The Balkan Wars of the nineties resulted in the worst war crimes seen in Europe since the Nazi era. When the fighting ended, a fourteen-year manhunt began in order to bring those responsible to justice.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) eventually accounted for all 161 suspects on its wanted list, including Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić and Slobodan Milošević, a feat never before achieved in political and military history.

In his new book The Butcher’s Trail, the Guardian’s diplomatic editor Julian Borger, documents this monumental manhunt. He will be joining us to reveal what he discovered from the special forces sol­diers, intelligence officials, and investigators that were involved, and how this process could set a precedent for bringing future war criminals to justice.

Julian Borger will be joined in conversation by: Philippe Sands QC, an expert in international law; Kemal Pervanic, a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp, he has since dedicated his work to education, reconciliation and peace-building; and Milan Dinić, who worked as a journalist for a decade for media outlets in Serbia and the Balkans. The discussion will be chaired by author and journalist, Adam LeBor.

Julian Borger is the diplomatic editor for the Guardian. He covered the Bosnian War for the BBC and the Guardian, and returned to the Balkans to report on the Kosovo conflict in 1999. He also served as the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent and its Washington bureau chief.

Both writers encounter people who are longing for a strong leader to bring back security and pride. They will be joining us to discuss whether, following the challenges to democratic structures in Russia, Hungary, and most recently Poland, eastern Europe’s new democracies are at risk.

Chaired by author and journalist Oliver Bullough, who lived and worked in Russia from 1999 – 2006. He is author of two books about Russian history and politics: The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame Be Great.

With:

Peter Pomerantsev, the author of Nothing is True and Nothing is Possible, Adventures in Modern Russia. He is a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, where he runs a project on contemporary propaganda and how to deal with it.

Philip Ó Ceallaigh is the author of two collections of short stories, Notes from a Turkish Whorehouse and The Pleasant Light of Day. At present he is working on a book about the Jewish world of Eastern Europe and its destruction, as witnessed by its writers.

This event is organised by

When money, politics, abuse of power and corruption reach across borders, transnational networks of journalists become key to an open, accountable and democratic society. Cross-border investigations such as Swiss Leaks and Tobacco Underground have caused public outcry, and in many instances have led to legislative changes and the prosecution of those under investigation.  

This game-changing journalism model is increasingly facilitated by the rise of digital tools, access to international databases and the ability to bypass restrictive national freedom of information laws. However, cross-border collaboration is facing its own challenges, from funding opportunities to logistical issues and disparate journalistic cultures.  

In an event in partnership with the Romanian Cultural Centre in London (RCC) and Frontline Club Bucharest, a panel of experts will be discussing what it takes to expose stories that spill across borders, as well as the potential obstacles and impact involved.

This discussion will be moderated by Gavin MacFadyen, director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism and a visiting professor at City University.

The panel:  

Crina Boros is an investigative reporter at Greenpeace UK and trainer who specialises in data-driven reporting and transparency laws. Her portfolio includes Swiss Leaks, the abuse of migrant workers, victim compensation and money laundering. She has led the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s first international index on women’s rights, and has reported for the BBC, Exaro News, and OffshoreAlert.

Stefan Candea is an investigative journalist, and co-founder of the Romanian Centre for Investigative Journalism (CRJI), The Black Sea – a lifeboat for journalism in the region – and Sponge, an open and collaborative media innovation lab for Eastern Europe. A member of the International Consortium for Investigative Journalism, he also teaches investigative journalism at University of Bucharest and was the 2011 Carroll Binder Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. His cross-border investigative stories on organised crime won several international awards. Currently he’s working at EIJC on his PhD research analysing the structures of cross-border investigative networks.

Stephen Grey is a special correspondent on the global enterprise team at Reuters news agency. He is author of Ghost Plane, an account of the CIA rendition program, and Operation Snakebite, on the war in Helmand, Afghanistan. His most recent film was “Kill/Capture” for PBS Frontline. He has won several awards, including the Overseas Press Club award in 2006 for human rights reporting and the Kurt Schork Award for International Reporting in 2010.

Craig Shaw is a British journalist and fellow at the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London. Specialising in cross-border corruption and human rights, he previously worked for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists on the global “Offshore Leaks” investigation which helped lift the veil on the secretive world of tax havens. Shaw’s reports have been published in leading international news media such as The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Sydney Morning Herald, L’Espresso, Der Freitag and the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Romanian Cultural Centre in London (RCC) is an independent association promoting Romanian culture abroad since 1994. It is funded by The Ratiu Family Foundation (RFF), which supports projects relating to civil society, democracy, arts and culture in Romania, the UK and the US.

Frontline Club Bucharest operates as part of the charitable Frontline International Partners project, and organises regular talks, documentary screenings and workshops in order to engage communities in Romania in critical thinking about international affairs and the media. 

Photo: Jpatokal/WikiCommons/CC BY-SA 2.0

Holding a cane in his right hand, Movses Haneshyan, 105, slowly approaches a life-size landscape.

He pauses, looks at the image, and begins to sing: “My home… My Armenia.”

It’s the first time Movses is seeing his home in 98 years.

A century ago, on the eve of World War I, there were two million Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. By the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, one and a half million of them were dead, with many more forcibly removed from the country.

The picture Movses is looking at is taken by Armenian-American photographer Diana Markosian. She travelled to Armenia to meet Movses and other survivors, to ask them about their last memories of their early home. She then retraced their steps in Turkey to retrieve a piece of their lost homeland.

She will be joining us in conversation with Fiona Rogers, global business development manager at Magnum Photos International & founder of Firecracker, to show her work and share the stories of the survivors she met who, 100 years on, still remember their home.

Diana Markosian is an Armenian-American photographer whose work explores the relationship between memory and place. She received her master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism at 20. Her work has since taken her to some of the most remote corners of the world, where she has worked on both personal and editorial work. Her images can be found in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker and Time Magazine. Her work is represented by Reportage by Getty Images.

Based on extensive testimonies and interviews, award-winning foreign correspondent Åsne Seierstad’s new book, One of Us, offers a definitive account of this tragic episode in Norway’s history. She will be joining us in conversation with John Lloyd, contributing editor to the Financial Times and director of Journalism at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, to share her research and talk about what she discovered about Breivik, his ideology and the world he grew up in.

In addition to offering the reader a picture of Breivik, Seierstad also explores the lives of his victims – presenting a story of community versus isolation, hope versus rejection, love versus bigotry – and a powerful memorial to those who lost their lives.

Åsne Seierstad is an internationally bestselling author, she has also received numerous awards for her journalism. She has worked as a correspondent in Russia, China, the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq. She is the author of With their Backs to the World: Portraits from Serbia, A Hundred and One Days: A Baghdad Journal, The Angel of Grozny and and the bestselling The Bookseller of Kabul. She is currently working on a book about Libya and the aftermath of Gaddafi.

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE FILMED AND STREAMED LIVE ON OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL

It is a year since protests erupted in Ukraine. The events that followed saw the fall of Viktor Yanukovych, the annexation of Crimea and violent clashes breaking out across the east of the country.

As the stand off with Russia continues, we will be taking a view of the situation in Ukraine one year on. Will 2015 see an end to the most dangerous conflict to grip Europe since the wars in the former Yugoslavia?

With fighting ongoing, our panel will be exploring the divisions that have developed in the country and what the future holds for the unity of Ukraine.

Chaired by Gabriel Gatehouse, BBC foreign correspondent who has covered the crisis in Ukraine extensively.

The panel:

Andrey Kurkov, is an acclaimed Ukrainian writer and commentator. He is the author of many novels, including the bestselling Death and the Penguin. Last year he published Ukraine Diaries, a first-hand account of the ongoing crisis in his country.

Orysia Lutsevych is a research fellow at Chatham House Russia and Eurasia Programme looking at the role civil society in post-Soviet transitions. Her current research project focuses on Russian use of non-state actors in foreign policy and ‘soft power’.

Tonia Samsonova is a London correspondent for Echo of Moscow radiostation, one of few relatively independent media outlets in Russia. In summer 2014 she launched the media-project TheQuestion.ru.

Robert Brinkley was the British Ambassador to Ukraine from 2002-06 and is the chairman of BEARR Trust.

Photograph: Getty Images

France is in mourning after three days of violence that saw 17 of its citizens killed. Violent events began on Wednesday 7 January with the brutal attack on the offices of satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo and ended two days later with sieges on two hostage sites.

As the country begins to come to terms with what has happened, we will be joined by a panel to take a view of events and to discuss the repercussions for society and security in France. We will also be tackling the arguments around the use of freedom of expression.

Chaired by James Coomarasamy, presenter of Newshour on the BBC World Service and former BBC Paris Correspondent. He has just returned from Paris where he was presenting Newshour on the World Service and The World Tonight on Radio 4.

The panel:

Maajid Nawaz is co-founder and chairman of Quilliam. His work is informed by years spent in his youth as a leadership member of a global Islamist group, and his gradual transformation towards liberal democratic values, documented in his autobiography Radical.

Natalie Nougayrède is a columnist, leader writer and foreign affairs commentator for The Guardian. She was previously executive editor and managing editor of Le Monde.

Peter Neumann is professor of security studies at the department of war studies, King’s College London, and serves as director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), which he founded in early 2008.

Nesrine Malik is a Sudanese-born writer and commentator, focusing on Middle Eastern politics and minority matters in the UK.

This event is organised by the Czech Centre London.

Twenty five years ago in December 1989, Václav Havel was elected as President of Czechoslovakia, marking the end of the Velvet Revolution and with it, the culmination of 41 years of communist rule.

Before becoming a statesman, Havel was a playwright, essayist, dissident and philosopher. His political activities during the communist regime brought him under the surveillance of the secret police and led to multiple prison stints, including a four-year incarceration between 1979 and 1983. His Civic Forum Party played a major role in the Velvet Revolution, and Havel himself was instrumental in dismantling the Warsaw Pact and expanding NATO eastwards. Above all, however, he remained an intellectual and an artist.

By his side throughout was Michael Žantovský, Havel’s press secretary, speech-writer, translator and close friend. The pair met as dissidents under communist rule and remained close until Havel’s death in 2011. Žantovský will be joining us in conversation with Edward Lucas, senior editor at The Economist, to bear witness to Havel’s extraordinary life as documented in his new book Havel: A Life, and to share his own experiences of living through the Velvet Revolution and the formation of the Czech Republic.

Michael Žantovský is the current Czech Ambassador to the Court of St James. He was among the founding members of the movement that coordinated the overthrow of the communist regime. In January 1990, he became the spokesman, press secretary and advisor to his lifelong friend, President Václav Havel. He has combined a career in politics and the foreign service with work as an author and translator into Czech of many contemporary British and American writers.

Part of the Made in Prague Festival, 17 October – 30 November 2014.

David Cameron has subsequently agreed to EU sanctions and travel bans have been imposed on Russian officials. But would our response have been stronger were it not for the importance of Russian money to London?

Russians are granted more investor visas than any other nationality; Russians buy London property, send their children to British schools and hire British lawyers and bankers. For some, Britain has become a shamelessly mercenary country, putting financial gain before morality.

Others argue that the government is right to put growth first; its obligations are to the British people, who are interested in their livelihoods, not the legality of a referendum in Crimea. Are sanctions even the best approach? With them comes the risk of isolating Putin, making a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis less likely.

Standpoint magazine brings together a distinguished panel to debate Britain’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Chaired by Daniel Johnson, the founding editor of Standpoint. He covered the end of the Cold War for The Daily Telegraph and is the author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on a Chess Board.

The panel:

Ben Judah has reported for Standpoint from Russia and Ukraine. He is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russian Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.

Tony Brenton worked for 30 years for the Foreign Office and was British Ambassador in Russia from 2004 to 2008. In 2007 he was awarded a KCMG. He is now extraordinary fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Roger Boyes is diplomatic editor at The Times. Previously he has worked as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, Berlin and Rome.

Peter Hitchens is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He is a columnist on the Mail on Sunday and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington.

Your ticket will include a copy of Standpoint magazine.

From the Second World War to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland award-winning investigative journalist Ian Cobain‘s new book Cruel Britannia explores Britain’s role in the development and use of torture. Drawing on previously unseen official documents, and the accounts of witnesses, victims and experts Cobain reveals some stark truths.

With the High Court judgement that a group of Kenyans can claim damages from British government for abuses suffered during the Mau Mau rebellion, and on-going enquiries into the abuse of terror suspects, we will be joined by Cobain and a panel of experts to discuss Britain’s record on involvement in the use of torture. We will be asking whether it is to time to challenge the official line that the UK does not ‘participate in, solicit, encourage or condone’ torture.

Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.

With:

Ian Cobain, an investigative journalist with the Guardian and author of Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture. His inquiries into the UK’s involvement with torture since 9/11 have won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism, and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He has also won several Amnesty International Media awards and a Liberty award.

Clive Baldwin, the Senior Legal Advisor for the Legal and Policy office at Human Rights Watch, where he has been working on issues of international law since 2007. His areas of focus include the Middle East, north and west Africa and discrimination law.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations.

Dr Ruth Blakeley, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on state violence and terrorism, particularly by liberal democratic states. Her current project, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, focuses on analysing the global system of rendition and secret detention. She is the author of State Terrorism and Neoliberalism, and she has published widely on state violence and torture.