Aegis Trust
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aegis Trust, founded in 2000, is the leading British NGO which campaigns to prevent genocide worldwide. Based at the United Kingdom’s Holocaust Centre, which opened in 1995, the Aegis Trust coordinates the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group for genocide prevention and is responsible for the Kigali Memorial Centre in Rwanda, which commemorates the 1994 genocide and is central to education of a new generation about the dangers of ethnic division.
The word Aegis means 'Shield' or 'Protection', reflecting the need to protect vulnerable people against genocide. Since late 2004, Aegis has been among the organisations at the forefront of research, campaigning and policy development in the United Kingdom's response to the Darfur crisis.
Contents |
[edit] Origins: The Holocaust Centre
The Aegis Trust was founded by brothers James and Stephen Smith, as a progression from their establishment of the UK Holocaust Centre. They had no personal connection with the Holocaust, but simply felt that whatever your ethnicity or religion, the fact people could commit mass murder should challenge you – ideally in formative years, within the education system.
Within a few years of opening, the Holocaust Centre was internationally recognised as a place of remembrance and education, with hundreds of schoolchildren daily visiting the permanent exhibition and memorial gardens, meeting survivors of the Holocaust and hearing their personal stories. Today it also provides training about racism for professionals including police and prison officers and aims to inspire reflection on the common responsibility to prevent mass atrocities.
[edit] Catalyst: the Kosovo crisis
The outbreak of the Kosovo crisis in 1999 provided the catalyst for the development of Aegis. Troubled by the repetition of genocidal violence, the Smiths responded by initiating a regional aid appeal in the East Midlands. Going to the camps, however (where James Smith became an Area Coordinator for the International Medical Corps), they realised that just as in the Holocaust, Rwanda and Bosnia, the victims and perpetrators in Kosovo were expecting the crisis, yet it caught the rest of the world off guard. As in every genocidal[dubious ] crisis, there was a series of steps which led to the conditions in which ethnic cleansing was possible.
A doctor, James Smith figured genocide as a public health problem, asking the question; if 200 million people had died of a particular disease in the past century, how much would we invest in prevention? If the process or the pattern which leads to something is identifiable, it has to be preventable. So Aegis – the genocide prevention organisation – was established.
In 2002, Aegis hosted a joint conference with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. More strongly than ever before, concepts about genocide prevention were taken from the world of academia into the world of policy-making. Politicians, aid workers, generals, scholars, religious leaders and field specialists started a ball rolling that would see genocide prevention grow into being a field in its own right. Five years on, that field is populated by a growing number of organisations and activists.
[edit] The Aegis model
Aegis’ work follows three strands: 1) Education; if you can reach the decision-makers of tomorrow, you may change the response to such events in the future; 2) Protection of people at risk, working with policy & decision makers on areas where genocide is happening or likely; 3) Survivor support – survivors and their experiences lie at heart of what Aegis does.
Since January 2002, Aegis also features the Aegis Trust Award, which is given to individuals whose "humanitarian actions went beyond the call of duty."
[edit] External links
 |
This article about an organisation in the United Kingdom is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
