Prof. Fred Grünfeld (January 2011)

In January prof. Fred Grünfeld visited ACIC. Fred Grünfeld is Professor of the Causes of Gross Human Rights Violations (PIOOM-Chair) at the Centre for Conflict Studies at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is also Associated Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Law in the Department of International and European Law at Maastricht University and the Maastricht Centre for Human Rights and at the University College Maastricht, the Netherlands. In 2007 Fred Grünfeld published the book ‘The failure to prevent genocide in Rwanda: the role of bystanders’ (together with Anke Huijboom). The book was published by Transnational Publishers/Martinus Nijhoff.

In this research seminar he gave to our students he focused on the role of bystanders in gross human rights violations at national and international level. Victims and perpetrators are often referred to as two completely separate and homogenous sets of people. However, the reality of many post-conflict situations is more complex. Neither all victims nor all perpetrators are the same and the two groups are rarely separate and distinct. It is in particular the relationship between these actors at different time periods that matters. Some individuals are both victims and perpetrators or were victims and became primarily perpetrators. During the seminarthe students focused on the bystander’s role at the national and international level for different time periods. What matters is the interaction between the bystanders and the other two actors, the perpetrators and the victims. Furthermore, the ultimate power of bystander states and international organizations to redress and stop international crimes and gross human rights violations were discussed. Questions on prevention and the preventative stage, which includes measures to ensure that a conflict or atrocities do not escalate further, were also addressed.

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