Boston, MA – Today at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, discussed the challenges facing international justice today. Ms. Arbour gave the keynote address during a special Kennedy Library Forum commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials. The speech entitled The Right to Life and the Responsibility to Protect in the Modern Age (doc) reflected on the anniversary of Nuremberg Trials and discussed what needs to be done in today’s world to help end human suffering:
This anniversary inevitably brings us back to the events that triggered the Nuremberg trials: the horrors of the holocaust and the unprecedented human suffering brought about during the Second World War. Fifty-five million people lost their lives in the course of that brutal conflict and many more lives were altered forever as the impact of the war is still felt today by survivors, their families and their wider communities…. Our efforts to protect life will forever fall short until we develop that fuller understanding: an understanding which requires us to acknowledge, and act on, the realization that intervening to halt mass killings will never be as effective as our aspirations demand without a more nuanced, more holistic understanding of the ingredients of that right…. For so long as we continue, consciously or otherwise, to remain within the confines of the old, unspoken orthodoxies which view human rights as inherently intrusive and antithetical to state interests; for so long as we continue to view human rights violations as being of concern only when committed on a scale such as to threaten international peace and security; and, in this regard, for so long as we remain blind to the fact that the root of our collective security lies in our individual well-being, then the rhetoric of New York will amount to nothing.
Following Louise Arbour’s remarks, the UN High Commissioner on Human
Rights entered into a discussion with Martha Minow, Jeremiah Smith, Jr., Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and took questions from members of the audience listening to her remarks in the Stephen Smith Center at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Following the conversation with Louise Arbour, the Kennedy Presidential Library hosted a panel discussion with survivors of genocide who discussed the many issues surrounding accountability and justice for genocide survivors and victims. Participants in this panel discussion included Jasmina Cesic from Bosnia, Mardi Seng from Cambodia, Sonia Weitz who survived the Holocaust, Richard Nsanzabaganwa from Rwanda and Mohamed Yahya from Darfur, Sudan. This forum was moderated by John Shattuck (remarks (doc) ), CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, former U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic, and former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Kennedy Library Forums are sponsored by: Bank of America, Boston Capital, The Lowell Institute, Corcoran Jennison Companies, The Boston Globe, 90.9 WBUR and boston.com
These two forums are made possible through the additional support of: The American Jewish Committee, Amnesty International, Anti-Defamation League, Carr Center for Human Rights, Facing History and Ourselves, Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies, Jewish Community Relations Council, Physicians for Human Rights and Reebok Human Rights Program.
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