WASHINGTON—The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, today announced the following briefing:
TRUTH, RECONCILIATION, & HEALING
Toward a Unified Future
Thursday, July 18, 2019
10:00 a.m – 12:00 p.m.
Rayburn House Office Building
Room 2167
Live Webcast: www.facebook.com/HelsinkiCommission
Today, many countries seek to address historic wrongs, heal wounds, bridge divisions, and build a shared future. Truth and reconciliation efforts to encourage restitution, reparations, and restorative justice have been called for in many places, including the United States, Western Europe, Canada, and the Balkans, while Holocaust survivors and other victims of Nazi persecution continue to seek justice worldwide.
For example, in June, Amsterdam city councilors voted to apologize for the city’s role in the transatlantic slave trade. In April, Belgium’s Prime Minister Charles Michel apologized for the kidnapping of thousands of children born to mixed-race couples during its colonial rule in several African countries. In 2015, Sweden published a historic white paper on abuses and rights violations against Roma in the 20th century. A decade ago, Canada established a reconciliation process in response to the Indian Residential School legacy, which forced First Nation children to attend government-funded boarding schools.
At this briefing, panelists will review lessons learned and discuss ways to heal and reunify societies divided by war, genocide, hierarchal systems of human value, and other tragedies stemming from extreme nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of ethnic and religious discrimination. Speakers will address official government apologies, truth and reconciliation processes, restitution, reparations, and other policy prescriptions that have been used or are currently being considered to address historic wrongs and unify citizens in countries across Europe and North America.
The following speakers are scheduled to participate:
- Dr. Gail C. Christopher, Founder, Ntianu Center; Chair, Board of the Trust for America’s Health
- Ambassador Stuart Eizenstat, Author, “Imperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor,” and “The Unfinished Business of World War II;” Senior Counsel, Covington
- The Hon. Tracy Tansia Bibo, former City Councilor, Liedekerke, Belgium
- Councilor Don Ceder, Municipal Councilor, City of Amsterdam, the Netherlands
- The Hon. Soraya Post, former Member of the European Parliament, Sweden
- Dr. Diane Orentlicher, Professor of International Law, American University; former Special Advisor to the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe; Author, “Some Kind of Justice: The ICTY’s Impact in Bosnia and Serbia”
