Ms. Barankitse said she planned to donate the $1 million to three organizations that help child refugees and orphans and work to eradicate poverty: the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess Foundation of Luxembourg, the Jean-François Peterbroeck Foundation, and the Bridderlech Deelen Foundation of Luxembourg.
Marguerite Barankitse from Maison Shalom and REMA Hospital in Burundi was named as the inaugural Laureate of the $1 million Aurora Prize for Awakening Humanity. At a ceremony held in Yerevan, Armenia, Barankitse was recognized for the extraordinary impact she has had in saving thousands of lives and caring for orphans and refugees during the years of civil war in Burundi.
When I met them, it had been nearly a century since the survivors had seen their home. I wanted in some way to reunite them with their homeland. Based on the childhood memories they shared with me, I traveled to Turkey, took an image of what remained and brought it back to them.
Speaking at an international forum on genocide prevention and the refugee crisis held in Armenia, the actor said he had decided to use his fame to focus attention on those “who can’t get any cameras on them at all” after reading about atrocities being committed in the Darfur region in the early 2000s.
Well, I’ve been involved for a period of time and interested in Armenia for a number of reasons, obviously there is the question of identifying things like the Armenian Genocide and I thinks that’s something that has a lot of emotion in the US as well. But when I met Ruben [Vardanyan], he wanted to talk about finding a version of Armenian history where we can talk about the great things that have happened and looking forward. And I thought – what a great idea to be able to find people who risked their lives at times, certainly give up virtually everything in their life in the service and help of others, and to find a way to celebrate that in the name of Aurora, in the name of looking back in the way.
As a second lieutenant in the German army stationed in the Ottoman Empire in April 1915, Wegner took the initiative to investigate reports of Armenian massacres. Disobeying orders intended to stifle news of the massacres, he collected information on the Genocide and took hundreds of photographs of Armenian deportation camps, primarily in the Syrian desert. Wegner was eventually arrested, but not before he had succeeded in channeling a portion of his research material to Germany and the United States through clandestine mail routes. When he was transferred to Constantinople in November 1916, he secretly took with him photographic plates of images he and other German officers recorded.
“I can say that 24-hour news cycle forms an insensitive audience, because that news becomes common. When you hear about 1 million refugees, it is just a number; it is more effective when a little boy is found dead washed ashore. In this case people find time to focus on this issue, and then they realize that the UN has not done enough for the refugee crisis. The way we respond to the refugee crisis is horrible.”
“I can say that 24-hour news cycle forms an insensitive audience, because that news becomes common. When you hear about 1 million refugees, it is just a number; it is more effective when a little boy is found dead washed ashore. In this case people find time to focus on this issue, and then they realize that the UN has not done enough for the refugee crisis. The way we respond to the refugee crisis is horrible”, Clooney said.
“We see that a long struggle is underway to reach the point that everything will be named accordingly. We see that steps are being conducted to call the Armenian massacres as genocide, however, they are being done very slowly, this struggle continues longer than it should be”, “Armenpress” reports, Clooney says.
“I’d like to focus on the second approach. There is International Criminal Court (ICC), which examines crime, including the one against humanity and military crime, which are scandalous or attached attention of the international community. That court was founded as a result of Nuremberg and Tokyo trials. The process was launched yet in 1945, however, it was frozen until 1998, when Roman status has been adopted, which entered into force in 2002. That is, ICC may examine cases regarding all types of crime, which have been planned by the Statute and took place since 2002. However, as you know, international courts are based on international accords and have certain features. One of them is the fact that it may examine only cases referring to crimes committed in the territories of the countries having joined the Statute, or infringement was committed towards the citizens, the state of which has also joined the Statute. ”
