The Power of Place: How historic sites can engage citizens in human rights issues

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:18 -0500

The Power of Place

by Liz Sevcenko

Download full notebook in English and Spanish and a brief summary in Russian and Armenian below.[*note]

Read an interview with the author
See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

In this notebook the author describes how human rights activists as well as the museum community can make more effective use of the spacial impact of historic sites to help educate people about social change and human rights. The Tenement Museum in New York City has joined with more than a dozen other institutions that have focused their attention on "sites of conscience"–places where terrible human rights abuse has occurred that should never be forgotten. Their goal is not only to remember the past, but also to use the emotional power of these places to catalyze critical thinking about the ongoing social issues of today, through dialogue and educational activities.

Around the world, people instinctively turn to places of memory to come to terms with the past and chart a course for the future. From makeshift roadside memorials to official commemorations, millions of people around the world gather at places of memory looking for healing, reconciliation and insight on how to move forward. Memory is a critical language and terrain of human rights. It’s here, through the process of preserving the past, that evidence of human rights violations is maintained and made public, issues this evidence raises are debated and tactics for preventing it from happening again are developed. In short, these places can be critical tools for building a lasting culture of human rights. Our project is to take a fundamental human instinct and develop it as an identifiable, self-conscious tactic in the service of human rights and social justice.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum preserves a five-story building at 97 Orchard Street, home to over 7,000 immigrants from more than 20 different nations from 1863 to 1935. The Museum restores the tiny apartments of the diverse immigrant families who lived there and tells the stories of their daily challenges and triumphs in America. The human rights issues they faced – labor exploitation, racial and ethnic discrimination, poverty and immigration restrictions – are very much alive today. Located in a neighborhood that is today nearly 40 percent foreign-born, the Museum hosts public dialogues on immigration, welfare, housing, cultural identity and other related issues; teaches English and activism to new immigrants; and promotes immigrant voices and issues through changing arts programs. The Museum believes that historic sites can be powerful catalysts for public awareness and action on human rights issues.

To promote this idea the Museum initiated the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. The Coalition was founded in 1999 when the Tenement Museum brought together leaders of nine historic sites from around the world: the District Six Museum (South Africa); Gulag Museum (Russia); Liberation War Museum (Bangladesh); Lower East Side Tenement Museum (USA); Maison des Esclaves (Senegal); Memoria Abierta (Argentina); National Civil Rights Museum (USA); Terezín Memorial (Czech Republic); Women’s Rights National Historical Park (USA); and the Workhouse (United Kingdom). The group pledged to work together to develop effective strategies for activatingour places of memory as centers for dialogue on contemporary issues.

Our goal is to transform historic site museums from places of passive learning to places of active citizen engagement. We seek to use the history of what happened at our sites – whether it was a genocide, a violation of civil rights, or a triumph of democracy – as the foundation for dialogue about how and where these issues are alive today and about what can be done to address them. We define sites of conscience as initiatives that:

Interpret history through sites;
Engage in programs that stimulate dialogue on pressing social issues and promote humanitarian and democratic values; and
Share opportunities for public involvement in issues raised at the site.

The Coalition conducts program development workshops, staff exchanges and web-based resource exchanges. We also collaborate with leading human rights organizations to link our histories with currentcampaigns and inspire citizen participation in current struggles for truth and justice. The Coalition is currently coordinated at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.

Read an interview with the author
See Phillipe Duhamel's creative take on this resource at interTactica!

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.

Public Audiences

bharris — Fri, 25 May 2007 20:08:11 -0500

Public Audiences: Creating Space to Recognize Victims of Internal Conflict in Peru

By Sofia Macher, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Peru

Download full notebook below. [*note]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Peru is one of the most recent experiences of processes of transitional justice, institutionalized with the aim of exploring the truth hidden behind a past characterized by massive abuse of human rights. One of the central activities in this process is the Public Audiences, created with the aim of legitimizing and dignifying the personal experiences of the victims in order to support the therapeutic and recuperative work on their behalf.

The TRC was created by the President of the transitional government in June of 2001. It was made up of 12 commission members, all Peruvians, and duration of two years. It did not count on jurisdictional powers: its mandate was to document the grave violations of human rights committed during the twenty years (1980-2000) of the internal armed conflict. However, the Public Audiences were formal sessions in which a victim or family member of a victim would give an account of what had happened before a group of people that had the ethical authority stemming from the State to listen and express their solidarity and acknowledgement. Unlike other Truth Commissions, the purpose of these sessions was not for investigation, but instead an audience for the restitution of rights, of citizenship, and of dignity for the victim, an audience to listen in respectful silence, lending ears to and giving voice to those who had never before been given such things. All these people were assaulted by the State that had the obligation to protect them, and were later rejected by society. Many of them were displaced to other areas, condemned to fear, to silence that broke with the social support of their own communities. The Public Audiences are, so to speak, a step towards the restitution of this so necessary support. But the audiences also had an effect on society itself. Knowing a personal history, one that is parallel to the official history -- that until that moment everyone had believed and known -- had a much greater impact than the Commission’s final report could have ever had. Having heard hundreds of testimonies from different areas of the country, it put on the table the horror to which no Peruvian could feel unconnected.

This notebook shares the way in which the TRC in Peru implemented its Public Audiences in order to dignify the victims, contributing to the general recuperation of society. Certainly there are similarities with other processes and experiences (South Africa or Nigeria, for example), but there are also new aspects that are important since a new format was created that permitted Peru to begin a process of laying the foundations to generate change in the interior of the State, and also in society itself. The lessons of this experience can be useful for any focused process, more so in reconstructing the psychosocial fabric of the people and the victimized society, than in blaming the perpetrators. It is also helpful here to emphasize the effort of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) to support these learning processes.

*Note: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the files marked with an asterisk (*). You can download a free version of this program from www.adobe.com.