The second panel aimed to present the true meaning of the exclusions affecting women and children during armed conflicts and discuss their consequences for excluded people. The panellists included Brita Fernandez Schmidt, former Managing Director Women for Women International; Léa-Rose Stoian, Deputy Director, We are NOT Weapons of War; and Marek Krupinski, Director General of UNICEF Poland.
On the second day of the conference Tuisina Ymania Brown, Co-Secretary General, ILGA World; Jovan Ulićević, Board Member, Transgender Europe; and Vyacheslav Melnyk, Executive Director of the Campaign against Homophobia, spoke about exclusions on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity. The guests discussed why LGBT+ people arouse so much intolerance, where the consent to violence derives from, and why there are cases of law enforcement agencies remaining passive in the face of persecution.
The conference ended with an emotional meeting with victims and witnesses of exclusion, who tried to point out the commonalities and differences in their experiences and what impact the experience of exclusion had on their lives. Participants in the discussion included Almasa Salihović, Survivor of the conflict in Bosnia; Maung Zarni, activist counteracting the persecution of the Rohingya in Myanmar; Linda Greta Zsiga, Roma activist encountering exclusion in Romania; and Dr Lutz van Dijk, historian and writer, representative of the LGBT+ community.
During the conference and open-call session, representatives of local organisations talked about their projects, which promote exclusion awareness in the modern world and provide genuine help and support to those who have fallen victim to it. The winners of the international competition "My memory, my responsibility. In my place", organised by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Institute, also delivered their presentations.