Conference: "Continuing Crisis in Darfur"

[marct]

I just got this announcement and thought I should post it.

Marc

Conference: "Continuing Crisis in Darfur"

November 9-11, 2007
University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada)

Presented By:

Canadian Centre for Genocide Education
STAND Canada (Students Taking Action Now: Darfur)
STAND Ottawa - University of Ottawa
CASTS (Canadian Against Slavery and Torture in Sudan)
Department of History - University of Ottawa
Faculty of Law, Common Law Section - University of Ottawa
SHOUT (Students Helping Others Understand Tolerance) Ottawa
Armenian National Committee of Canada
WUSC (World University Service of Canada)
Genocide Watch (Washington, DC)

Support By:

Courtyard By Marriott, Ottawa
Les Suites Hotel, Ottawa

In early, 2003, rebel groups in Darfur, the western region of Sudan, started attacking government forces and installations there, having accused the Sudanese government of neglecting the region and oppressing black Africans in favour of Arabs. The Sudanese government responded by arming Arab Janjaweed militia for the purpose of attacking the civilian populations of the black African tribes from which the rebels were primarily drawn, precipitating what the United Nations has characterized as the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe. Indeed, the United Nations has estimated that some 400,000 people have lost their lives and that some two million more have been driven from their homes, as thousands of villages have been systematically destroyed. The rape of women - some really only girls - has been widespread and systematic.

On November 9-11, 2007, a conference on the continuing crisis in Darfur will be held at the University of Ottawa. The conference will bring together many of the genocide scholars, Africanists and Sudanists, and Canadian humanitarian workers and activists who are working on Darfur. Among the speakers will be Major Brent Beardsley, the Operations Manager for Canadian Lieuteant-General Romeo Dallaire, Force Commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda; Mr. Nigel Fisher, the President & CEO of UNICEF Canada, who led the agency's recovery operations in the Great Lakes region after the Rwandan Genocide in 1994; Professor Robert O. Collins, who, having authored some 25 books and monographs on the history of Africa, Sudan, and the Nile, is considered a foremost specialist on the history of Sudan; Dr. Gregory Stanton, President of Genocide Watch in Washington, DC, and a renowned genocide scholar and activist; and Professor Samuel Totten (University of Arkansas), a member of the Darfur Atrocities Documentation Team of the United States Department of State and also a renowned genocide scholar and activist.

Come and learn not only about the continuing crisis in Darfur, but international responses, including humanitarian responses and activism.

Registration Fee:

Scholars: $50.00
Public: $35.00
Students: $25.00 (Free billets available for out-of-town students)

For more information, please visit the website of the Canadian Centre for Genocide Education <www.genocideeducation.ca> or e-mail <darfur@genocideeducation.ca>.

[Rex Brynen]

The McGill University Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism is privileged to host the first major international conference of its kind on the prevention of genocide. From October 11th to 13th, 2007, in Montreal, Canada, The Global Conference on the Prevention of Genocide will bring together from around the world survivors, witnesses, legislators, diplomats, activists and others whose lives have been forever changed by humanity’s most horrific invention. It represents the first major non-governmental conference on genocide since the United Nations, in 1948, first moved to label and criminalize what Winston Churchill once called “the crime that has no name.” The Conference will open a dialogue between decision-makers and genocide survivors, between the leaders of this generation and those of the next, with the goal of exploring means of preventing genocidal violence, rather than focusing on ad hoc intervention.

Conference speakers include Roméo Dallaire, Gareth Evans, Luis Moreno Ocampo (current ICC chief prosecutor), Jan Pronk (former Sudan SRSG), and many others.

Details here (I'll be attending).