Background
Respect and promotion of human rights, prevention of mass atrocities crimes (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity), development and operationalization of the Responsibility to Protect adopted at the UN World Summit in 2005 are high on the agenda of the International Community, including the European Union.Both UN and EU institutions recommend to raising awareness and building skills at national and regional levels to facilitate the implementation of the above-mentioned objectives.
Members of the Visegrad Group have been working together in several fields of common interest since the change of regime in 1989-1990, and their cooperation has further increased within the European Union. The prevention of violent conflicts and mass atrocities has opened up new possibilities for regional cooperation.
The Budapest Centre for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities launched a four semester Initiative in 2014 to arrange a series of workshops in the Visegrad Countries for building a common preventive framework to prevent mass atrocity crimes.
The workshops are aimed at:
- Building regional and national skills related to prevention of mass atrocities ;
- Contributing to the efforts of the International Community to effectively address the threats of mass atrocities;
- Strengthening the expertise and knowledge of mass atrocities prevention in EU institutions and governments, academia and youth of Member States;
- Supporting the International Community to act in concert;
- Promoting the dialogue on current issues and tasks related to the principle the Responsibility to Protect between international institutions, governments, academia and civil society;
- Creating national networks for the implementation of mass atrocities preventative strategies.
Implementation
The Budapest Centre for the International Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities, in collaboration with partners from the Visegrad Group (Milan Simecka Foundation, Slovakia; Transitions Online-TOL, Czech Republic; and the University of Gdansk, Poland), and supported by the International Visegrad Fund, arranged workshops in Budapest, in January 2014, in Bratislava in June 2014, and in Prague in February 2015.The next three-day workshop for members of the representatives of governmental institutions, academia and civil society will take place in Warsaw 05-07 October 2015.
The number of participants of each exercise is limited to twentyfive, including one representative of each member state of the Visegrad Group not hosting the training.
The project targets mainly the staffs in the Ministries of defence, interior, foreign affairs, justice and the intelligence services being potential participants of international peace-building and preventative activities as well as researchers and the civil society.
The Budapest Centre provides experts delivering lectures and facilitating the workshop as well as orchestrating the simulation exercise. In doing so, it relies on national capacities as much as possible.
All workshops are highly interactive, with a view to sharing knowledge, experience and best practices as well as assessing capacities in institutional and national mechanisms, and identify ways for enhancing collaboration.
Each programme is tailored to national requirements and takes account of timely issues.
Download the programme
V 4 Prevention – Prague Workshop Presentation
V4 Prevention – Warsaw Workshop Presentation
