Values in Retreat? Is the Resurgence of “Transactional” Foreign Policy Hindering the Prevention of Mass Atrocities and the Promotion of the Rule of Law?

The Lemkin Reunion, 6th Annual Meeting

Shattuck Center, School for Public Policy, Central European University Budapest

April 23-24, 2020

The sixth Lemkin Reunion in April 2020 will examine the resurgence of “transactional” foreign policy and the challenges it poses for the prevention of atrocities and promotion of the rule of law.

The Shattuck Center invites practitioners, experts and scholars at all levels to present papers and articles at the 6th annual Lemkin Reunion. Applicants should send their CVs and 300-word (max) abstracts to [email protected] no later than February 7, 2020. Selected applicants will be contacted by February 17, 2020.

We are very excited to announce that Alhakam Shaar will represent the Aleppo Project at the upcoming Beirut Innovation in Politics Forum, which takes place in the Lebanese capital on December 18th.

The Beirut Innovation in Politics Forum (BIP Forum) is an annual multi-format forum for committed and creative change-makers, concentrated on innovative solutions for pressing political challenges in the MENA region. By gathering international expertise from organizations, projects, companies and individuals, BIP Forum is exposing and debating innovation in politics in its practical and theoretical aspects. We aim to identify inventive approaches and methodologies from various backgrounds, contributing to an understanding of democracy, freedom, and innovation from different perspectives in the MENA region.

Register here

For more information please click here

March 2019 marks eight years since people in a wide web of villages and cities across the Syrian landscape took to the streets in defiance of the Assad family’s rule. Initially responding with gunfire, imprisonment and torture, the regime’s strategy evolved into the carpet bombing and mass destruction of whole rural and urban communities, culminating in the forced transfer of all remaining residents from areas such as Ghouta and eastern Aleppo, which remain largely uninhabited. Although the fighting has ebbed, the war in Syria has not ended and a political settlement has not been reached. The near ten million displaced, mainly in harsh conditions in and around Syria, do not feel safe to return to their neighbourhoods and villages. However, the Syrian government has promulgated laws enabling the construction of development projects where displaced communities once resided with no or few guarantees of compensation for displaced property owners. One such project, Marota City, plotted over the demolished informal district of Basateen al-Razi, is already under construction. What will reconstruction under the current conditions serve? Under what conditions can reconstruction in Syria be equitable?

Each year the Shattuck Center hosts the Lemkin Reunion, a gathering named in honor of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who lost his family in the Holocaust and first coined the word genocide. He campaigned tirelessly during his life to ensure that the crime of genocide was codified as an international crime. The Lemkin Reunion gathers policymakers involved in responding to atrocity crimes and assesses the lessons they learned.

As part of the Aleppo project activities, the Shattuck Center on Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery (Shattuck CCNR) at the Central European University (CEU) is pleased to invite you to attend a workshop to establish a participatory planning system for the city of Aleppo. The workshop will take place in Berlin on Saturday, April 15, 2017 from 12:00 – 18:00.