On Friday, July 10, two Auschwitz Institute staff experts participated in an international digital roundtable and conference event organized by the Srebrenica Potočari Memorial Center, the University of Sarajevo’s Faculty of Political Science, and the Institute for Islamic Tradition of Bosniaks to mark the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide. Due to public safety concerns related to the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic, the virtual event was organized in lieu of the planned in-person commemorative activities.
Entitled “Denial and Triumphalism: Origins, Impact, and Prevention,” the event brought together worldwide experts on genocide studies and related fields to discuss the legacy of the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica and to explore the phenomenon of genocide denial in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The conference sought to place an emphasis on the themes of memory, denial, prevention, and accountability within the broader 25th anniversary discussion.
AIPG’s Dr. James Waller, Director of Academic Programs, and Dr. Gabriela Ghindea, Director of Mediterranean Basin Programs, joined more than 30 other speakers for the expansive virtual program. The day-long agenda included remarks by former United States Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, AIPG instructor and alumnus Dr. Hikmet Karcic, and Dr. Emir Suljagić, Director of the Srebrenica Memorial Center, among other prominent names in the field.
For his part, Dr. Waller delivered a talk entitled “Srebrenica as a Call to Action: Fighting Denial and Impunity through Prevention,” which focused on the continued importance of the Srebrenica Genocide to the field of contemporary atrocity prevention. Later in the day, Dr. Ghindea contributed a segment entitled “A Shared Desire: Regional Efforts to Prevent Genocide,” which discussed the specific ways in which the legacy of the Srebrenica Genocide has shaped the work on atrocity prevention being done in the region and the work of the Auschwitz Institute’s Mediterranean Basin Program.
For more information on “Denial and Triumphalism: Origins, Impact, and Prevention,” please visit https://srebrenica25.ba. To view the full recording of the event on YouTube, please click here.