The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is planning to have twelve permanent zones or galleries. According to the CMHR’s website, there will be a zone devoted to the Holocaust and a “Mass Atrocity” zone, immediately adjacent to it, which will feature detailed information on many other mass atrocities that have taken place worldwide.

The prominence given the Holocaust with its own separate gallery, and the as yet unclear status of the other cases of “Mass Atrocity” is causing considerable concern within some communities. It raises questions as to which cases will be included, how much space will be allotted to each case, what their content will be, if they will have a permanent or only temporary exhibit, and how these decisions are made.

The article “How Genocide Should Be Represented in the Canadian Museum for Human Rights” written by Roger W. Smith, Chair of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, discusses these concerns.

“The phenomenon of genocide is complex, and its ramifications are global and devastating for humanity at large. We may approach the subject by studying cases of genocide individually -such as the Holocaust, the Armenian or Rwandan Genocides, or the Holodomor - or we may deal with them comparatively,” the article says.

“By exploring genocide in a comparative manner, we can begin to see its patterns. When we see and understand those patterns, we have the ability to predict the conditions by which genocide may occur. Once we have the ability to predict when genocide may occur, then we have the possibility of preventing it.”