Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018

Mr. Speaker, yesterday we voted on a number of critical pieces of legislation. One of these, which I supported, was H.R. 3030, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2017, sponsored by my friend Ann Wagner.

This bill will strengthen our efforts to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Our Foreign Service officers are often on the front lines where there is a risk or reality of atrocity crimes. H.R. 3030 will ensure they have the right training to recognize and respond to early warning signs of such crimes. This legislation will also strengthen Congressional oversight by requiring the President to annually report on what is happening on the ground, how the United States has responded, and recommendations for strengthening U.S. response. I was proud to cosponsor this bill and I commend my colleagues for supporting it.

I commend my colleague for naming this bill after the late, iconic Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. He spoke so powerfully about the unique, persistent evil of anti-Semitism that generated the Holocaust, warning that ``the antisemite is by definition ideologically fanatic and pathologically racist . . . an antisemite is someone who has never met me, never heard of me, yet he hates me.''

Mr. Wiesel and I worked together at the historic 2004 Berlin conference of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. There 55 participating governments committed to specific, significant actions to combat anti-Semitism. They were following the parliamentary movement to get the OSCE to fully and forcefully fight anti-Semitism. That movement originated in a Helsinki Commission hearing I chaired in May 2002 and I was proud to lead this movement together with parliamentarians from Germany, the UK, and France.

In his Berlin keynote address, Mr. Wiesel said, ``We know . . . that anti-Semitism is dangerous not only to Jews but to countries too, where it is allowed to flourish . . . When a Jew is slapped in the face, humankind itself falls to ground . . . Antisemitism is rooted in hatred; its language is a language of hatred, it doctrine is filled with hatred--and hatred by its nature, always runs overboard, crossing geographical boundaries and ethnic affiliations. It is a contagious disease.''

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Wiesel also dedicated his life to the prevention of other genocides, calling for action to prevent genocides in Bosnia,

Rwanda, and Sudan. Yet another genocide was committed after Sudan, this one against Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq and Syria by ISIS. The survival of these ancient communities depends on humanitarian, stabilization, and recovery assistance from the United States and other countries.

Last June this house unanimously passed H.R. 390, the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act, so that our aid reaches the genocide survivors and perpetrators are held accountable. The Senate has still not been given the opportunity to vote on this urgently needed legislation. I again call for the Senate to pass H.R. 390 now and send it to the President for his signature. This legislation will significantly strengthen the ongoing efforts of his Administration to directly help Christian and Yazidi genocide survivors at risk of extinction.

Another critical piece of legislation for which I voted in support was the Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act, H.R. 5480.

Chairman Royce's Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act expands, and improves upon, our previous microenterprise legislation. By way of background, the Committee on Foreign Affairs has a long history in this field, dating back at least to former chairman Ben Gilman's Microenterprise for Self-Reliance and International Anti- Corruption Act of 2000. I myself introduced the Microenterprise Results and Accountability Act of 2004, and a bill that amended the 2000 legislation, both of which became law.

In keeping with a deeper understanding of how to combat poverty and maintaining a needed focus on women, Chairman Royce's bill broadens the scope from microenterprise to include small and medium enterprises. While it is important to make sure that the very poor are not being neglected, small and medium enterprises help power development and thereby empower the poor. Thus I encouraged all to support H.R. 5480 and the House voted to pass the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I also supported H.R. 5105, the BUILD Act.

I thank my friend and colleague, Mr. Ted Yoho of Florida, for offering this critical and visionary legislation. This legislation will modernize development finance to benefit the developing world, consistent with U.S. policy objectives.

To cite one critical component, the BUILD Act serves to counteract China's strategy in Africa, which uses development finance as a means to serve China's ends, even if that means propping up brutal dictators.

I thank Chairman Ed Royce for his leadership in guiding this legislation through the Foreign Affairs Committee, and for his responsiveness to concerns I had relayed, relating to China.

In particular, I appreciate changes made to the initial draft of this bill concerning the denominating of future loans in foreign currencies.

While the International Development Finance Corporation that this legislation would create needs to have flexibility, including issuing loans in foreign currencies, we must remember it is also the long-term geostrategic goal of China, Russia, and certain other countries to replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency.

I therefore appreciate Chairman Royce's amended text, which adds, ``Foreign currency denominated loans and guaranties should only be provided if the Board determines there is a substantive policy rationale for such loans and guaranties.''

Beyond this, however, there should be a clear policy statement on the importance and overall strategic interest in retaining the dollar as the world's reserve currency. Indeed, earlier this year, China met with central bankers from 14 African nations to discuss the viability of using China's yuan as the reserve currency for the region.

This nonetheless underscores the urgency for creating an International Development Finance Corporation, which the BUILD Act accomplishes, while underscoring the need for policy guidance that loans in foreign currencies not be used to undermine reserve dollar dominance.

I further voiced support of H.R. 4819, the DELTA Act, introduced by my friend and colleague Mr. Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska, of which I was a cosponsor.

There is much in this bill to recommend it--from prioritizing anti- poaching and wildlife trafficking efforts in the greater Okavango River Basin, to helping preserve the majestic elephant and other endangered species, to providing sustainable livelihoods for local communities.

One other aspect of this bill which I highlighted was that it enables us to partner with, and coordinate efforts with, the countries of Botswana, Namibia and Angola.

Botswana and Namibia in particular are two countries which are often overlooked, but which have made great strides in recent years towards becoming responsible partners. Both are, in the context of Africa, good places in which to do business, and should be commended for their efforts in improving governance. Their partnership in the greater Okavango initiative underscores this trend.

Angola is a nation which, after decades of civil war followed by strongman rule, is beginning to tackle corruption under new President Joao Lourenco. While it remains to be seen how far and how quickly Angola can go toward becoming a reliable partner and a country in which to do business, its inclusion as a DELTA Act partner country is a sign of confidence in the future.

I urged my colleagues to support the DELTA Act, and it also passed the House yesterday.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous material on the subject of my Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. Today we remember the millions of victims of genocide throughout history, and we recommit to working toward the day when genocide and mass-atrocity crimes are not only inconceivable, Mr. Speaker, but they are nonexistent.

April marks the commemorations of some of the worst genocides in history, including the Holocaust and Rwandan, Cambodian, and Armenian genocides. Time and again, senseless bloodshed has ended innocent lives and fractured families and livelihoods.

My hometown, St. Louis, is home to the largest Bosnian community outside of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This community has shaped what the city looks and feels like. It has added great cultural diversity to the city, immense intellectual capital, thriving small businesses, and a strong religious presence.

Two decades ago, members of our Bosnian community were refugees. In 1995, Orthodox Serbs, under the command of General Ratko Mladic, initiated a horrific ethnic cleansing campaign against majority Muslim Bosniaks. The escalating bloodshed forced 130,000 Bosnian refugees to seek new lives in the United States. Thousands were murdered in Srebrenica. Today I wish to honor these brave men and women.

The resilience of our Bosnian neighbors has enriched our city, and their courage inspires me. It has inspired me to seek change. Tomorrow I am offering an amendment to the State Department Authorization Act of 2018 asking the administration to study countries at risk of genocide and mass-atrocity crimes and craft training regimens for U.S. Foreign Service officers.

Should this bill become law, America's diplomats will have the know- how to respond to those conflicts on the ground and act before violence spirals out of control. Most importantly, this amendment establishes that the official policy of the United States of America is to regard the prevention of genocide and atrocity crimes as a core national security interest.

However, this is just one step in the right direction. The U.S. Government must improve how it responds to conflicts. Last April, I introduced the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act to improve U.S. efforts to prevent mass-atrocity crimes, named after the courageous Auschwitz survivor. The legislation honors the legacy of Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and his life work to fight evil around the world.

Mr. Wiesel was just 15 years old when the Nazis deported him and his family to Auschwitz. He was the only member of his family to survive. Having witnessed the near total destruction of his people, he spent his life defending the persecuted. In his honor, we fight to rectify injustice and protect the most vulnerable in our society and across the globe.

As Mr. Wiesel understood so well, the true horror of genocide is that it is preventable, and the U.S. Government has the tools to effect real change. The Elie Wiesel Act would affirm the mission of the United States Atrocities Prevention Board and its work to coordinate prevention and response efforts. It would also authorize the Complex Crisis Fund to support agile, efficient responses to unforeseen crises overseas.

This time, when America says ``never again,'' our actions will reinforce our platitudes and our words. I thank the Chair, Mr. Speaker, and I thank all of my colleagues who share in this fight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern) for his outstanding words and his support, his support and that of Representative Randy Hultgren on sponsoring and cosponsoring with me my piece of legislation, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act.

This truly is an issue that is not just about human rights and giving voice to the voiceless and speaking for the most vulnerable in our society; it is about human dignity across our globe.

It is about the U.S. responding to these conflicts in the way that only we can and should do and provide the kind of moral authority and support to do so through both our Congress and through our foreign service officers and others who are working across the globe. So I thank the gentleman for his fine words.

I now yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her kind words.

The gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Tenney) is also a leader in this cause and this effort that is really about, as we said, human dignity and human rights across this world.

We want a day when no longer are these refugees suffering, whether it is in Syria. On the day that President Macron addressed a joint session here in this very Chamber, the President of the People's Republic of France, that stood with the United States, along with the United Kingdom, in the bombings against Syria that were targeted against those who had been barrel-bombed and victimized and murdered by the Assad regime in Syria.

We share a common bond with the Bosnian community. We both have very large Bosnian communities, many of whom started out as refugees some 20 years ago. Now, as I said, the cultural diversity, the business, the religious presence has been just wonderful to see flourish in a district like Missouri's Second Congressional District, so I recognize the common bond that we have there.

I thank Ms. Tenney for participating in this Special Order that goes to the heart of genocide and mass atrocities across our globe. I know that the people of Ms. Tenney's district in New York are also appreciative of all she does there to represent them and those who are the most vulnerable in our society, so I thank the gentlewoman from New York.

I now yield to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) for his kind words. He is a leader and a senior member of our House Foreign Affairs Committee, and I also have the privilege of serving on it.

It is an honor to have Congressman Chabot here at this Special Order during Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month to give voice to those millions of victims and to say we live for a time when this is nonexistent in society.

I look forward, Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, to offering my amendment to the State Department Authorization Act of 2018, asking the administration to study countries at risk of genocide and mass atrocity crimes and crafting the kind of training regimens for U.S. foreign service officers that are so very important.

I look forward to the time when my piece of legislation, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act, will, Mr. Speaker, be signed into law. It will improve the U.S. efforts to prevent mass atrocity crimes, and I think we all, in this Chamber, on a bipartisan level, Mr. Speaker, continue to hope and, more importantly, to work towards a time when America says, ``Never again,'' and our actions reinforce our words.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for coming out. I thank those advocates on the Friends Committee on National Legislation's stand. Together we remember the Carl Wilkens Fellowship and so many others that stand with the victims of genocide and mass atrocities. It is an honor to be with my colleagues here tonight and with the advocacy groups that stand for the millions that say, ``Never again.''

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Ann Wagner for yielding. She is a wonderful inspiration to me as a new Member.

I also want to thank Congressman McGovern for his comments.

This is really important that she is hosting tonight's Special Order on genocide awareness and prevention.

During the month of April, we joined together to honor victims and survivors to educate the public about genocide--it is hard to believe it is happening in our time--and to advocate for the prevention of future atrocities.

In the past 150 years, tens of millions of men, women, and children have lost their lives during brutal genocides and mass atrocities. Millions have been tortured, raped, and forced from their homes. Some of the darkest moments in world history have occurred, oddly enough, in the month of April.

In April 1933, the Nazi Party began its boycott of Jewish-owned businesses. This marked the beginning of a campaign of hatred that led to the murder of 6 million Jews.

My district is home to thousands of refugees from the former Yugoslavia. I have a long history with Yugoslavia. I began my study of the country of Yugoslavia in 1981 when I first participated as a student, a college student from Colgate University, in a semester abroad, and we traveled throughout the entire Yugoslavia and all the different principalities and republics. It was a spectacular and beautiful country, and it sparked a lifelong interest for me in this region.

I completely fell in love with the country and was fascinated by the people who were there who survived conquests, whether it was from the Ottoman Empire to being part of so many other parts of human history. They were also victims during the Nazi invasion, as well, during World War II.

I had the lucky opportunity to graduate from college and work as a foreign correspondent in the Press and Cultural Office of the former Yugoslav Consulate in New York. I also worked, at that time, alongside with ABC Sports during the Winter Olympics held in Sarajevo in 1984.

The war in Yugoslavia was a tragic saga in the history of human experience, especially for me, with my long history and love of the country and the people who inhabited this part of world.

I worked with people from the consulate, from all the republics and autonomous provinces from the former Yugoslavia. It just seemed unthinkable to me that this human genocide could occur in a region of the world which had experienced many occupying forces due to its very unique, very important geopolitical, strategic location in the world.

Yugoslavia was always known as the gateway between East and West, the place where you could get from Europe through Yugoslavia to, eventually, the Middle East along the Mediterranean. This region had diverse culture, religion, and people from all parts of Europe and the Middle East, and the world all united together for centuries, actually, living alongside each other with different values. Certainly, they had their differences.

But sadly, unfortunately, after all this history of unrest, the war in Yugoslavia eventually elicited the worst in humankind and was witness to one of the most horrific genocides in our generation against Bosnian citizens.

To the Bosnian community, April, again, marks 26 years since the beginning of the siege in Sarajevo, Bosnia. The horrific period of violence lasted for over 3\1/2\ years and was the longest siege in modern warfare. All told, over 10,000 people, including 1,500 children, were killed in Sarajevo during the siege.

In 1995, the worst massacre within Europe since World War II took place. The Srebrenica massacre killed more than 8,000 Bosnian boys and men during the Bosnian War.

In addition to these horrific killings, more than 20,000 civilians were expelled from the area. Many of these Bosnian refugees immigrated to my region. We are thrilled to have them.

It is just worth noting that my son was actually a student in the afterschool program at the Jewish Community Center in my area. The Jewish Community Center was actually instrumental in helping to find safe refuge in our community for these Bosnian Muslims who were suffering from this unconscionable genocide and atrocities against them.

I think it was the solidarity and the sympathy and the understanding, the true understanding of genocide that our Jewish citizens recognized in our region, and we are grateful to them. And we are also grateful to the Bosnian community for the decision to have so many wonderful Bosnian families visit our city and now remain as citizens. They provided the same ingenuity and the entrepreneurship and the vibrancy and the creativity that I remembered during my days of studying this very special part of the world.

I am especially grateful to them for enabling me to sustain the bond that developed between me, my family, who have all traveled to that part of the world, and this amazing group of people for the past 37 years of my life. It has become almost a vocation for me, just my study of Serbo-Croatian and my study of this region.

As we mark these tragedies of the past, we must not overlook what is taking place in the present. I just want to mention a little bit about my city, Utica, New York.

It has been recognized as one of the friendly cities to refugees. The Utica City School District now has over 42 languages spoken, and so we have a number of people coming from war-torn areas where, very graciously and also very generously, our communities have accepted them and provided them a home.

I want to just highlight one of the communities that is in our region as well, and those are the people from Myanmar, where over 700,000 Rohingya people have fled the Rakhine State in the face of expulsions and violent persecution at the hands of government forces.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad's military butchers its own citizens and uses chemical weapons without regard for international law.

Under this dark cloud of atrocities and massive human rights violations, both present and past, I just want to join with my colleagues today in remembering these and remembering to ensure that these lessons are never forgotten, but more important, if we could only make sure they are never repeated.

I sincerely thank my colleague, Congresswoman Ann Wagner, for her great leadership on this issue, her tenacity and her courage and her continued fight to try to help these people who are the most needy, who have just been victimized in our society and across our country and our world. I thank her for including me tonight.

It is very special for me to especially recognize the Bosnians. It has been such a long part of my history, and my heart and my sympathy go to these wonderful people who suffered unfairly.

I just want to say thank you again to Mrs. Wagner for her great leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, last week we marked up H.R. 1911, the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism. All of the Co-Chairs of the Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Anti-Semitism are cosponsors of the bipartisan H.R. 1911--including four members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Eliot Engel, Brad Schneider, and Ted Deutch--which I authored to advance the fight against the ancient, persistent evil of anti-Semitism, whenever and wherever it occurs in the world.

So far 80 members have cosponsored the bill, including 25 members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Many leading Jewish organizations also support the legislation.

My friend, the great former Soviet refusnik and religious prisoner, Natan Sharansky, testified at two of the nine hearings I have chaired on anti-Semitism. He proposed what he called a simple test to help us distinguish legitimate criticism of Israel from anti-Semitism. Sharansky called it the ``three Ds: Demonization, double standard, and de-legitimization.''

Rabbi Andy Baker, Director for International Jewish Affairs for American Jewish Committee and Personal Representative of the OSCE

Chairperson-in-Office on Combatting-AntiSemitism, reports, ``We continue to see physical and even lethal attacks on Jews in Europe, efforts to restrict or ban elemental religious practices, and emboldened extremist political parties with an anti-Semitic agenda. Even as European governments have come to recognize the dangers facing their Jewish communities, many still have failed to devote the necessary resources to protect them or to be clear-eyed in recognizing the sources of the problem.'' This past March an 85-year Holocaust survivor, Mireille Knoll, was brutally murdered in Paris, an abhorrent example of anti-Semitic hatred.

According to B'nai Brith International, ``Unfortunately, we continue to see the dramatic growth of anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe and the Islamic world. This scourge has reached its highest level since World War II. B'nai Brith International is dedicated to shining the spotlight on hatred of Jews as a distinct and unique social illness, and to marshaling efforts to combat, and wherever possible, eradicate this phenomenon.'' According to B'nai Brith Canada, ``Last year was a record-breaking year for anti-Semitism in Canada, according to a new audit by B'nai Brith's league for human rights. As Global's Anne Leclair reports, Quebec ranks second in the country for reported anti- Semitic activity.''

The Kator Center on Anti-Semitism Worldwide sounded the alarm; stating ``Europe's largest Jewish communities are experiencing a normalization and mainstreaming of anti-Semitism not seen since the Second World War.''

There is an urgent need for a comprehensive United States government approach to combating anti-Semitism--led by a strong, senior official. In 2004, Congress passed and signed into law the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act of 2004. I was the prime sponsor of the provisions that created the Office to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism in the State Department and position of Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti- Semitism to lead it.

H.R. 1911 would elevate the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti- Semitism to the rank of Ambassador, to be nominated by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate, and reporting directly to the Secretary of State. It would mandate the Special Envoy to serve as the primary advisor to the United States government on monitoring and combating anti-Semitism in foreign countries and coordinate efforts across the government.

The bill would prohibit the Special Envoy from being double-hatted with duties and responsibilities unrelated to monitoring and combating anti-Semitism. It would also require the President to nominate a Special Envoy within 90 days of the enactment of this act and thereafter within 120 whenever the position is empty.

Since Congress created the position, there have been long delays in every Administration filling it.

PRESIDENT BUSH: 583 days

PRESIDENT OBAMA: 307 days and 227 days

When they were appointed, Gregg Rickman, Hannah Rosenthal, and Ira Forman did a tremendous job. Currently there has been no Special Envoy for 482 days. I and colleagues on both sides of the aisle, including you Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Ed Royce, called on the President and Secretary Tillerson to appoint someone as a matter oftop priority. I repeat that call and urge Secretary Pompeo to appoint a Special Envoy now.

Jewish communities here and abroad continue to be targeted for hatred and deadly violence. America has a proud bipartisan history of leading the fight against anti-Semitism, including this House unanimously-- passing H. Res. 354 in 2015, which I authored as a detailed blueprint for actions that are critical to prevent more deadly attacks on Europe's Jewish communities.

We must build and expand on this history. The Special Envoy is critical to focusing and redoubling our leadership and this bill enhances the position. I ask my fellow committee members to support this vital legislation.

I also ask my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 3030, the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2017. This bill will strengthen our efforts to anticipate, prevent, and mitigate genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. My friend Ann Wagner is the sponsor of this legislation and I am proud to cosponsor it.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3030) to help prevent acts of genocide and other atrocity crimes, which threaten national and international security, by enhancing United States Government capacities to prevent, mitigate, and respond to such crises, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material in the Record.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, it was over 60 years ago that free people around the world pledged to never again stand by in silence as oppressed people are annihilated in a genocide. Unfortunately, since then, we have witnessed mass atrocities and genocide in places such as Bosnia, the Rwandan genocide, Cambodia, Burma, and in the ISIS strongholds in Syria and in Iraq.

The United States has often been a leader in responding to these and other humanitarian crises--not soon enough, in many cases. However, there is more, obviously, that can be done, and U.S. efforts have been largely reactive and disjointed, with little transparency or oversight.

This bill is the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act. It would correct these deficiencies. This act would require an annual report of administration actions to prevent and respond to potential genocides and mass atrocities, and it would mandate the identification of countries that are at risk of such crimes against humanity.

This act also requires that all Foreign Service officers, who often are at the forefront of U.S. efforts to address atrocities ever since our Ambassador in Armenia was the first to sound the alarm on the Armenian genocide, be trained to deal with early warning signs, conflict assessment, mediation, and other responses.

All of this will better enable our government to develop a coordinated response as a crisis is developing and, ultimately, to save lives.

With its name, this bill honors the legacy of Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, and it furthers our commitment to his call, for it was his call for ``never again''--never again by strengthening the U.S. Government's coordination on efforts to prevent, mitigate, and respond to genocide and other mass atrocities.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in support of this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

House of Representatives, Permanent Select Committee on

Intelligence,

July 17, 2018.

Hon. Edward R. Royce,

Chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: On June 22, 2018, H.R. 3030, the Elie

Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018 was

referred to the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

(the Committee).

In order to expedite the House's consideration of the

measure, the Committee will forgo consideration of the

measure. This courtesy is conditioned on our mutual

understanding and agreement that it will in no way diminish

or alter the jurisdiction of the Committee with respect to

any future jurisdictional claim over the subject matter

contained in the legislation or any similar measure, nor will

this waiver inhibit the Committee's ability to address issues

of concern going forward. I appreciate your support to the

appointment of Members from the Committee to any House-Senate

conference on this legislation.

I also appreciate your including this letter in the

Congressional Record during floor consideration of the bill.

Thank you for your assistance with this matter.

Sincerely,

Devin Nunes,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Wagner), who is the author of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ros-Lehtinen), chair of the Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in closing, I thank my colleague, Congresswoman Ann Wagner, for her leadership on this important bill. I also thank the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Engel, for his support, along with Mr. Sherman, on this bill.

Passage of this legislation sends a strong message of the continuing U.S. commitment to respond to genocide and to respond to mass atrocities as they emerge, with effective and coordinated programs that will best protect the most vulnerable. The U.S. must be a world leader in efforts to prevent genocide and crimes against humanity.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.