Victims attend terrorism conference at Tilburg University
05 Mar 2008
How can victims of terrorism and their families obtain justice and what rights should they have? Who should compensate them? Private insurers or the state? And how much should they get? Who will pay for long-term psychological counselling and what treatments work best in the context of terror?
These and other questions are the central theme of the conference on Standards for Victims of Terrorism, being held on 10 and 11 March 2008 at Tilburg University in the south of the Netherlands. Victims of terrorism, their families, national governments, international bodies, non-governmental organizations and academics will engage in a discussion leading to a Declaration on Assistance to Victims of Terrorism.
Victims
John Tulloch, whose blood-soaked face became an iconic image of the terror attacks on the London Underground in 2005, will be attending the conference in Tilburg to talk about his experiences with the mass media. Jo Berry will talk about the murder of her father Sir Anthony Berry, a Member of the UK Parliament, by the IRA in 1984. Michael Buback will speak on the assassination of his father Siegfried Buback, Germany’s Attorney General, by the Red Army Faction in 1977. The attendance of victims and their families is an essential aspect of the conference.
Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, will be drawing lessons from experiences in the US following the attacks on the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001.
Access to justice not a given
The experiences of victims and their families following the 9/11 attacks in New York and later in London and Madrid have clearly shown that access to justice is not a given. Existing guidelines do not properly take into account the specific context of terrorism and the various effects on victims, their families and the public at large.
To fill the gap in national and international law, the European Union has asked a group of academics to investigate how help to victims can be improved. The terrorism conference in Tilburg will discuss the outcomes of that study and the conclusions will be issued in the form of a Declaration on Assistance to Victims of Terrorism. The declaration will be announced on Tuesday, 11 March 2008, the fourth European Day for the Victims of Terrorism.
Attendants of the conference
The conference will be attended by academics from Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, by non-governmental organizations, by Dutch Minister for Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin, and by Franco Frattini, Vice-President of the European Commission and responsible for justice. The delegates will take part in workshops looking at access to justice for victims, the administration of justice itself, restorative justice, compensation and long-term psychiatric counselling.
The preparatory study by the EU was conducted by the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT), the Leuven Institute for Criminology (LINC), the UK’s Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV), the European Forum for Restorative Justice and Slachtofferhulp Nederland (victim support organization).