On September 18th, the first of four Raoul Wallenberg events on genocide and mass atrocity prevention was held in New York City at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University. Speaking at this event were Jan Eliasson, Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Irwin Cotler, Canadian Member of Parliament for Mount Royal and former Minister of Justice, and Luis Moreno Ocampo, Founder and Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Pictures of the event are available on our Flickr page. The Center on International Cooperation at New York University and the Consulate General of Sweden partnered with MIGS in this event.
Credit: Tristan Brand
The next Raoul Wallenberg public event will take place in Ottawa on September 30th at the Centre for International Policy Studies at Ottawa University. Confirmed speakers are:
- Irwin Cotler, Canadian Member of Parliament for Mount Royal and former Minister of Justice
- Paul Dewar, Member of Parliament for Ottawa Centre and current chair of the Canadian All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and other Crimes against Humanity
- Errol Mendes, Lawyer and Author, Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa
- Vera Gara, Holocaust survivor, Author
- David Lunderquist, Chargé d'Affaires Embassy of Sweden in Ottawa
Our partners for the Ottawa event are the Centre for International Policy Studies at Ottawa University, Global Shapers Ottawa Hub, the Swedish Embassy in Canada, and the Canadian All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Other Crimes Against Humanity.
Two further Wallenberg events will be held in Toronto on October 14th and in Montreal on October 29th.
For more information, please see: http://www.raoulwallenberglegacy.org/
Credit: Tristan Brand
Interviews
On September 22nd, Kyle Matthews spoke to CBC’s The Homerun about Canada’s strategy towards ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
On September 22nd, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs hosted a conversation with Roméo Dallaire. Journalist James Traub conducted the interview. You can watch the interview here.
Op-eds and Media
- On September 2nd, Kyle Matthews wrote an op-ed in The Montreal Gazette and The Province titled “Stop Islamic State now, before it’s too late” . Concordia University later named him “newsmaker of the week” for conducting a number of interviews on CBC radio across Canada and for making an appearance on CBC’s The National news show.
- On September 17, ahead of MIGS’ Raoul Wallenberg events across North America, Assistant to the Director Marie Lamensch published an article in the Huffington Post Quebec titled “Raoul Wallenberg: l'héritage d'un héros”
- On September 25th , Frank Chalk, Roméo Dallaire and James Orbinski published an op-ed in the on line edition of the Toronto Globe and Mail titled “Canada should be a leader in the fight against Ebola.”
- MIGS supported the #WithSyria and #AvecLesSyriens movement, which consists of over 130 organisations and people around the world working to protect civilians caught in the conflict.\
Publications
- Max Bergholz’s paper “‘As If Nothing Ever Happened:’ Massacres, Missing Corpses, and Silence in a Bosnian Community,” was published in Élisabett Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, eds., Destruction and Human Remains. Disposal and Concealment in Genocide and Mass Violence (Manchester University Press, 2014), pp. 15-45.
- An NGO in the Balkans called "REKOM" (The Regional Commission for Determining Facts about War Crimes and Other Serious Human Rights Violations on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia from 1991-2001) cited the research of MIGS' Assistant Director Prof. Max Bergholz in its most recent official statement issued on August 30, 2014 to commemorate the International Day of Missing Persons. This NGO has members from all of the countries of the Former Yugoslavia. The quotation is from a research article that Prof. Bergholz published in 2010 on the dynamics of silence after intercommunal killing in Bosnia, which was translated into Bosnian in 2012 with the assistance of an Aid to Research-Related Events (ARRE) grant from Concordia University.
Awards
- MIGS’s Distinguished Senior Fellow Roméo Dallaire will receive the Lourdes National Leadership Awards. Guelph MP Frank Valeriote stated his admiration for the work of Lt-Gen Dallaire in regards to genocide prevention, child soldiers and the treatment of veterans and their families.