Lessons Learned from 25 Years of Resistance and Remembrance
Communities Drive Change
UNITE: Creating Communities of Changemakers
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Over the last decade, the world has seen an unprecedented rise in violent conflicts and mass human rights violations , resulting in more than a quarter of the world’s population living in conflict-affected environments. At the same time, the World Health Organization reports that 3.6 billion people reside in areas highly susceptible to climate change. Impoverished and marginalized people are disproportionately bearing the brunt of these crises, as they have for generations. In October 2024, with generous support from the Ford Foundation, the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience launched UNITE, a global academy designed to equip nearly 100 human rights activists the world over with new skills, connections and financial support to lift up and counter the historic inequities at the root of cycles of conflict, climate injustice and systemic discrimination.
UNITE draws on ICSC’s experience facilitating ten previous academies that trained over 120 activists in the fields of transitional justice, forensics and media advocacy to lead powerful human rights initiatives in their communities. Here, participants in ICSC’s African Youth Transitional Justice Academy take part in a dialogue facilitation workshop in Rwanda in 2019. The academy empowered ten youth activists and civil society actors from seven countries in Africa to raise awareness of issues related to memory, justice and reconciliation.
Through UNITE academies, ICSC will position activists to carry out memory, truth and
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