100 Years since the End of the First World War, 70 Years after the Genocide Convention: Reflections on Mass Violence in the Middle East Today

Speakers:

• Uğur Ümit Üngör, Associate Professor at the Department of History, Utrecht University

• Vicken Cheterian, political analyst and Lecturer, Webster University & University of Geneva

Moderator:

• Aude Merlin, Lecturer in Political Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

 Click HERE to register

December 9, 2018 is the 70^th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations General Assembly of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Yet neither this Convention nor later initiatives have put an end to mass violence.

This conference will focus on one region, the Middle-East, which has experienced many episodes of mass violence in the last 100 years, most recently with the massacres of the Yezidis in Iraq and Syria.

On December 13, two accomplished academics, Ugur Ümit Ungor and Vicken Cheterian will examine the region’s history. They will try to explain the present. Could it be that ignorance or the wilful suppression of history have helped perpetuate patterns of violence? Can the exploration of history help change those patterns for the future?

The conference is organized by the Belgian Collective for the Prevention of Crimes of Genocide and Against Negationisms in partnership with the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU Europe), the research unit on political life of the Free University of Brussels (Cevipol), the International Roma Youth Network (Ternype) and the European Union Jewish Students (EUJS). 

About the speakers

Uğur Ümit Üngör is Associate Professor at the Department of History at Utrecht University and Research Fellow at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam. His main areas of interest are state formation and nation formation, with a particular focus on mass violence. His most recent publications include Genocide: New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses and Consequences (Amsterdam University Press, 2016, ed.), Confiscation and Destruction: The Young Turk Seizure of Armenian Property (Continuum, 2011) and the award-winning The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2011). He is an editor of the Journal of Perpetrator Research, and coordinator of the Syrian Oral History project at NIOD. He is currently leading an NGO-funded research project on paramilitarism and completing the book Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2019), as well as a book on state violence in Syria.

Vicken Cheterian is a journalist and political analyst. He teaches international relations at Webster University, Geneva, and lectures in the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva. His books include Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide (C Hurst, 2015), From Perestroika to Rainbow Revolutions: Reform and Revolution after Communism (C Hurst, 2013), and War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier (C Hurst, 2009)

About the Belgian Collective
Created in 2015, the Belgian Collective for the Prevention of Crimes of Genocide and Against Negationisms is composed of associations linked with groups that have suffered genocides. It includes the following entities:

-        Association des Arméniens démocrates de Belgique
-        Centre Communautaire Laïc Juif David Susskind
-        Centre pour la prévention des crimes contre l’Humanité
-        Comité des Arméniens de Belgique
-        Fédération Assyrienne de Belgique
-        Fédération des Araméens de Belgique
-        Ibuka Mémoire & Justice
-        Izuba
-        Institut Syriaque de Belgique
-        La nuit rwandaise
-        Muyira Art & Mémoire
-        Seyfo Center Belgique
-        Union des Rescapés du génocide des Tutsi

For info, on 13/12, Uğur Ümit Üngör will also be talking at ULB (Université Libre de Bruxelles) during a workshop from 2pm to 5pm on Post-ottoman Co-existence. More info here: Post-ottoman Co-existence