Note to Correspondents

United Nations, International Bar Association to Mark Anniversary of Nuremberg

 

Trials in Round-Table Discussion on Justice, Accountability, 9 November

On 9 November, the United Nations Department of Public Information, in partnership with the International Bar Association,  will organize a roundtable discussion entitled, “Justice and Accountability after the Holocaust”, to examine the failure of the judiciary in Germany to safeguard the rights of individuals under Nazi rule and the responsibility of States and the courts today to protect their populations.  Held in observance of the sixty‑fifth anniversary of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, the event will take place from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. in the Economic and Social Council Chamber at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

In Nuremberg, the world was to hold accountable for the first time perpetrators of the yet to be defined crime of genocide.  Justice Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor for the United States in Nuremberg, recognized the significance of this important milestone in history when he warned, in his opening statement, that civilization could afford no compromise in bringing the accused to justice.  The Nuremberg trials would help to lay the legal foundation for international tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, as well as the Rome Statute, under which the International Criminal Court was established.

The event will be opened by Stéphane Dujarric, as Officer‑in‑Charge of the Department of Public Information.  Speakers will include Cecile Aptel, Co‑Chair of the International Bar Association’s War Crimes Committee and Professor at Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; Irwin Cotler, Member of Parliament and former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada; Patricia Heberer, an historian with the Centre for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; and Karen Odaba Mosoti, Head of the Liaison Office of the International Criminal Court to the United Nations.  Ramu Damodaran, Deputy Director for Partnerships and Public Engagement, Outreach Division, United Nations Department of Public Information, will moderate.

This event also marks the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogrom, which took place in Nazi Germany in November 1938.  

The International Bar Association is the world’s leading organization of international legal practitioners, bar associations and law societies.  Its principal aims are to promote an exchange of information between legal associations; to support the independence of the judiciary and the legal profession; and to promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law through the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute.  The Association’s membership consists of more than 200 of the world’s bar associations and law societies, and more than 45,000 individual lawyers.  For more information on the IBA, please visit www.ibanet.org.

The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme was established in 2006 by United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 to further education about and remembrance of the Holocaust, in order to help prevent future genocide.  Its multifaceted programme includes online and print educational products, seminars, a film series, and the annual worldwide observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, on 27 January.

For more information about the programme, please visit www.un.org/holocaustremembrance.  Registration for the roundtable discussion can be done online at holocaustremembrance@un.org.

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For information media • not an official record