Peacebuilding in post-conflict societies increasingly encompasses memorialisation and practices of remembrance. Memorials that commemorate incidents of mass atrocity have been claimed as spaces for intervention by outside actors, and international support has often been decisive for their creation. While external involvement is driven by a desire for solid statements about the violent past, it is increasingly recognised that memorials are on the contrary sites for the ongoing production of meaning in the present; sites used both for mourning and for making politics. This article interrogates the productive encounter between external actors' globalised template for remembering and desire, and local processes of remembrance. The argument is illustrated by cases studies of the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Rwanda.