Commemorative event on the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda 7 April

UNIC Tehran in cooperation with the Iranian International Studies Association (IISA), held a commemorative event on the occasion of the International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda with participation of some 30 graduate students on 9 April 2018 at the UN building, AVA Diplomatic reports.

At the beginning of the session, UNIC Director Dr. Maria Dotsenko after her welcoming remarks, read the UN Secretary-General’s message on the Day. She also reminded the audience about important role which Iran has always played/playes within UN, as one of 51 founding Member States and that Iran hosted the first International Human Rights Conference 50 years ago, in April 1968, where historical Tehran Proclamation was adopted.

She also highlighted that UNIC published again the Persian translation of the Universal Declaration of Human Right, which celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and distributed copies of it and other UN multimedia materials in Persian.

Then the Secretary of IISA Dr. Ziaodin Sabouri thanked UNIC for the continued cooperation with their Association and briefed the participants on genocide in Rwanda.

The programme continued with “Finding UN Information and Documentation” workshop with a focus on “Human Rights and Genocide in Rwanda”.

The workshop was conducted by the UNIC Reference Assistant Ms. Nazanin Ghaemmaghami-Farahani. She introduced the Information and Educational Outreach Programme on Rwanda Genocide run by the United Nations Department of Public Information and focused on the history of Rwanda through the timeline on the page. Documents on war crimes and crimes against humanity including genocide were also introduced. Then the participants became familiar with the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to protect webpage and the definition of atrocity crimes.

In the framework of the public awareness campaign, dedication to the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on the Human Rights, the Reference Assistant introduced the human rights section on the UNIC bilingual webpage.  On the UN website she focused on  “Protect Human Rights” webpage as well as “Human Rights” webpage among global issues and Dag Hammarskjold Library (DHL) research guide on UN Documentation: Human Rights.

The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights(OHCHR), the Human Rights Council as well as the human rights treaty bodies were navigated and  the students learnt to use treaty based and charter based bodies documents databases separately.

Persian copies of UN Charter, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN System Chart were distributed among the participants.

UN videos on human rights with Persian subtitles (done by UNIC inters) were screened.

The Head of the Public Relations of IISA Ms. Elham Ebrahimi found the workshop very useful and hoped that UNIC could hold more sessions with the IISA members and interested students.