Memorialization Archives - Hume O'Neill Peace Blog

The sixth seminar in the Dealing with the Past series entitled “Memorialization as Truth-Telling: Lessons from the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation” was hosted online on 21 October 2020, 58 people attended.

The seminar was given by Sara Bradshaw, Program Director for Transitional Justice at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC). The seminar discussed the opportunities, challenges and best practices for local-level memorialization efforts to serve as truth-telling initiatives in the absence of formal truth commissions. The seminar used practical examples and case studies from the Global Initiative for Justice, Truth and Reconciliation (GIJTR), a consortium of nine partners led by the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. Lessons focused on cases in Colombia, Sri Lanka, South Sudan, The Gambia, and other conflict and post-conflict contexts. These explored how community-driven truth-telling initiatives can help ensure that all members of society, particularly marginalized groups such as women and minorities, are able to share their stories and contribute to sustainable peace.

The seminar is part of the Transitional Justice Institute (TJI) and INCORE, in partnership with Healing Through Remembering and the John Hume and Thomas P. O’Neill Chair in Peace, online seminar series.

On the 16 of April 2019 the Chair hosted Dr. Carl Stauffer. Stauffer teaches Restorative and Transitional Justice at the graduate Center for Justice and Peacebuilding (CJP), at Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, USA. He concurrently serves as Co-Director of CJP’s Zehr Institute of Restorative Justice and is the Academic Director of the Caux Scholars Program in Switzerland. A seminar was hosted by the Chair jointly by INCORE and TJI entitled “Memorialization: Remembering without Revenge”. In the seminar Dr Stauffer tackled the collective memory of historical harms. The point was made that it is no longer a question of if we will remember, it is instead a question of how we will remember past atrocities. Building on the work of Mirolsav Volf, the seminar wrestled with the question of whether it is possible to “remember rightly in a violent world?”