Activities
Conferences - Tilburg
Developing Standards for Assistance to Victims of Terrorism. Tilburg (The Netherlands), 10-11 March 2008
The final conference of the project “Developing standards for assistance to victims of terrorism” was organised by the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT). The project is promoted by the European Forum for Restorative Justice and co-financed by the European Commission. It runs from 1 March 2007 until 30 June 2008. The partners involved are INTERVICT, the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U. Leuven), the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrews , and Victim Support the Netherlands . Victim Support the Netherlands currently holds the chair of Victim Support Europe.
The two-day conference brought together practitioners, policy makers, academics and victims of terrorism from Europe, Israel , Russia, Canada and the USA. The first day plenary session focused on the phenomenon of terrorism and how to coordinate assistance and compensation to victims of terrorism by the state. The plenary sessions were followed by four workshops on the topics of access to justice and administration of justice, restorative justice, compensation, and continuing psycho-social assistance for victims of terrorism. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the draft standards for assistance to victims of terrorism on the basis of the research findings of the literature report with the conference participants.
The second day of the conference was dedicated to the victims of terrorism on this Fourth European Day for the Victims of Terrorism, starting with a moment of silence in commemoration of victims of terrorism all over the world. On this occasion, three victims of terrorism shared their experiences in form of an interview to the plenary. Thereby, the importance of receiving transparent information from the state, the risk of mass media in using victims and the humanising effect of having met the offender were pointed out. Prevenient to this session, speakers gave presentations on victims of terrorism in Muslim minority communities in Europe , the role of restorative justice for victims of terrorism, and the development of interactive processes to manage the aftermath of terrorist attacks by discussing experiences of encounters between victims and offenders in the context of IRA attacks . The afternoon session was introduced by Mr. Stefano Signore, Member of Cabinet of Commissioner Franco Frattini from DG Justice, Freedom and Security of the European Commission. Further, national and international organisations had the opportunity to give statements to the draft standards for assistance to victims of terrorism. Subsequently, the Declaration on Assistance to Victims of Terrorism was endorsed.
The conference results will serve as a basis for the finalisation of the standards that will be presented to the European Commission at the end of the project together with the literature report.
The presentations of the conference can be found here.
VICT 2006
With financial support from the VICT Programme
European Commission - Directorate-General Justice, Freedom And Security
