Inspired by the trainings of the Nansen Center for Peace and Dialogue, the Budapest Centre for Dialogue and Mass Atrocities Prevention completed its first interactive and practice oriented skills building in facilitation of dialogue being a tool for managing diversities, preventing and handling radicalization and violent conflicts. The three four hour sessions took place in cooperation with the College for Advanced Studies of Diplomacy in Practice at the Corvinus University of Budapest.
Based on the positive feedback received from the participants, the Budapest Centre will continue its skills building activities and tailor the agenda of the sessions to the needs of students, political activists and businesspersons with the view to increase their potentials for engaging in communication despite conflicting views.
The third piece of the series of webinars on the significance of dialogue in decision making mechanisms took place on 12 October, 2023. Practitioners shared their experience on the benefits of dialogue in the context of human rights and within the framework of global and regional multilateral organizations.
Kindly find the invitation to our Role of Dialogue in Multilateral Affairs Webinar on 12th (Thursday) October from 15.00-16.30 CET.
During this event former senior officials in the UN, OSCE and ICGLR will share their views and experience in using dialogue for addressing sustainably the challenges, in particular the pursuit of human rights and the risks of extreme crimes when shaping an inclusive multipolar world and multilateral system.
The Budapest Centre facilitated a series of dialogue between some members of the “far-right”, the Jewish, LGBTQ and Roma communities in the years of 2021-2022.
The experience of the series of dialogue has been published in the Hungarian Quarterly Review of Public Law in August 2023. The English version of the article you may wish to read here.
The General Assembly held a plenary meeting on the “Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” on 26 and 30 June as part of the formal agenda of its 77th session. As states gathered in the General Assembly to discuss challenges and best practices for the implementation of R2P, this year’s debate took place amidst the backdrop of alarming global levels of violence, persecution and conflict, including the outbreak of new conflicts in countries like Sudan with a recent history of atrocities
Click here to read the summary on this year's UN General Assembly Plenary Meeting on the Responsibility to Protect.
The 53rd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) was held in Geneva between 19 June and 14 July 2023. As the primary international human rights body, the HRC has the capacity to prevent and respond to mass atrocity crimes, as systematic violations and abuses of human rights can be an indicator of potential genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing.
Click here to read the summary which highlights major outcomes and relevant dialogues as they relate to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), atrocity prevention and populations at risk of atrocity crimes.
Watch here the interactive dialogue with the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, conducted at the 53rd Regular Session of Human Rights Council.
Atrocity alert No. 356: Sudan, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, Publication of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Click here.
PUBLICATION - Drawing on the crisis in Cameroon as an example, this article discusses how practitioners—especially policy makers and non-governmental advocates—can use the Simon-Skjodt Center’s Tools for Atrocity Prevention resource to inform and strengthen policy responses to specific cases. Click here.
VIDEO
PUBLICATION - Shirin Anlen and Raquel Vazquez Llorente highlight the potential of using AI tools to support human rights advocacy and social critique, without neglecting appropriate caution and ethical considerations. Click here.
PODCAST - Engaging with the powerful Click here to access this episode from the Centre of Humanitarian Dialogue with Haile Menkerios.
PUBLICATION - Kristina Hook and Ernesto Verdeja examine how social media misinformation (SMM) can worsen political instability and legitimize mass atrocities. They propose several recommendations for the instability and atrocity prevention community. Click here.
In his introductory intervention Mr Harald Weilnböck (Cultures Interactive, 6:58 - 25:05) argues for the need to replace the concept of extremism and term of prevention in favour of dialogue, education and skill building. He explained while dialogue builds bridges and connections, extremism and prevention tend inspire a habitus of intercepting, fighting and countering, while looking for dangers and enemies, hence tends to break off potential bridges and connections. It often even generates discrimination. Mr. Weilnböck points out we need a change of paradigm in order to better support democracy. Furthermore, Mr. Weilnböck shortly argued for the alternative concept of Group focused enmity/hatred, and Authorianism used in Germany and shared some good practice standards.
Mr. Mario Giro (29:04 - 45:45) calling himself as non-institutional mediator gave an overview of his peace making activities. He explained through concrete cases the difficulties and weaknesses of track 1.0 and track 2.0 diplomacy, argued for the combination of the state-guaranteed diplomacy and the flexible peace initiatives of the civil societies and spoke about the dilemmas of track 1.5 diplomacy where he was involved through Sant’Egidio Community. By referring to various conflict situations, he questioned the concept of ''war as a solution for conflicts'' and shared some lessons learned during his activities whilst highlighted the differences between peace agreeements and societal reconciliation.
Mr. Steinar Brynt (48:45 - 1:13:10) spoke about the dilemmas and similarities of the war of thenineties in Western Balkans and the war between Russia and Ukraine since 2014. He pointed to the fact that through the intensification of the conflict situation between the two countries dialogue became increasingly difficult and ultimately stopped. He touched upon issues of nation states, revival of traditionalism, possibilities and limitations of dialogue, the relationship building methodology, why we do not embrace dialogue, can dialogue be counterproductive under conflict and the need for finding a common language with those representing other concepts.
Mr. Gyorgy Tatar (1:35:05 - 1:48:35) highlighted the background and main objectives of the draft Statement circulated prior to the webinar. He initiated the establishment of an international Alliance of Dialogue for institutionalization of the tool of dialogue in international and national decision- making processes and inclusion of dialogue-related issues in the national educational curricula as well as the enhancement of collaboration of dialogue practitioners. Mr. Tatar invited the participants to give feedback on the initiative in the next few weeks.
Despite international progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), cities, particularly in the Global South, continue to grapple with[…]