December 2020 Newsletter

Published on December 17, 2020

Contents
I. Note from the Co-Directors

II. Upcoming Events

Save the Date: Spring 2021 Webinars

III. Recent News

Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention in Colombia

Wrapping Up the First Semester of the Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellows in Atrocity Prevention

Professor Whigham Presents for South African Institutions

Fundación Guagua in Colombia Invites Charles E. Scheidt Post-doctoral Fellow to Speak 

IV. Thank You

Note from the Co-Directors

Dear Friends, 

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 Dallaire Institute for Children, Peace and Security

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?

Image: Panelists for Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention in Colombia Webinar
Panelists for Transitional Justice and Atrocity Prevention in Colombia Webinar

Once we have the video closed captioned we will post it to our YouTube Channel.


Wrapping Up the First Semester of the Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellows in Atrocity Prevention


We finished off the very first semester with the first cohort of Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellows in Atrocity Prevention this month. As you may remember, we introduced this cohort in our October 2020 newsletter and we are so excited to work with this wonderful group of faculty members from Binghamton University.

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.


Fundación 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 Fundación Guagua – Galería de la Memoria Tiberio Fernández Mafla on Wednesday, December 9th.

Image: “Memoria Viva”: Violencia de Estado y Movimiento por la Memoria en Colombia
“Memoria Viva”: Violencia de Estado y Movimiento por la Memoria en Colombia
The Fundación recently launched a research initiative called Semillero de Investigación de la Memoria Colectiva, a research center for the study of collective memory in Colombia. The title of the event is “Memoria Viva”: Violencia de Estado y Movimiento por la Memoria en Colombia (‘Memory Alive’: 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’s 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.

If the work of I-GMAP is important to you, we welcome your support. There are many ways in which you can help us expand our reach and impact. Your charitable gift directly supports the work of I-GMAP.

Donate Online 


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