This high school symposium was by far the most interesting global event I have attended, not necessarily because of the topic of genocide but interactions I had with the other participants. We started the conference with Roz Duman, the founder of the Colorado Coalition for Genocide Awareness and Action, who first defined genocide, and then dove into how students could help. Part of her definition of genocide considered the differences between genocide and crimes against humanity, where genocide is the targeting of a specific race or group. The main takeaway from her speech was that the definition of genocide is so vague and often time leaves out horrible crimes that should be considered genocide. An example of this is slavery. The transatlantic slave trade was not made with the intention of killing Africans; however, I would argue that there are parts of the slave trade that were made to target blacks. This vague definition of genocide proved to be difficult when there was a Q&A session. Many of my peers mainly asked questions of whether or not a specific event was considered genocide. Unfortunately, it takes many conferences and debates to determine this, so Duman could not instantly answer them. Something that bothered me during the symposium was that many of us were too focused on defining events as genocide when we could just be trying to prevent the event from happening again. Why did it matter that it was labeled as genocide?
The next part of the symposium was a group discussion mainly to talk about how genocides happen and “what will it take for genocides to end in [our] generation?” The very first thing mentioned in my group was that genocides mostly only occur in underdeveloped countries because they are uneducated. I was alarmed by the lack of reaction to this statement and the agreement that it was met with. I tried to reason with them and ask why they thought that the only way to stop genocide was through education. I also pointed out that the most well-known genocide was in a developed country. They seemed confident that the only way to be open-minded was through education. I don’t think this is necessarily true. I think it is important that history is taught in a way without bias and that all history is taught. I think it is important to have basic manners and to be open-minded but this doesn’t have to be taught through education. Their comments made me think more about how ignorance and hate could be combated and how that could lead to possible genocide. Although I don’t feel as I learned more about genocide, I learned about the youth in the community outside FVS thought.