The best way of commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights is to ensure human rights violators are held accountable and punished for their actions, says the Irish section of Amnesty International.
The organisation is holding a series of talks this week with the common theme of putting the declaration into practice.
Prof Eric Stover, a human rights specialist, said the UN war crimes tribunals in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, while flawed, provided a model to build upon.
From his work investigating the mass graves of Srebrenica and Vukovar, he said "you get a real sense of the way in which there has never been justice for victims". But, he said, "there is an opportunity now through the international criminal court to track down war criminals and break the cycle of impunity".
The arrest last week of a senior Bosnian Serb officer for war crimes, and the decision of the House of Lords to support the prosecution of Chile's Gen Pinochet were important steps towards breaking this cycle, he said.
"The Pinochet ruling sends out a message that dictators can be held accountable for offences which took place 30 or even 40 years ago. Hopefully, his case is just a start."
The main challenge was "not to allow atrocities to become statistics or the people to become objects. We have to humanise these atrocities, make them real and show how they affect everyone else, how what happens in Bosnia affects people in Limerick."
Prof Stover will be joined at the talk tonight, at 8 p.m. in the Walton Theatre, Trinity College, Dublin, by photographer Gilles Peress, with whom he has published a book on the two mass graves investigated by the UN in the former Yugoslavia.
Tomorrow, at 8 p.m. at the Swift Theatre, Trinity College, Amnesty will host Chris Anyanwu, a Nigerian news journal editor, who received a death sentence for publishing articles about the arrests and secret treason trials of armed forces offices. She was released in June after suffering serious ill health as a result of harsh prison conditions.
Also tomorrow, the anniversary of the signing of the declaration, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Ms Liz O'Donnell, will host a reception for NGO participants in the Department's human rights forum. And the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Joe Doyle, will host a lunchtime reception for ambassadors.
