Displacement, Forced Migration and Reparation: Comparisons and Controversies
Open Call for an Interdisciplinary Workshop on
Displacement, Forced Migration and Reparation: Comparisons and Controversies
4-5 February 2024, University of Haifa
Throughout history, expulsions and forced migration have been recurring phenomena. However, it was in the twentieth century that they evolved into state-sponsored methods of domination, impacting people across the world. In a globalized system of nation-states, political power has often been viewed as dependent on homogenizing populations, whereas ethnic or religious conflicts are frequently addressed in biological terms, leading to radical dissolutions of the social and cultural makeup of peoples. As a result of these social engineering enterprises, unprecedented large-scale state-organized mass violence was committed, including forced repatriation, ethnic cleansing, expulsion, and genocide. In the aftermath of such events, the issue of redress arises. Although reparations may play a crucial role in transforming violent situations into peaceful ones, they are frequently absent and, consequently, victims of severe human rights violations and serious breaches of international humanitarian law are left without compensation.
The aim of this workshop is to gather an interdisciplinary group of scholars in order to discuss reparations as an instrument of policy making available to societies that experienced violent uprooting and forced migration. We believe that a more comprehensive, evidence-based and comparative research on the subject is needed in order to make reparations a vital prerequisite for reconciliation and maintaining peace during periods of transition.
The workshop is organised in collaboration with the Research Group “Paying for the Past” at the Israel Institute of Advanced Studies, the Minerva Centre for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions at the University of Haifa, the Jacob Robinson Institute for the History of Individual and Collective Rights at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Weidenfeld Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Sussex. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort to create a platform for discussion of historical injustice.
The organizers invite proposals for papers (20 minutes in length) engaging with these and related themes.
Please send a title, up to 250 words abstract, along with a short bio and contact information to Michal Ben Gal bmichal@geo.haifa.ac.il
The deadline for submitting a proposal is: 1 September, 2023.
Successful candidates will be notified by 1 October, 2023.
For further information, please contact the organisers:
Itamar Mann: imann@univ.haifa.ac.il
Iris Nachum: iris.nachum@mail.huji.ac.il
Gideon Reuveni: g.reuveni@sussex.ac.uk