David J. Simon, a Senior Lecturer in Global Affairs and the Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University, emphasizes that substantive discussions about genocide are crucial to prevent mass atrocities.
The Srebrenica Memorial Center recently held a presentation meeting in Sarajevo to present a legal analysis and reporting guidelines for the crime of genocide denial. The aim was to help overcome legal, academic, and institutional challenges to holding genocide deniers accountable.
“In a world plagued by division, mistrust and violence, the dark spectre of genocide is still with us,” stated United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the occasion of the International Day of Commemoration for Victims of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime, coinciding with the 76th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
Every year, the world is united in grief for the victims of genocide. In January, we remember the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. In July, we commemorate the more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys who were killed in Srebrenica. In recent years, memorialisations of the Holocaust and Srebrenica have increasingly involved closer cooperation between educators in both communities.