The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR), together with the Office of the Special Advisers on the Prevention of Genocide (OSAPG), and the Stanley Foundation, along with the support of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), began the third cycle of the Raphael Lemkin Seminar for the Latin American Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. The weeklong training took place February 14-21, 2016, in Poland.
The Seminar welcomed the participation of 21 government officials from different member countries of the Latin American Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (the Latin American Network). As with previous iterations, participants benefitted from the “power of place” intrinsic to the most notorious of the Nazi extermination camps in addressing important concepts and key tools for the prevention of genocide and other atrocities.
Sharing a similar configuration with the Global Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention, the first two days of the event followed the “situated learning” model of education with curricular modules and tours carried out on the grounds of Auschwitz. The subsequent days (3-5) were structured around the three stages that exist within the continuum of prevention strategies – primary (upstream), secondary (midstream), and tertiary (downstream). The week’s activities culminated on the sixth and final day by putting genocide and atrocity crimes prevention in action with a capstone simulation exercise.
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e second half of the 2016 Raphael Lemkin Seminar for the Latin American Network for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention will be held in mid-2016, within a member country of the Network. This will complete the third cycle of bi-annual seminars agreed upon by the member countries of the Latin American Network.
Eugenia Carbone, Director of AIPR’s Latin America Program, said:
The initiation of the third cycle of the Raphael Lemkin Seminar for the Latin American Network has a special symbolic value, as it represents the sustained commitment by the countries of the region that is apparent not only in the active participation in these training efforts, but also in the continued strengthening of a community of government officials sensitive to, and willing to work on, issues of prevention at the regional level.