Earlier this week I had the honour to Chair the APPG on Conflict Issues as we hosted Lieutenant-General Romeo Dallaire who has been a member of the Canadian Senate but, more famously, was Force Commander of UNAMIR, the UN peacekeeping mission deployed to Rwanda before the genocide in 1994. Lieutenant-General Dallaire warned…
I attended a very special memorial service in St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, last Friday. Like similar events across Europe, we were remembering the Srebrenica Genocide of July 1995: the cold blooded murder of 8327 Bosnian men and boys by Bosnian Serbs, and the rape and abuse of the women and girls left…
I attended a moving and powerful Holocaust Memorial Day Ceremony yesterday. This annual event provides a focal point around the world to remember the horrors of Auschwitz, Kristallnacht and the March of Death. Holocaust Memorial Day events also recall the genocides since: Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Survivors spoke of their losses, and of their…
As a Mathematician with a lifelong passion for numbers I have always liked statistics. I am wary of them, of course. ‘There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics” may be an overused quotation, but it does contain a grain of truth. In the wrong hands, ‘facts’ are not always what they…
Our event this week in Bujumbura (introduced in my previous blog) is split into two parts. Special UN Envoy Mary Robinson’s consultation and mobilisation in support of the Framework of Hope will be followed by a Great Lakes Regional Conference on United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 –…
