AURORA PRIZE

Raymond Kévorkian is a historian, a scholar of the Armenian Genocide, former director of the Nubarian Library in Paris and the author of numerous works on the past and present of Armenia. He is taking part in a conference titled “Armenian Diaspora and Armenian-Russian Relations: History and Modernity,” organized by Moscow State University in cooperation with Foundation for development and support of Armenian Studies "ANIV" on September 14 and 15, 2016.

December 9 is now the United Nations' International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. We join the UN today in remembering the victims of Genocide and confirming our collective responsibility to prevent this crime. Each December 9, we shall highlight the international community’s shared responsibility and call for greater accountability and action as a way of bestowing dignity to those who suffered.

Against the backdrop of World War I, the Young Turk authorities of the Ottoman Empire planned and perpetrated a Genocide of their Armenian subjects. But amidst the devastation and violence, there were people who opposed the forced deportations and mass killings of Armenians and voiced their protest, at a time when many considered the slaughter to be beneficial for the Turkish nation. 

 

They were governors, villagers, community leaders and friends who managed to save the lives of many Armenian men, women and children in dire circumstances. 

At the Near East Foundation’s (NEF) centennial gala in New York City on October 28, 100 LIVES and NEF announced an eight-year-long educational scholarship program meant to benefit 100 at-risk children from the Arab Middle East. 100 LIVES and NEF jointly developed the program as a way to express gratitude on behalf of the global Armenian community to the people of the Middle East, who offered shelter and food to those displaced by the Armenian Genocide a century ago.