March 4, 2013, NEW YORK – The Auschwitz Institute today signed an agreement with the Federal Foreign Office of Germany to support a meeting of Lemkin Seminar alumni in Tanzania this May.
The German funds will go toward stipends for 25 government policymakers to attend the May 27–28 meeting in Arusha, ” Best Practices and New Opportunities in Genocide Prevention: Governmental Action, Technology, and Regional Context .”
The Auschwitz Institute is organizing the meeting jointly with Tanzania’s Ministry of Constitutional and Legal Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation , and the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect .
Arusha was chosen as the meeting site because of its uniqueness on the African continent in administering international justice to victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and other related human rights violations. Like the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where the Auschwitz Institute holds its genocide prevention programs, the Tanzanian capital, often referred to as “The Hague of Africa,” will reinforce the message of genocide prevention by utilizing the “power of place.”
Tanzania was also the first country to establish a National Committee on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, War Crimes and All Forms of Discrimination, based on a 2006 protocol of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR).