Greetings and welcome to the last monthly newsletter of 2020.
Year's end is always a time for taking stock, and as this remarkable year (finally)
draws to a close, this stock-taking surely takes on a special urgency. Taking stock
means reminding ourselves of what we have. Doing that means also understanding what
we've lost. Around the world, nearly 75 million people have been infected with COVID-19,
and 1.64 million people have died from it. Many of those who survive face long-term
health problems. The global effects of the pandemic range from public health to global
economic development to political stability; understanding and repairing the longer-term
harms that societies and individuals have suffered will take years, perhaps decades.
Few if any of us have been without losses of one kind or another: the loss of life
and health of course; the loss of relatives, friends and colleagues; the loss of livelihood
and freedom to move, explore, socialize, attend weddings and visit new family members;
for many, the loss of a basic sense of personal and collective security.
Taking stock also should bring us in closer solidarity with all those around the globe
who did not lose a basic sense of personal and collective security, for the simple
reason that they never had it. Like other "natural" disasters (the scare quotes remind
us that the pandemic has multiple human-made drivers), the pandemic has multiplied
the risks of atrocity violence already faced by the world's most vulnerable groups.
Deprived of adequate health care and the protection of their states, they will also
likely be at the back of the queue for the new vaccines that promise finally to bring
the pandemic to a gradual end. Their enhanced vulnerability will continue well after
COVID-19 moves out of the news cycle.
But taking stock also means pausing to see what's been gained. For us at I-GMAP, looking
back at the strangeness of 2020 (all of which seems to have been spent on Zoom) reminds
us of all the new friends, partners and colleagues who have kindly shared their time
and expertise with us, virtually visiting our events and our classes, letting us learn
about their work and their organizations, and how they too have responded with courage
and creativity to the challenges of the past year. From the Brazilian Amazon to Sri
Lanka, Bangkok to Saskatchewan, Kampala to London, and across the United States, 2020
brought us into contact with so many remarkable people dedicated to preventing mass
atrocities however and wherever they may occur, and to building voice and resilience
wherever vulnerable groups are threatened. Even if we could not meet our new conversation
partners in person, our gratitude for them and their work is profound, and reminds
us that the global network of atrocity prevention actors continues to grow and interconnect. We
wish them, and you, a safe and peaceful end to this tumultuous year, and a peaceful
and healthy 2021.
- Nadia Rubaii & Max Pensky
Upcoming Events
Save the Date: Spring 2021 Webinars
Please keep an eye out for our upcoming series of webinars to kick off the new year.
We have set a date for the February 11th webinar and we will post additional information
and registration links for all of the webinars in the coming weeks.
Date
Time
Topic
Registration Link
January (dates tba)
tba
Two webinars on What a Biden-Harris Administration Means for Atrocity Prevention:
Part 1: Global Atrocity Prevention
Part 2: Domestic Atrocity Prevention
Forthcoming
Thursday, February 11, 2021
10:00am to noon EST
Discussion with colleagues at the
Forthcoming
March (date tba)
tba
A Conversation with Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the new Special Adviser of the Secretary-General
on the Prevention of Genocide at the United Nations
Forthcoming
April (date tba)
tba
Indigenous Priorities and Perspectives in Atrocity Prevention
Forthcoming
Recent News
Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention in Colombia
We held our rescheduled a conversation with four distinguished panelists about the
transitional justice process in Colombia on December 16th.
The 2016 Final Accord between the Colombian government and the Armed Revolutionary
Forces of Colombia (FARC) sought to end the Western Hemisphere's longest internal
armed conflict. The outcome of complex and protracted negotiations conducted in Havana,
the Final Accord developed the most wide-ranging and complex experiment in transitional
justice ever attempted. The Final Accord included comprehensive proposals for land
reform, the eradication of illegal drug production, wide-ranging programming for reparations
and support for victims, and a Special Jurisdiction for Peace to bring alternative
forms of legal justice to high-level perpetrators, among many other innovations.
Even supporters of the Final Accord's holistic approach predicted an uphill struggle
to implement the full range of its many different components. Opinions vary on how
to assess gains and losses over the past four years. One thing however is clear: the
killing has not stopped. Hundreds of people - in particular local human rights activists,
members of Indigenous communities, and former FARC members - have been murdered.
In this webinar, we asked our invited experts on the Final Accord and transitional
justice in Colombia to help us understand the causes of ongoing atrocity violence
in the country, and to help identify possible ways forward. How has the structure
and implementation of the Final Accord's comprehensive approach contributed to atrocity
prevention in Colombia? What prospects does transitional justice in Colombia have
for preventing atrocity crimes?
Panelists for Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention in Colombia Webinar
Once we have the video closed captioned we will post it to our .
Wrapping Up the First Semester of the Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellows in Atrocity
Prevention
In December, we held a virtual discussion with three faculty members, who were part
of the Curriculum Development Group, to discuss ideas for including an atrocity prevention
lens into their teaching. In the Spring, they will work individually to complete self-paced
online modules in the spring. By next year, we intend to have this program ready to
open up to faculty from across the State University of New York system of colleges
and universities in the form of micro-credentialing.
Professor Whigham Presents for South African Institutions
Our very own Assistant Professor Kerry Whigham presented on "Memory Encroachments:
Re-Plotting the Past in Post-Atrocity Europe, Argentina, and the United States" on
November 24th. The webinar was hosted by the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre
and the Durban Holocaust & Genocide Centre.
This presentation offered an analytical framework for understanding an increasingly
popular form of post-atrocity memorial practice as a kind of historical dialogue and
a means for the construction of public memory. Memory encroachments are sites of memory
whose central goal is to intrude or intervene upon the daily life of passersby. Unlike
traditional forms of memorialization, which utilize scale or recognizable architectural
forms to declare themselves publicly, to make themselves known, memory encroachments
do not call attention to themselves so obviously, nor do they serve as sites of destination.
In most cases, they are sites that one happens upon on the way to other things not
related to memory. The presentation examined an array of memory encroachments, including
the Stolpertsteine, or stumbling stones, of Europe and the baldosas por la memoria, or memorial sidewalk tiles, in Argentina.
Fundaci贸n Guagua in Colombia Invites Charles E. Scheidt Post-doctoral Fellow to Speak
Charles E. Scheidt Post-doctoral Fellow in Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention,
Dr. Jenny Escobar spoke to community members in Colombia for a virtual event hosted
by the Fundaci贸n Guagua 鈥 Galer铆a de la Memoria Tiberio Fern谩ndez Mafla on Wednesday,
December 9th.
鈥淢emoria Viva鈥: Violencia de Estado y Movimiento por la Memoria en Colombia
The Fundaci贸n recently launched a research initiative called Semillero de Investigaci贸n
de la Memoria Colectiva, a research center for the study of collective memory in Colombia.
The title of the event is 鈥淢emoria Viva鈥: Violencia de Estado y Movimiento por la
Memoria en Colombia (鈥楳emory Alive鈥: State Violence and Movement for Memory in Colombia).
Jenny worked with these community partners in Colombia during her dissertation research.
She was invited back as an advisor to help develop curriculum and research support
for students, researchers and practitioners interested in the Fundacion鈥檚 memory work
and other collective memory initiatives in Colombia. This speaking event was geared
towards the first cohort of researchers who are participating in this initiative.
Jenny is looking forward to building connections between memory scholars in Colombia
and I-GMAP.
Thank You
We are incredibly thankful to all of our I-GMAP supporters around the world.
Without you, we could not fulfill our mission to work across academic disciplines,
to construct bridges between academic researchers and educators and prevention practitioners,
and to enhance individual and institutional understanding, commitment, and capacity
to prevent genocide and mass atrocity.
We are very much looking forward to carrying the lessons we all learned from 2020
into 2021 and be innovative in how we carry atrocity prevention into the new decade.
