A handbook is being created on how to apply the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism in Latin America, it was recently announced.
Fernando Lottenberg, the Organization of American States’ commissioner for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, and Ariel Gelblung, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center for Latin America, will work on completing the handbook together.
They urge Latin American countries to adopt the tool and “incorporate it into their national legal bodies as a way to identify anti-Semitism and educate, legislate, prevent and take care of the Jewish citizens of the region and eventually punish the perpetrators,” the Simon Wiesenthal Center said Thursday in its announcement of the project.
“The agreement was immediate, and we will get to work to make available all the experience acquired in the field on the application of the definition to achieve a continental scope,” said Gelblung.
Its director for international relations, Shimon Samuels, added: “Of all our projects in common with the Organization of American States, this is the most ambitious.”
“We will accompany the commissioner in his work, just as with his peers in the European Commission,” noted Samuels. “Latin America deserves to have its own application handbook adapted to the reality of the region, enriched by the experience of the Wiesenthal Center.”
