Democracy, Memory and Justice with Charles Villa-Vicencio. Debating Transition at the Romanian Cultural Institute

The Romanian Cultural Institute (Aleea Alexandru 38, Bucureşti) organizes on Tuesday, June 30th, 6 pm, a roundtable on Democracy, Memory, and Justice in collaboration with the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa. The participants are: Charles Villa-Vicencio (Senior Fellow, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, Cape Town; Visiting Professor, Georgetown University), Vladimir Tismăneanu (Professor of Politics, University of Maryland College Park; President, the Presidential Consultative Ommission of the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Romania), Ioan Stanomir (Profesor, University of Bucharest, Political Science Department; President of the Presidential Commission for the Study of the Constitutional and Political Regime in Romania), and Silviu Rogobete (Professor, West University in Timişoara; Consul of Romania in Cape Town). H.E. Pieter A. Swanepoel, Ambassador of the Republic of South Africa, will participate at the event. The roundtable will be hosted and moderated by Mr. Mircea Mihăieş, Vice-President of the Romanian Cultural Institute. The proceedings will be in English (free admission).
Professor Villa-Vicencio is one of the most important international authorities in the field of transitional justice. In 1996, President Nelson Mandela and Rev. Desmond Tutu offered him the key position of National Research Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (T.R.C.), a commission globally recognised for the decisive contribution it has made in the process of peaceful transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. At the same time, Charles Villa-Vicencio took up the role of adviser to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Peru in 2003 and the Commission for Peace in Southern Sudan 2006, in the same year also acting as an international consultant in the Basque Country. He has also provided and continues to provide advice in matters of transitional justice in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia, Namibia, Rwanda (for the Belgian Foreign Ministry) and Zimbabwe. A prolific author, Professor Villa-Vicencio has published and edited eighteen books and an impressive number of articles in academic journals. His work offers an inter-disciplinary dialogue between theology, psychology, sociology, philosophy, politics, human rights, and history.