later, frightened Rohingyas are still in motion, casting a shadow over the ongoing peace efforts. For Bangladesh, this presents a two-fold challenge. On the one hand, there is the need to do what best serves the interests of the country, which include repatriating the refugees as quickly as possible. For an already overpopulated country with scarce resources, this makes sense on a moral practical level. It is, after all, only natural for a country to want to put the interests of its people before that of the people from other lands. On the other hand, there is the moral obligation of taking care of a community that experts say is the world's most persecuted, and you cannot simply wash your hands of it after having sheltered them for so long. Is there a way to reconcile these conflicting priorities? Before we get back to that, here's a brief recount of what happened so far. WHAT FUELLED THE EXODUS? There are many reasons prompting the Rohingyas to flee/migrate. The most immediate reason we already know; but sectarian violence is not new to Rakhine. For years, Rohingyas have been exposed to anti-Muslim campaigns, xenophobic violence, rape, murder, and arson almost as a matter of routine, and military crackdowns—or “clearance operations” as the army like to call it—have resulted in the flight of tens of thousands of people on various occasions in the past. But there is more to this story. Because of their ethnic and religious identities, Rohingyas in Myanmar have to endure “institutionalised discrimination,” which means restrictions on their marriage, family planning, employment, education, religious choice, freedom of movement, and pretty much everything that they are entitled to. These discriminatory policies have been in place for decades. According to a World Bank estimate, Rakhine is also Myanmar's least developed state, with a poverty rate of 78 percent, compared to the 37.5 percent national average. “Widespread poverty, poor infrastructure, and a lack of employment opportunities in Rakhine have exacerbated the cleavage between Buddhists and Muslim Rohingya,” according to the US-based think-tank Council on Foreign Relations. All these factors, coupled with the fact that they are now denied citizenship, land and property rights as well as enfranchisement, and recognition as one of the country's 135 ethnic groups, have created an environment in which there is no hope for the members of the community. They must either perish or suffer terribly, or get out of the country to escape this fate. The Myanmar government saw to it that there was no third option. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND Despite Myanmar's revisionist attempts, it is an established fact that the history of Rohingya goes back centuries. The country's political establishment and its predominantly Buddhist population consider the Rohingyas “intruders” or “illegal immigrants,” a view rooted in their supposed heritage in East Bengal, now Bangladesh, although most of them have never known life outside Rakhine. “The Rohingya trace their origins in the region to the fifteenth century, when thousands of Muslims came to the former Arakan Kingdom. Many others arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Rakhine was governed by colonial rule as part of British India. Since independence in 1948, successive governments in Burma, renamed Myanmar in 1989, have refuted the Rohingya's historical claims.” (Council on Foreign Relations) Myanmar also doesn't recognise the label “Rohingya,” a self-identifying term that surfaced in the 1950s, which experts say provides the community with “a collective political identity.” Though the etymological root of the word is disputed, the Rohingyas say they have a right to self-identification, a right rejected by Myanmar. Government decisions have often been driven by the Buddhist nationalist sentiment that rejects any Rohingya claim to self-identification or citizenship, making them “stateless” in their own country. According to Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, a Thailand-based advocacy group, Myanmar's 1948 citizenship law was already “exclusionary,” and the military junta, which seized power in 1962, introduced a law 20 years later that stripped the Rohingyas of access to full citizenship. Until recently, these people had been able to register as “temporary residents” with identification cards, known as white cards, that the junta began issuing to Muslims in the 1990s (which were later cancelled). Since 2014, the government decided that the Rohingyas could now identify only as Bengali. FACTS IN NUMBERS According to an estimate, over 655,000 Rohingyas, most of them children, have entered Bangladesh since the latest conflict broke out. The children, clearly, are the most vulnerable group among the refugees, followed by women. Among other vulnerable groups are the elderly, the injured and those with disabilities, who form about 10 percent of the refugee population. Bangladesh has been providing shelter to the Rohingyas since 1978 when the first batch of refugees arrived in Teknaf (among other countries that accepted them are India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand). There was another mass exodus in 1992. Many of them, however, returned after an agreement between the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar, but a significant number of them stayed back, to be joined by another large group after a crackdown in 2016. Overall, about a million Rohingyas—730,654 of them registered by the Department of Immigration and Passports as of December 2—now live in Bangladesh. The latest exodus is significant primarily because it is the largest and bloodiest of its kind. According to Doctors Without Borders, at least 6,700 Rohingya Muslims were killed in Rakhine in the first month alone, including 730 children under the age of five. More than 59 percent of those children were shot, 15 percent burned to death, 7 percent beaten to death, and 2 percent killed in landmine blasts. Many women, on the other hand, were raped by the soldiers. Although there is no estimate, the Associated Press news agency, after interviewing 29 rape survivors, concluded that the army's rape of women and girls has been “sweeping” and “methodical.” The sheer scale, speed and intensity of the crimes committed against the Rohingyas are simply mind-boggling. LIFE IN BANGLADESH Despite the enormous costs and risks associated with hosting such a large refugee population, Bangladesh did so with relative patience and compassion so far, with help from other countries, international aid agencies, and local NGOs. There are nearly a dozen refugee camps and settlements in Cox's Bazar housing the refugees. Add to that the island in Noakhali that Bangladesh plans to turn into a temporary settlement for 100,000 refugees. The USD 280 million project, which would be complete by 2019, came under criticism from aid workers who raised objection to its location, a remote, flood-prone island that they say is “all but uninhabitable” because of the nature of its formation. However, the initiative drew mixed reactions from the public. While some praised it, others were quick to question the rationale behind a project of this magnitude when the focus, in their view, should be on the repatriation of the refugees. Meanwhile, the conditions of the existing camps/settlements have been reported to be dire. No one is expecting the task to be easy. Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations in the world, with over 163 million mouths to feed, and even with the help that has been received and promised so far, the burden of having to provide food, medicine, security and WASH services to an extra million people is too great to be handled with precision. But the issue being one of great international sensitivity, it attracted scrutiny from day one, and every word used, emotion expressed, and action taken by those responsible are being weighed against international standards in such matters. So far, we've had reports of sexual exploitation (“survival sex”), child trafficking, and spread of various diseases in the camps. The sudden arrival of such a large group of people has also created tensions in local communities, with many considering them a “security risk” and a threat to their livelihoods. Which only makes it imperative that the Rohingya issue is handled with greater care, and steps are taken to improve their safety, health and dignity, with greater international assistance both for them and the host communities. THE PATH AHEAD On November 23, Myanmar and Bangladesh signed a deal for the possible repatriation of the refugees, although details remain vague on several key aspects such as the rights that would be granted to the Rohingyas, how their safety will be ensured in a country with raging anti-Muslim sentiment, and locations for resettlement. Also, what guarantee is there that there will not be another security crackdown or forced exodus to Bangladesh next year, or the year after? Many doubt if this deal will be the end to the Rohingya crisis, saying Bangladesh should continue diplomatic efforts for a lasting solution. Caution should also be taken about who we can trust in times of crisis, especially after the failure of India and China, previously deemed friendly to Bangladesh's interests, to side with it in its dealing with Myanmar. Also, the failure of Saarc—a regional bloc meant to increase regional collaboration on important policy issues including the safety of member states—to intervene in the matter raised questions about its usefulness. Bangladesh needs to assess, and reassess, its relations with such countries and alliances going forward. On the other hand, as the authorities in Myanmar and Bangladesh follow up on the repatriation pact, rights activists say, they should also deal sensibly with those who want to return and those who do not. According to a survey conducted between September and October, 78 percent of the refugees surveyed said they would willingly return if the situation “improves.” About 16 percent have no desire to return and only 6 percent would return home unconditionally, the survey added. This is where the question of striking a balance between protecting Bangladesh's interests and the necessity for an ethical handling of the Rohingya crisis comes, one that Bangladesh cannot do on its own. Bangladesh needs more than luck at this point. Only careful planning, meaningful regional collaboration, and a need-based, forward-looking foreign policy can perhaps help in the coming days. Can Bangladesh do it? That's something to ponder about in 2018. http://www.thedailystar.net/supplements/unpacking-2017/rohingya-crisis-postscript-1513045 (c) 2018 The Daily Star

In the four months since the Myanmar military began a crackdown after Rohingya militants attacked an army base and police posts on Aug. 25, around 655,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority have fled the western state of Rakhine and crossed into neighboring Bangladesh. A Reuters graphic makes use of data from the U.N. Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNOSAT) to show hundreds of villages in Rakhine state that were once inhabited by the Rohingya, but have now been burned down. A total of 354 villages have either been completely or partially destroyed, Human Rights Watch said on Dec. 18. The data, which was gathered from Aug. 25, the day of the Rohingya militant attack, to Nov. 25, shows burned settlements in an area stretching 110 km (68 miles) from the green hills of Rakhine’s northern tip to beaches near the state’s capital Sittwe in the south. See the interactive graphic here: tmsnrt.rs/2zGVUmt Top officials in the United Nations and United States have described the Myanmar military’s crackdown as ethnic cleansing. Myanmar has denied human rights abuses, saying its military is engaged in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. The military exonerated itself of all accusations of atrocities in an internal investigation, which published its findings on Nov. 13. Myanmar’s civilian government has said that the burnings were carried out by Rohingya militants and the Rohingya themselves. Myanmar’s military did not respond to Reuters’ questions about its role in the alleged atrocities against the Rohingya described in this graphic. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-rakhine/a-visual-that-shows-just-how-many-rohingya-villages-have-been-burned-idUSKBN1EQ0PO?il=0 (c) 2017 Reuters

2017 was another productive year for Genocide Watch. In 2017, Dr. Stanton worked with Iraqi and UN legal experts on plans for trials of the hundreds of ISIS terrorists in Iraq. That work resulted in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2379 to send a UN Investigative Team to assist the Iraqi government in prosecutions. Dr. Stanton is working with the Dutch government to create universal jurisdiction and tribunals to try ISIS leaders. Dr. Stanton testified at a public hearing in Malaysia sponsored by the Permanent Peoples Tribunal (based in Rome) on the genocide committed against the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar by the Myanmar Army, a genocide that has driven over a million refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. He contributed articles about the Rohingya genocide to newspapers and appeared on worldwide television, including BBC and CNN as well as on television in Malaysia and Bangladesh. Dr. Stanton testified as an expert witness in a successful hate-speech trial in South Africa against a communist union leader who called for all South African Jews to emigrate to Israel. Dr. Stanton gave a TEDx talk, “The Call,” viewable at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi6k9XKbQec&feature=youtu.be Dr. Stanton spoke at the biennial meeting of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), held in July 2017 at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Dr. Stanton was President of the IAGS, and is a Life Member of the IAGS and recipient of the IAGS Distinguished Lifetime Service Award. Dr. Forgey spoke in December 2017 at the United Nations during the Assembly of States Parties to the ICC Conference on Accountability for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence as a Method of Warfare. ​ In the coming years, Genocide Watch’s emphasis on genocide education will increase. The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum is constructing the exhibits in its new building using our Ten Stages of Genocide. Teachers, journalists, and government policy makers around the world use the Genocide Watch Ten Stage model of the genocidal process.

Protest movements in the Middle East face enormous repressive hurdles and rarely have happy endings. Even when protesters “succeed” in toppling an autocrat, they’ve rarely succeeded in ending autocracy. In Iran, the obstacles to success are daunting. Whereas most Middle Eastern countries are ruled by secular autocrats focused on repressing primarily Islamist opposition, Iran is an Islamist autocracy focused on repressing secular opposition. This dynamic—unarmed, unorganized, leaderless citizens seeking economic dignity and pluralism, versus a heavily armed, organized, rapacious ruling theocracy that espouses martyrdom—is not a recipe for success. And yet, against this inauspicious backdrop, Iran’s mushrooming anti-government protests—although so far much smaller in scale than the country’s 2009 uprising—have been unprecedented in their geographic scope and intensity. They began December 28 in Mashhad, a Shiite pilgrimage city often considered a regime stronghold, with protesters chanting slogans like “leave Syria alone, think about us.” They soon spread to Qom, Iran’s holiest city, where protesters expressed nostalgia for Reza Shah, the 20th-century modernizing autocrat who ruthlessly repressed the clergy. They continued in provincial towns, with thousands chanting, “we don’t want an Islamic Republic” in Najafabad, “death to the revolutionary guards” in Rasht, and “death to the dictator” in Khoramabad. They’ve since spread to Tehran, and hundreds have been arrested, the BBC reported, citing Iranian officials. What triggered these protests is a subject of debate—some evidence suggests they were initially encouraged by hardline forces to embarrass President Hassan Rouhani—but what has fueled them have been the same grievances that power anti-government protests everywhere: rising living costs, endemic corruption, fraud, mismanagement. In Iran, add to that bitter cocktail both political and social repression, all conducted from the moral pedestal of Islamist theocracy. While these grievances have been festering for years and indeed decades, among the dozens of factors that distinguish today’s protests from 2009 is the smartphone. In 2009—when an estimated 2 million to 3 million Iranians protested silently in Tehran—fewer than 1 million Iranians owned such a device, and few outside Tehran. Today, an astonishing 48 million Iranians are thought to have smartphones, all of them equipped with social media and communication apps. The app Telegram alone is thought to have 40 million users, elusive from government control, but not immune to a communications shutdown if Tehran tries to throttle the internet. But while Iranians have a much better understanding how elsewhere is living, the rest of the world has had a less clear idea of how Iranians are living given Tehran’s effective distortion of Western media coverage. Since 2009 and even before, the dogged professional journalists covering Iran—including The Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi, The New York Times’s Nazila Fathi, Newsweek’s Maziar Bahari, Reuters’s Parisa Hafezi and Babak Dehghanpisheh, and dozens more—have been intimidated, expelled, and in some cases imprisoned. The few journalists remaining in Iran rightfully worry about their personal safety. Many of the best Iranian writers, scholars, and artists of their generation have been similarly banished from Iran. At the same time, the regime has provided visas and access to those whom they know will provide friendlier coverage. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has been especially effective at manipulating Western journalists, analysts, and officials. This has created an opening for a new breed of opinion journalists and analysts—some of whom are simultaneously seeking and promoting business opportunities in Iran—pulling punches in order to preserve their access. What happens now? The Iranian government has the highest per capita execution rate in the world, treats women as second class citizens, persecutes gays and religious minorities, and stifles free speech. While there is a natural inclination among decent people everywhere to want a peaceful civil rights movement to succeed in Iran, there are ample reasons to believe it will not. The regime’s coercive apparatus—the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Bassij milita—are organized, armed, and abundant, and well-practiced in the brutal science of repression. Opponents of the government, in contrast, are unarmed, leaderless, and rudderless. In addition, Iran has at its disposal tens of thousands of Shia militiamen—including Lebanese Hezbollah—it has been cultivating for years and in some cases decades. For these battle-hardened forces, crushing unarmed Iranian protesters is a much easier task than fighting Syrian rebels or Sunni jihadists. While some have expressed hope these protests might compel the Iranian government to try and address popular grievances, history shows us the opposite is more likely true. In the weeks and months to come, expect the regime to grow ever more repressive. Iran’s security forces thrive when there is insecurity. Some Iranians even fear the IRGC has allowed the protests to fester as a pretext for expanding their authority in the name of national security. What can the United States do? It is only natural that popular agitations against a regime whose official slogan is “Death to America” will elicit strong support from U.S. politicians. The question, as always, is what is the most constructive way for Washington to “support” such protests? In the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war, President George H.W. Bush infamously encouraged Iraqi Shiites to rise up against Saddam Hussein. When they did so and were slaughtered, international outrage was directed at Bush more than Saddam. In 2009 the Obama administration offered only tepid support to the Green Movement uprisings in Iran, something Hillary Clinton later described as her biggest regret as Secretary of State. What should American leaders do, then? While carefully crafted expressions of solidarity with the people, but not incitement, are good for posterity, given Washington’s meager leverage over Tehran such statements likely have only limited impact (In contrast to official statements about authoritarian regimes over whom the U.S. has had actual leverage, like Mubarak’s Egypt). What’s more important than public statements are U.S. policies that can inhibit the regime’s coercive capacity and their ability to black out communications. One concrete suggestion is to make it clear that companies and countries around the world complicit in Iran’s repressive apparatus—including those providing censorship technology—will face censure from the United States. The United States should also mobilize global partners that do have working relations with Iran—including Europe, Japan, South Korea, and India—to add their voices of concern and condemnation to Tehran’s repression. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has been noticeably silent. Given the opacity of the Iranian system and its inaccessibility to independent investigation, the days and weeks ahead are eminently unpredictable. Khamenei and his IRGC backers appear firmly entrenched from thousands of miles away, but we also know from history that authoritarian stability can be a chimera. In August 1978, the CIA confidently assessed that the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran “is not in a revolutionary or even a pre-revolutionary situation.” Five months later the Shah—stricken with advanced cancer unbeknownst even to his family—left never to come back. Khamenei’s health has been the source of wide speculation for years, but tightly held as a national security secret. “I’m a pessimist because of intelligence,” the Italian philosopher Antonio Gramsci apparently liked to say, “but an optimist because of will.” Two-thousand-five-hundred years of Persian civilization and a century-long quest for democracy offer hope about the irrepressible Iranian will for change. But the Islamic Republic’s four-decade history of brutality suggests that change will not come easily, or peacefully, or soon. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/12/the-battle-for-iran/549446/?utm_source=fbb (c) 2017 The Atlantic

After a year that has seen them subjected to a brutal Burmese military crackdown described as “ethnic cleansing” by the UN and US, Rohingya Muslim refugees face the prospect of a concerning new development in 2018 across the border in Bangladesh. Conditions in the camps of Cox’s Bazar continue to deteriorate as more Rohingya arrive, and those trapped here have one of two grim options for the future. In the past weeks, Bangladesh and the Burmese government have assembled a working group to arrange the repatriation of Rohingyas back across the border, which – if forced – international observers say would be unsafe. At the same time, refugees fear being stuck for many years to come in the camps which have ballooned to rank among the biggest in the world. And in a new development along the border, goodwill from local Bangladeshi communities towards their embattled fellow Muslims is being stretched to the limit. Tensions are building over land and wages, while refugees desperate for cash to buy daily necessities are exposed to exploitation by landowners. The Independent has found Rohingya boys as young as 14 are working from dawn to dusk in rice fields outside the makeshift settlements of Cox’s Bazar for as little as 300 taka (less than £3) a day, about half the normal local wage. “I arrived in September,” says Awaz, a 15-year-old from Maungdaw township, just across the border in Burma’s western state of Rakhine. “The military came and opened fire so we fled leaving everything behind,” says the boy, who stays over the road in a plastic tent in Thangkhali camp, with his parents, in their thirties, and five brothers. “Back home we had our own land,” he adds. The latest UN figures suggest an exodus of 655,000 people has taken place across Burma’s northwest border in just four months. After abandoning burning villages, their crops and livelihoods, the refugees have settled along the hilly borders of Cox’s Bazar district – on land belonging to locals. The building tension is piling pressure on the Bangladeshi authorities, who are mindful of the clashes that were sparked in the early Nineties when a more modest influx of fewer than 300,000 Rohingyas crossed the border. Then they were also fleeing persecution in Burma and, again, faced forced repatriation and poor conditions in Bangladesh. According to NGOs working in the area today, Rohingyas are increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by landowners while the massive influx is forcing poor Bangladeshi labourers out of work. “Now there are so many Rohingyas that we are not getting any work,” says 60-year old Aminah Khatun. “We used to get some 500-600 taka, but they are much cheaper,” she says. “And the prices of food, fruit and vegetables have almost doubled. We used to pay 1,200 taka for a sack of rice, now it’s 2,000.” As the humanitarian crisis nears its fourth month, a preliminary agreement between Bangladesh and Burma to repatriate “expeditiously” the Rohingya is setting nerves on edge among the refugees who fear they will have no guarantees for their safety, or equal rights with the Buddhist majority in Rakhine. Bangladesh’s government announced late on Friday that it had prepared a list of 100,000 Rohingya refugees to be repatriated in a first phase. Burmese officials will now consider the list, and both sides say people will only be moved willingly. But many Rohingya remain terrified the Burmese military will force them into detention camps, alongside some 120,000 in central Rakhine who were driven out of their villages following intercommunal violence five years ago. The local community in Cox’s Bazar has so far sympathised with the plight of the Rohingyas. But while some have taken economic advantage of the situation, others ask when the repatriation process will start, even as refugees continue to arrive. “They tell us that they’d been persecuted by the Buddhists at home, that we are Muslims like them and have to help them,” says Aminah. There is no resentment in her voice, but with no short-term solutions on the horizon, she hopes they will go back home soon. In camps such as Unchinprang water shortages at the beginning of the dry season mean more wells are needed. NGOs have to bargain with locals and pay rent as the camps keep expanding. “At the beginning, the owners of the land were asking for money to buy the land from them for some $50 and relatives in Malaysia would send us money. Now the military has forbidden this but the owners complain because people forage in the forest and cut trees for fuel to cook,” explains Safil, a Rohingya in Kutupalong camp. The overcrowded hills were covered with trees just a few months ago, he adds. The influx of aid following the extraordinary humanitarian effort of the past months is also contributing to the bubbling resentment. As across the border in Burma when foreign aid was first delivered in the 1990s to Rohingyas, the local community feels left out. Even the older Rohingya settlers who fled in the past decades are afraid of losing support and land. “We appreciate the pressure of having almost one million refugees in a poor country that needs help,” says Mohammed Abu Asaker, UNHCR spokesperson in Cox’s Bazar. “This is why we try to help the local community as well, providing medical facilities for locals for example,” he says. He points out that when there are so many refugees, locals are exposed to illnesses as well. But UNHCR also notes that the Rohingya are refugees because they crossed the border out of fear of their lives. “It’s not early to talk about repatriation but the situation in Burma is not conducive for people to go back. We strongly recommend no one goes back unless the root causes of the problem, including citizenship and promoting integration instead of confining them in camp, have been addressed,” the spokesperson says. UNHCR also confirms that with the end of the rainy season, smugglers are approaching Rohingyas in the camps who want to risk the dangerous and illegal journey by boat to Thailand or Malaysia. Thousands are believed to have lost their lives at sea in 2015 when a crackdown by Thai authorities led smugglers to abandon their human cargo at sea. Rights activists note that the repatriation agreement, which the two governments are still working out, is likely to exclude many Rohingya as Burma insists on evidence of their former residency. “The truth is that the implementation of the agreement is unlikely and many would not meet the requirements anyway,” says Chris Lewa, director of the Arakan Project, an NGO advocating for the rights of the Rohingya for almost two decades. Many refugees fled without documents or do not speak the national Burmese language. “It is not clear what will happen to those who don’t meet the requirements,” Ms Lewa adds. But among the tents packed into Kutupalong camp, many Rohingya men say they have to get out. “I will never stay here. I want to leave. I hope to get a fake passport and go,” says Safil, father of two children. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/rohingya-muslims-myanmar-burma-bangladesh-refugees-local-clashes-workers-food-border-a8121231.html (c) 2017 The Independant

The Special Chamber for International Crimes of the High Court Friday sentenced Emmanuel Mbarushimana to life in prison over his role in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. Mbarushimana was extradited from Denmark in July 2014, after exhausting all avenues to block his extradition, including petitioning the European Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights, which ruled that there were all conditions necessary for him to get fair trial in Rwanda once extradited. The former teacher at a primary school in Dahwe in the former Butare prefecture in 1994, was charged with genocide, complicity in genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, murder and extermination, in the former Muganza Commune, currently in Southern Province. He is accused of instigating the establishment of two road blocks in the area where many people were killed. He is also said to have been among the leaders of the attack on Kabuye hill, where thousands of Tutsi were killed between April 21 and 25, 1994. Mbarushimana immediately appealed against the High Court’s decision. http://www.newtimes.co.rw/section/read/226571/ (c) 2017 The New Times

This year has witnessed few more dramatic falls from grace than that of Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burmese Nobel peace prize laureate began 2017 facing a growing hum of criticism over the plight of the Rohingya minority in the country where she is now de facto leader. The year draws to a close with the UN's human rights chief saying she could potentially face genocide charges in future. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, told the UN Human Rights Council in November that the widespread and systematic nature of the persecution of the Rohingya by the army in Myanmar (also called Burma) meant that genocide could not be ruled out. He also said it constituted "a textbook example of ethnic cleansing". In a recent interview, he talked of culpability of the country's leadership - both civilian in the case of Suu Kyi - and military. "Given the scale of the military operation [against the Rohingya], clearly these would have to be decisions taken at a high enough level," Al Hussein told the BBC. "And then there's the crime of omission. That if it came to your knowledge that this was being committed, and you did nothing to stop it, then you could be culpable as well for that." It was not so long ago that Suu Kyi was affectionately known as The Lady and internationally feted as a pro-democracy activist who sacrificed much for her cause. She was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 1991 while under a house arrest that was to last for almost 15 years. A Rohingya refugee woman holds her child after they crossed the Myanmar-Bangladesh border on Christmas Day. Photo: Reuters/Marko Djurica "Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government," her biography on the Nobel prize website read. "The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could co-operate in harmony." The Rohingya - who are Muslims in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar - have long suffered discrimination by a government that refuses even to recognise them as citizens, subjecting them to restrictions on employment, healthcare, education and marriage. Hopes that Suu Kyi would bring an end to this repression when she was elected in 2015 were soon dashed. When the Myanmar military launched a crackdown against the Rohingya last year, claiming they were rooting out "terrorism", Suu Kyi remained silent. According to the UN, more than 600,000 Rohingya - around two-thirds of the entire Rohingya population - have been driven into refugee camps in neighbouring Bangladesh as the military campaign escalated this year, with reports this week of mass graves being found. Last month, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson described the "horrendous atrocities" taking place as ethnic cleansing, and said Washington would pursue targeted sanctions. Suu Kyi's response to all of this has earned her the opprobrium of fellow Nobel laureates including Desmond Tutu and Malala Yousafzai, and calls have increased for her to be stripped of her Nobel. In a recent statement, U2 - whose song 'Walk On' was inspired by Suu Kyi's story - said her silence regarding the horror visited upon the Rohingya was "starting to look a lot like assent". The UN human rights chief Al Hussein told the BBC he had urged Suu Kyi to take action after his office published a report in February detailing atrocities that had taken place up to that point. "I appealed to her to bring these military operations to an end," he said. "I appealed to her emotional standing… to do whatever she could to bring this to a close, and to my great regret it did not seem to happen." Suu Kyi's defenders argue that in a country where the military remains the real power, her ability to stop the campaign against the Rohingya is limited. But Al Hussein makes the same observation several others have made: that Suu Kyi tellingly refuses to even use the term "Rohingya" to refer to the persecuted. "To strip their name from them is dehumanising to the point where you begin to believe that anything is possible," he said. The violence against the Rohingya is partly rooted in the emergence in recent years of an ultra-nationalist Buddhist movement in Myanmar which stirred anti-Muslim sentiment that sometimes spilled into mob attacks. The worst escalation of the military campaign - which had already resulted in hundreds of villages burned and thousands killed - came in August after militants attacked security forces. But the UN rights chief believes Myanmar's army was emboldened when it saw no international response to the operations against the Rohingya: "I suppose that they then drew a conclusion that they could continue without fear." Whether that changes in 2018 remains to be seen. https://www.independent.ie/world-news/asia-pacific/from-international-darling-of-democracy-to-disgraced-pariah-36445362.html (c) 2017 Irish Independent

On 27 January 2015, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), an assembly of parliamentarians from 47 European countries, adopted Resolution 2091 (2016) Foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq recognising, as the first international institution, the atrocities committed by Daesh fighters as ‘genocide and other serious crimes punishable under international law.’ The Council of Europe is an international organization established in 1949 with the aim of upholding human rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Europe. Despite its European focus, the Council of Europe has also been vocal on issues pertaining to situations outside of Europe, especially where the link to European affairs is present. This is certainly true concerning the Daesh atrocities perpetrated against religious minorities in Syria and Iraq and the issue of European Daesh fighters. Indeed, over the last couple of years, PACE has been at the forefront of the international attempts to recognize the Daesh atrocities as genocide and to work towards bringing them to justice. The Resolution 2091 was followed by similar recognitions and recommendations by the European Parliament, the US Congress and State Department, the UK House of Commons, the Parliaments of Australia, Canada, France, Austria, and Hungary. Despite the growing consensus among international institutions and states that atrocities committed against Daesh amount to genocide, genocide that these states are under an obligation to prevent and punish, the act of punishing the atrocity has not been carried out. In October 2016, Pieter Omtzigt, Dutch Parliamentarian, was announced the rapporteur on ‘prosecuting and punishing crimes against humanity or possible genocide’ to prepare a report and a resolution in response to his findings. Omtzigt held a hearing on the topic that was followed up by an inquiry on states’ exercise of the universal jurisdiction over Daesh crimes under international criminal law. The inquiry revealed that while a number of states prosecuted the so-called Daesh foreign fighter returnees (Daesh fighters coming from countries across Europe), the fighters were not prosecuted for the crime of genocide or crimes against humanity or complicity in these crimes, but for lower crimes, such as terrorism, funding of terrorism, membership in a terrorist organisation etc. Despite such prosecutions being important, they do not fulfil states’ obligations under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Convention on Genocide). Moreover, the number of prosecutions is significantly lower than the number of returnees across the states. For example, in the case of the UK, the number of Daesh foreign fighters that joined Daesh in Syria or Iraq is assessed at over 850, according to Soufan Group. The official assessments are also that approximately half of them have returned to the UK (425+). However, as in accordance with the information provided by the UK Government to Omtzigt’s response, as of January 2017, there have been only 101 convictions. This means that 300+ of Daesh foreign fighters, who are now back in the UK face no criminal accountability after it is highly likely that they committed crimes in Syria and Iraq, crimes amounting to genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. This raises several questions regarding how effective the UK approach to countering domestic terrorism is: the UK Government continues to propose new laws or policies to counter terrorism (or broadly defined extremism) limiting the rights of all, but at the same time does not want to deal with the individuals that are at the centre of the problem: the returning Daesh foreign fighters. The failure to bring Daesh foreign fighters to justice is visible across Europe. Omtzigt’s report was adapted by PACE in September 2017 and only a month later, on October 12, 2017, PACE further adopted his resolution ‘Prosecuting and punishing the crimes against humanity or even possible genocide committed by Daesh.’ The resolution passed with overwhelming support. The most noteworthy provisions of Resolution 2190 include calling upon members of the Council of Europe to ensure that they prosecute Daesh fighters whether by exercising the universal jurisdiction, prosecuting for the crimes committed within their jurisdiction, and aren’t obstructing a UN Security Council referral to the ICC. Resolution 2190 sent a very clear message, which is that the responsibility to prosecute Daesh fighters for their crimes does not lie exclusively with Iraq or Syria. States and international institutions must work together towards this aim. Omtzigt was clear in his report that the leading Daesh fighters should be prosecuted by an international tribunal, as this has been done in relation to other international mass atrocities. Resolution 2190 is also non-binding, however it is still an important political signal. Resolutions like this one have been used to establish domestic policies on issues of international concern. Omtzigt has a clear plan for the Netherlands that he will be proposing to the Dutch government. Already on December 22, 2017, the Dutch government published a letter regarding the Daesh atrocities perpetrated against religious groups in Syria and Iraq. The letter states that Daesh in all likelihood commits genocide and crimes against humanity. It further states that the Convention on Genocide applies. As the Netherlands will take a seat at the UN Security Council in January 2018, Omtzigt will be asking the Dutch government to lead the efforts to establish an international or hybrid tribunal to prosecute leading Daesh fighters. The step is crucial to ensure justice for the victims. Justice that cannot be done using domestic courts only. Daesh crimes indeed require international attention and common efforts. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewelinaochab/2017/12/30/council-of-europe-leading-the-legal-fight-against-daesh/#3358196b67bc (c) 2017 Forbes