Leading international figures, including the Nobel Peace Prize peace laureate Elie Wiesel, Elie Wiesel, will meet at Columbia University September. 28 to discuss the growing world refugee crisis.

The plight of escapees from ethnic and regional conflict in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere in Bosnia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere will be discussed in the all-day conference, Refugee Crisis Forum: Reporting on the Refugee Migrations of the Post-Cold War Era. Other speakers will include Phyllis E. Oakley, Assistant Secretary of State for population, refugees and migrations,, Robert P. DeVecchi, president of the International Rescue Committee, Soren Jessen-Petersen, director of the New York office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and refugees from Bosnia, Liberia and Burma.

The forum conference is sponsored by the Sanpaolo Professorship Chair in International Journalism of the Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia. the University.

Seymour Topping, the Sanpaolo Professor, is chairman of the forum, which is a calendar event of the United Nations 50th anniversary observance and the only such one to address the plight of the 40 million refugees around the world. It is undertaken with the cooperation of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the United Nations Association.

Forum discussions will consider the implications for global stability of the increasing number of refugees in Africa, Europe and Asia; their need for protection and resettlement; the problems faced by countries granting asylum; the role of the UN in combating forced migration, and the challenges in achieving balance between national sovereignty and human rights intervention.

"We expect this event to heighten public and media awareness of the swelling tide of forced migration and its implications for global stability," said Mr. Topping, the former managing editor and foreign editor of The New York Times who is also administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia.

Columbia University President George Rupp will open the forum with welcoming remarks at 9:30 A.M. in the Rotunda of Low Memorial Library on the University's Morningside Heights campus at Broadway and 116th Street. The forum events in the Rotunda are free and open to the public. Reservations and payment of $25 are required for a noon luncheon in Faculty House. Ms. Oakley , will speak there on Refugees and Migration: A New National Security Challenge. (For information and registration call (212) 854-4437.)

September 28 will be designated as UN Refugee Day at Columbia, with relief organizations invited to set up information tables on Low Plaza describing their work.

Panel discussions will be devoted to refugee problems stemming from ethnic and regional conflict in the republics of the former Soviet Union, former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere.

Mr. Topping, who has traveled with the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia and teaches a course on reporting on regional and ethnic conflicts, said is a former executive editor of The New York Times and administrator of the Pulitzer Prizes at Columbia, said:

"We look to national leaders, media executives with responsibility for news coverage together with journalists with on-site experience, specialists of government, the United Nations and refugee organizations to document and discuss the dimensions of the migrations, the adequacy of relief and resettlement programs and ways to deter forced migrations."

Three refugees will describe their experience in a session introduced by Mr. DeVecchi beginning at 9:45 A.M. They are Semir Tanovic, who fled Bosnia in 1993 with his parents, wife and infant; Marjorie Mitchell, a businesswoman from Liberia who now works for the Soros Foundation, and Kin Sann Myint, the first Burmese woman to be trained in international administration, who sought asylum in the United States after the 1988 coup.

Mr. Topping will moderate a panel on Curbing Forced Migration beginning at 10:30 with Arthur C. Helton, director of forced migration projects for the Open Society Institute; Robert B. Oakley, former presidential envoy to Somalia now with the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University; Catherine O'Neill, co-founder of the Women's Commission for Women Refugee Women and Children;, Sir Brian Urquhart,former UN Under Secretary General for Special Political Affairs, now scholar in residence at the International Affairs Program of the Ford Foundation, and Mr. Jessen-Petersen.

Elie Wiesel will speak be introduced at 2:15 P.M. He will be introduced by Joan Konner, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism.

Marlene Sanders, former network television correspondent and the now director of program development at the Journalism School, will moderate a panel on Media Coverage of Refugee Issues at 3:15. Participants will be Betsy Aaron, former foreign correspondent with CBS News; Mark Fritz of the Associated Press, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for his Rwanda coverage; Edward Giradet, editor of Crosslines - Global Report;, Alex Jones, author, former New York Times reporter and host of WNYC's On the Media , and Tom Kent, international editor of the A.P.

An exhibition of photographs of refugees selected culled from submissions to the Pulitzer Prizes will be on view in the Faculty Room of Low beginning at 8:45 A.M., as will a video of a documentary film produced by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, A Global View `95.

Serving as rapporteur will be Sichan Siv, senior vice president for policy and programs at the United Nations Association, who will sum up the proceedings at 5 P.M. Mr. Siv, a survivor of Cambodia's killing fields, was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Deputy Assistant to President Bush.

Following the forum, at 5:30 Prof. Maristella Lorch, director of the Italian Academy, will host a reception in the Faculty Room at 5:30 to celebrate the publication of the book Somalia, Rwanda and Beyond: The Role of the International Media in Wars and Humanitarian Crises, based on a 1994 media workshop at Columbia organized by the academy.

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