As the start of the ICC review conference draws near, Michael Gibbs calls our attention to the potential role of sport in reconciliation and peace building. In a comment in today's Guardian, he emphasizes that transitional justice institutions need to do a better job engaging victims in their work and suggests a novel approach:

An important first step towards meeting these challenges is moving our characterisation of victims beyond the mere fact of their "victimhood". While their rights as victims must never be ignored, it is important also to recognise victims as survivors and as stakeholders in the court's work. If our understanding of victims is limited merely to what they have suffered in the past, it will be near impossible to fully engage them in a process that aims, first and foremost, to combat impunity and secure a sustainable peace for the future of their communities.

This is why, on the eve of the review conference, victims of conflict in Uganda, Sudan, and Kenya have challenged ICC delegates to a football match. The match offers victims a unique opportunity to interact with delegates on a stage that is truly their own, and to present themselves as more than victims, ahead of their more formal role in the conference that follows.

I'm guessing some people will find this condescending, and there may be some merit in that. But I find the idea of transcending 'victimhood' and claiming 'survival' really appealing. In my own work on Ukraine, and in trying to understand how the Holodomor compares to the Jewish or Armenian genocides, I come across a lot of criticism about how these groups 'exploit' their suffering for instrumental purposes - claiming resources like territory or membership in international institutions, for example, or deflecting criticisms of human rights abuses. These are obviously controversial ideas, but they raise a legitimate question: how can we commemorate our dead, the murdered members of our identity groups, without mortgaging their memory to achieve future goals? I think notions of 'victim empowerment' can potentially help here. Our dialogues and discourses should point to overcoming - to preserving what is worth preserving at all costs. Then, perhaps, we can move beyond the 'competitive victimhood' scenarios that hold us back by causing resentment and fear - turning remembrance into a zero sum game.