As the UN’s Summit of the Future commences on September 22, 2024, this forum asks global scholars of Holocaust literature alongside human rights advocates and UN practitioners to ponder the nexus between Holocaust literature and human rights, and the role this literature can play in promoting a “safer, more peaceful, more just, more equal, more inclusive, more sustainable, and more prosperous world.”
Panelists will discuss the role of Holocaust literature in educating about genocide, including its limitations, how this past might work to negotiate human rights difficulties in the present, and to ponder the role of Holocaust literacy in promoting an ethical society.
The forum is opportunity for those who work to promote human rights and prevent genocide and related crimes, to consider how literature helps in their day-to-day work, including fulfilling UN mandates. Similarly, it is opportunity for literature scholars to consider how aesthetics and cultural artefact play a role in informing and influencing practitioners who work in the international humanitarian sector.
The forum is to be equally shared between experts on literature and human rights, enabling a robust conversation that spans both the advantages and disadvantages of engaging with this body of literature.
The forum is supported by the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the UK Arts and Humanities Reseach Council, Washington University in St. Louis, and Leeds University.
Speaker Bios
With a PhD in Education from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, Jean-Damascène Gasanabo has substantial experience working with the United Nations, international non-governmental organizations, non-profit organizations, and governments on projects related to atrocity crimes and equitable and sustainable education curricula. He served as Consultant for the United Nations Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and Consultant for UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and in Somalia. He also headed the Support Department in charge of Research and Communications at Geneva Call, a Geneva-based NGO, Switzerland. As the Director General of the Research and Documentation Center on Genocide at the Rwanda National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), he managed and led research projects as well as designed, implemented, monitored, and assessed projects related to the Genocide against the Tutsi. Key projects included the digitization of forty-five million pages and four thousand audio-visual materials from Rwanda’s Gacaca Courts, the preservation of textiles at the Nyamata genocide memorial site, the preservation of bodies at the Murambi genocide memorial site, and the preservation of artifacts in six other national genocide memorial sites in Rwanda. Between 2013 and 2015, he participated in a team responsible for designing Rwanda’s new national education curriculum for history and civic education. He is currently Consultant with International Organizations.
Tabea Linhard
Tabea Linhard is a Professor of Spanish, Global Studies, and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in from Duke University in 2001 and has been at Washington University since 2003. Her research focuses on displacement and asylum in the 1930s and 1940s, and she has published extensively on Migration and Refugee Studies, Spanish and Mexican literature and film, Memory Studies, Jewish Studies, and Mediterranean Studies. She is the author of three monographs, Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (Stanford University, 2023), Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory (Stanford, 2014), Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War (U of Missouri, 2005), and two edited volumes, Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space (Palgrave, 2018) and Revisiting Jewish Spain in the Modern Era (Routledge, 2013).
Tabea Linhard is a Professor of Spanish, Global Studies, and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her PhD in from Duke University in 2001 and has been at Washington University since 2003. Her research focuses on displacement and asylum in the 1930s and 1940s, and she has published extensively on Migration and Refugee Studies, Spanish and Mexican literature and film, Memory Studies, Jewish Studies, and Mediterranean Studies. She is the author of three monographs, Unexpected Routes: Refugee Writers in Mexico (Stanford University, 2023), Jewish Spain: A Mediterranean Memory (Stanford, 2014), Fearless Women in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War (U of Missouri, 2005), and two edited volumes, Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space (Palgrave, 2018) and Revisiting Jewish Spain in the Modern Era (Routledge, 2013).
Her current projects include Agents’ Secrets, a monograph that explores the relationship between gender and espionage during the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the early years of the Cold War, a contribution on “Writing the Holocaust in Latin America” to the Cambridge History of Holocaust Literature, as well as chapter on “Mediterranean Geographies” for the Oxford Handbook of Migration and Literature. She recently co-facilitated the 2024 Curt C. and Else Silberman Faculty Seminar at the United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial on “Refugees and the Holocaust.”
At Washington University she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Spanish and Spanish American literature and cultural studies, the Holocaust, global migration, memory, and human rights. She is a founding member of the Genealogies of Sepharad research collective, a Principal Investigator for the Moving Stories research initiative, and a member of the Board of Directors of the MICA (Migrant and Immigrant Community Action) Project in St. Louis.
Alice Wairimu Nderitu
Alice Wairimu Nderitu of Kenya is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Ms Nderitu is a recognized voice in the field of peacebuilding and atrocity crimes prevention. As mediator of armed conflicts, she served as a member of the African Unions Network of African Women in Conflict Prevention and Mediation (Fem-Wise), the Women Waging Peace Network and Global Alliance of Women Mediators. She contributed to defining the role of women mediators, as one of the few women who are signatories to peace agreements as a mediator.
Alice Wairimu Nderitu of Kenya is United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Ms Nderitu is a recognized voice in the field of peacebuilding and atrocity crimes prevention. As mediator of armed conflicts, she served as a member of the African Unions Network of African Women in Conflict Prevention and Mediation (Fem-Wise), the Women Waging Peace Network and Global Alliance of Women Mediators. She contributed to defining the role of women mediators, as one of the few women who are signatories to peace agreements as a mediator.
She notably, led several processes as mediator, including as the only woman in a 16-month peace process involving 100 elders and 3 mediators, resulting in the Nakuru County Peace Accord signed by 10 ethnic communities in Nakuru, Kenya. Alice then became the lead mediator in a peace process in Kaduna State, Nigeria leading to the Kafanchan Peace Declaration, signed by 29 ethnic communities. She was also the lead mediator in a process in Plateau State in Nigeria, leading to the Southern Plateau Inter-Communal Peace Declaration signed by 56 ethnic communities. She also led the founding of Community Voices for Peace and Pluralism, a network of African women professionals preventing, transforming, violent, ethnic, racial, and religious conflicts worldwide.
She previously served as Commissioner of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) in Kenya, established to respond to the 2008 post-election crisis, mediate religious, ethnic and race related conflicts, counter and address hate speech and promote peaceful and harmonious coexistence. In this role, she also co-founded and was the first Co-Chair of the Uwiano Platform for Peace, pioneering, in 2010, the use of mobile technology in reporting indicators of violence, including hate speech, therefore linking early warning to early response. She previously also supported several countries globally in setting up mechanisms linking early warnings to early response at all levels, including at the community and national levels.
She also served as Director, Education for Social Justice at Fahamu, headed the human rights education department of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and was a Commonwealth Exchange Fellow at the South African Human Rights Commission. She was also a member of the Concerned Citizens for Peace, a group of Elders facilitating peace confidentially between African leaders at the highest levels.
She is an Aspen Leadership scholarship recipient, a Transitional Justice Fellow, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, South Africa, and Global Raphael Lemkin course alumni. She also served as Summer Course faculty at SIT Graduate School, Vermont, Brattleboro, USA and lecturer for the Socio-Economic Rights course at Pretoria University’s Centre for Human Rights, South Africa. She was a facilitator of the Senior Mission Leaders Course at the International Peace Support Training Center, Kenya and the Rwanda Military Academy, Rwanda.
Widely published, Ms. Nderitu is also the recipient of several global awards recognizing her commitment to peaceful conflict transformation and her innovative approach to mediation. Ms. Nderitu holds an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Keene State College, a Master’s Degree in Armed Conflict and Peace Studies and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Literature and Philosophy from the University of Nairobi.
Zoe Norridge is a Reader in African and Comparative Literature and Visual Cultures at King’s College London. She researches contemporary arts in Rwanda and cultural responses to the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi. Her work often involves collaborations with artists and survivors and she has convened numerous workshops, events and exhibitions of photography in Rwanda and the UK. Her translation of Yolande Mukagasana’s survivor testimony Not My Time to Die was published by Huza Press in 2019. She has also made two BBC radio documentaries: Rwanda’s Returnees and Living with Memory in Rwanda. She is former Chair of the Ishami Foundation, and an associate Editor at Wasafiri magazine, and a member of the UK Holocaust Memorial Day Trust’s Expert Reference Group. She edited a special issue of Wasafiri on Human Rights Cultures in Rwanda, Kenya, Colombia and Argentina with the Kenyan writer Billy Kahora.
Savita Pawnday
Ms. Savita Pawnday is the Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Established in 2008 with the support of international human rights leaders, including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as supportive governments and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group, the Global Centre is the world’s leading research and advocacy organization for advancing the international norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the United Nations and beyond. The Global Centre works to prevent mass atrocity crimes – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing – throughout the world.
Ms. Savita Pawnday is the Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Established in 2008 with the support of international human rights leaders, including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, as well as supportive governments and organizations such as Human Rights Watch and International Crisis Group, the Global Centre is the world’s leading research and advocacy organization for advancing the international norm of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) at the United Nations and beyond. The Global Centre works to prevent mass atrocity crimes – genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing – throughout the world.
Savita is a foremost expert on R2P and atrocity prevention. Over the last decade, she has worked extensively with and advised a wide range of governments and the United Nations on how to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Savita has routinely convened Foreign Ministers and other high level policy makers on R2P to mobilize action to protect populations from atrocity crimes. In 2010, Savita was instrumental in conceptualizing and launching the Global Network of R2P Focal Points. Now with over 60 countries, the Global Network of R2P Focal Points is the largest network of senior government officials of its kind. She is also a founding Steering Group member of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC).
Savita has led Global Centre’s work on UN peacekeeping, international justice mechanisms, Women, Peace and Security, and advocacy on specific country situations where populations are at risk of atrocities, such as Syria, Myanmar, South Sudan, Yemen and Ethiopia. She has written and published extensively on R2P and atrocity prevention. Savita is regularly invited by governments, the United Nations, NGOs, academic institutions, and other international multilateral organizations from around the globe to speak on R2P.
Prior to joining the Global Centre, Savita worked in various capacities as a researcher and a project manager. She has worked in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi with Catholic Relief Services, in New York with Trickle Up and in India with a few grassroots NGOs. She holds an M.A. from Fordham University in political economy and development, with a specialization in political economy of civil wars, and a B.A. in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, University of Mumbai.
Kirril Shields
Dr. Kirril Shields is a Senior Director at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect where here manages projects in the region that work to curb atrocity and human rights abuse. He works as an Expert Consultant for the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and R2P and has worked for the World Bank and the World Health Organisation in Mongolia. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, and he writes on topics that include foreign affairs and regional politics. Working with organisations in the South-east Asian region, he leads the Centre’s training on the prevention of hate speech and disinformation, and he lectures at UQ on topics such as the literature, the Holocaust, the history of genocide, world affairs and politics, and humanitarianism.
Dr. Kirril Shields is a Senior Director at the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect where here manages projects in the region that work to curb atrocity and human rights abuse. He works as an Expert Consultant for the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and R2P and has worked for the World Bank and the World Health Organisation in Mongolia. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, and he writes on topics that include foreign affairs and regional politics. Working with organisations in the South-east Asian region, he leads the Centre’s training on the prevention of hate speech and disinformation, and he lectures at UQ on topics such as the literature, the Holocaust, the history of genocide, world affairs and politics, and humanitarianism.