EVENTS

Remembering the Srebrenica and Rwanda genocides

02/07/2009 - Do war memorials unite or divide? This was the issue a panel of leading experts in the fields of combating impunity and memorialisation discussed at a public debate on 1 July 2009 in Amsterdam's De Balie Centre for Culture and Politics, marking the recent anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and upcoming anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre.

The gathering, organised by Impunity Watch in association with the Anne Frank Stichting, and moderated by Kees Biekart, a senior lecturer at the Institute for Social Studies, sought to examine the potential of monuments to victims of grave human rights abuses to unite or divide societies in the aftermath of war, conflict or other serious division.

 

The panel included Klaas de Jonge, Impunity Watch Research Coordinator for the African Great Lakes Region, Dion van den Berg, Senior Policy Advisor, IKV- Pax Christi, Jan Marinus Wiersma, Member of the European Parliament, Partij van de Arbeid, Nataša Kandic, Humanitarian Law Center, Executive Director, Dienke Hondius, Associate Professor of Contemporary History, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, andDavid Diaz, Deputy Director of the Europe and Central Asia Programme, Amnesty International.

 

A report on the debate is available here.

 

This debate was the first in a series on the topic of memorialisation and its role in the combat of impunity for grave human rights abuses, and forms part of a developing Impunity Watch project on the topic, within its comparative Perspectives programme.

 

Should you wish to be informed about upcoming events, please send an email to Marlies Stappers at marlies.stappers@impunitywatch.org.