agenda

agenda

9:00-09:45

Guided tour in Matenadaran for international guests

9:30-10:00

Registration of participants 

10:00

OPENING OF THE FORUM

Moderator            

Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, Endowed Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Keene State College; Co-founder of Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention     

OPENING REMARKS BY

  • Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia 
  • Video message by António Guterres, UN Secretary General, on the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime
  • Ararat Mirzoyan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia
  • Alice Wairimu Nderitu, UN Under-Secretary-General, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide

HIGH-LEVEL SEGMENT – PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE IN THE ERA OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES

  • Melanie O’Brien, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS); Associate Professor of International Law
  • Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, Chair of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC)
  • Federico Villegas, President of the United Nations Human Rights Council; Permanent Representative of Argentina to the United Nations Office in Geneva
  • Fabián Salvioli, UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-recurrence
  • Message on behalf of UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay to be delivered by Cecilia Barbieri, Chief of Section on Global Citizenship and Peace Education
  • Angelos Syrigos, Deputy Minister of Education and Religious Affairs of the Hellenic Republic, Associate Professor of International Law and Foreign Policy
  • Video message by Samantha Power, Administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID)
  • Verene Albertha Shepherd, Chairperson of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) (online)

11:30

Coffee Break

12:00

PLENARY SESSION. THE ROLE AND USE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN PREVENTING GENOCIDE AND ADVANCING ACCOUNTABILITY EFFORTS

Moderator

Savita Pawnday, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect                                                       

Speakers

  • Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
  • Daniel Bekele, Chief Commissioner of the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission
  • Kyle Matthews, Executive Director of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, Concordia University
  • Henry Theriault, Associate Vice-President for Academic Affairs at Worcester State University (online)
  • Rhiannon Neilsen, Cyber Security Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University

13:00

DISCUSSION/Q&A

13:30

LUNCH BREAK

14:30

PANEL ONE. MISUSE OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND RISK OF GENOCIDE

Moderator

Armen Marsoobian, Professor of Philosophy, Southern Connecticut State University; First Vice President of International Association of Genocide Scholars

           Panelists

  • Narek Poghosyan, Researcher at the Department of Comparative Genocide Studies of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute
  • Elisenda Calvet Martinez, Assistant Professor of International Law at the University of Barcelona; Member of the Executive Board of the International Association of Genocide Scholars
  • Bahru Zewde, Emeritus Professor of History at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia
  • Christopher Tuckwood, Executive Director of the Sentinel Project, Canada
  • Philippe Boukara, Education Program Coordinator, Historian, Shoah Memorial, France

15:30

DISCUSSION/Q&A

16:00

COFFEE BREAK

16:30

PANEL TWO. SOCIAL PLATFORMS AS A TOOL FOR THE DISSEMINATION OF HATE – PREVENTIVE MEASURES

                                Moderator

Cecilia Barbieri, Chief of UNESCO Section on Global Citizenship and Peace Education

          Panelists

  • Ronan Lee, Doctoral Prize Fellow, Institute for Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University, London
  • Melanie O’Brien, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS); Associate Professor of International Law
  • Michal Vašečka, Director of the Bratislava Policy Institute, Slovakia
  • Patrick Hein, Lecturer, School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University, Japan
  • Robert van der Noordaa, Founder of “Trollrensics” company; Hybrid Warfare Expert, The Netherlands (online)

17:30-18:00

DISCUSSION/Q&A

10:00

PANEL THREE. NEW TECHNOLOGIES AND PROTECTION OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE CONTEXT OF GENOCIDE PREVENTION AND POST-GENOCIDE REHABILITATION

Moderator

Harutyun Marutyan, Director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute 

           Panelists

  • Salah Al Jabery, Head of UNESCO Chair on Genocide Prevention Studies in the Islamic World, University of Baghdad, Iraq
  • Lori Khatchadourian, Associate Professor, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Cornell University; Co-director of Caucasus Heritage Watch (online)
  • Šimon Krbec, Managing Director of Archaeology of Evil Research Centre and Coordinator of the Project “Theresienstadt Centre for Genocide Studies”, Czech Republic 
  • Vasileios Meichanetsidis, Genocide Scholar, National University of Athens
  • Tessa Hofmann, formerly a Research Associate at Freie Universität Berlin; an Independent Scholar of Armenian and Genocide Studies (online)

11:00

DISCUSSION/Q&A

11:30

COFFEE BREAK

12:00

CLOSING SESSION

Closing remarks by Vahe Gevorgyan, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia

ADOPTION OF A DECLARATION ON JOINT ACTION

12:30

LUNCH

13:00

SIDE EVENT: BOOK LAUNCH – FROM DISCRIMINATION TO DEATH

Moderator

Suren Manukyan, Head of UNESCO Chair on Prevention of Genocide and Other Atrocity Crimes at the Yerevan State University; Head of Department of Comparative Genocide Studies at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute 

Speakers

  • Alice Wairimu Nderitu, UN Under-Secretary-General, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide
  • Nicholas Koumjian, Head of the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar
  • Melanie O’Brien, President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) (author)