BU Research Blog

Marking the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime, Melanne Verveer, Former United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues said yesterday at an event in parliament: ‘today’s documentation is tomorrow’s prosecution’. This, in part at least, motivates MaGPIE’s continued mapping effort of mass graves.

The event in Westminster Palace focused on ‘Wounds Beyond War: Sexual and/or Reproductive Violence as Means of Genocide’. On invitation by Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws LT KC, the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, British Group Inter-Parliamentary Union, and the Coalition for Genocide Response, powerful testimonies and interventions were made by Alisa Kovalenko, survivor of Conflict Related Sexual Violence in Ukraine; Rahima Mahmut, Uyghur human rights defender; Melanne Verveer, Former United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues; and Christina Lamb, Sunday Times foreign correspondent and author of ‘Our bodies, their battlefield’.

In addition to experiencing the highest number of active conflicts since 1946, across all such situations, women and girls are subjected to sexual and/or reproductive violence. Where such crimes are targeting communities, such as ethnic, religious, national or racial groups, because of their group identity, and with the specific intent to destroy the groups, sexual and/or reproductive violence may be used as a means of genocide.

The event forms part of a series of efforts organised by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute and the British Group Inter-Parliamentary Union seeking to garner support for mass atrocity prevention and accountability efforts. This included a briefing to parliamentarians on mass grave evidence for criminal justice purposes by BU’s MaGPIE team. A large part of MaGPIE is dedicated to recording and documenting mass graves across the globe to give an understanding of scale of the issue.

This week also saw the first anniversary of the fall of the Assad regime and whilst the country is grappling with a vast array of issues, not least thousands of missing persons, it was heartening to visit the Independent Institution on Missing Persons in the Syrian Arab Republic at their offices in Geneva. MaGPIE has a Memorandum of Understanding containing a framework of cooperation between the Independent Institution and Bournemouth University to include the provision of information and documentation and other possible areas of cooperation. The cooperation is to support the UN mechanism’s mandate to clarify the fate and whereabouts of missing persons and to provide adequate support to families of those missing. Renewing our commitment to support victims’ right to know the truth through the mapping of, and research into, mass graves is our act of solidarity in the face of continued perpetration of mass atrocities.