Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention Alumni Meeting

The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation

The Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR) is building a world that prevents genocide and other mass atrocities. Through education, training, and technical assistance, AIPR supports states to develop or strengthen national mechanisms for the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities. AIPR also encourages and supports states to cooperate through regional and international arrangements to advance prevention.

The 2016 Raphael Lemkin Seminar for Genocide Prevention Alumni Meeting, brings together over 60 alumni, instructors, and staff from the Auschwitz Institute’s annual week-long training seminar held in Oświęcim, Poland. The 2016 Alumni Meeting is being held at San Servolo in Venice, Italy, to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the establishment of the city’s Jewish Ghetto. The two-day event will be comprised of a variety of programming, including lectures, group discussions, case studies, a walking tour of the Jewish Ghetto, and the development of regional networks.

The 2016 Raphael Lemkin Seminar Alumni Meeting fulfills two primary objectives. First, it provides a space for Lemkin Seminar alumni to come together in order to share the work they have done – both the successes and failures – towards the prevention of genocide, including national, regional, and international cooperative mechanisms. Second, it offers the Auschwitz Institute an opportunity to extend and continue the participants’ learning from their inaugural seminars in Poland, with a particular focus on the upstream prevention of genocide and mass atrocities as well as the historical and contemporary role of forced concentrations in the persecution and destruction of civilian populations