Contents
About the Genocide Archive of Rwanda
For information about the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, the Kigali Genocide Memorial Center, or any of the partners and collaborating archives and repositories, please click here.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are these videos?
This is a collection that started at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda to document oral histories such as testimonies and interviews (of both survivors and perpetrators), court proceedings, and remembrance events relating to the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide. The University of Texas at Austin has begun a large-scale human rights digital archive initiative to provide world-class access to and preservation of these (and other) important materials. This website contains digitized videos, translated transcripts, and indexing of keywords done by UT Austin and KGM staff.
What is the KGM?
The Kigali Genocide Memorial was opened in April 2004, on the 10th Anniversary of the Genocide against the Tutsi. The Centre is built on a site where over 250,000 people are buried. These graves are a clear reminder of the cost of ignorance.
The Centre is a permanent memorial to those who fell victim to the genocide and serves as a place for people to grieve those they lost.
The Centre includes three permanent exhibitions, the largest of which documents the genocide in 1994. There is also a children's memorial, and an exhibition on the history of genocidal violence around the world. The Education Centre, Memorial Gardens and National Documentation Centre of the Genocide all contribute to a meaningful tribute to those who perished, and form a powerful educational tool for the next generation.
For more information, click here.
What is Glifos?
“GLIFOS media HD player provides an integrated framework not only for viewing media, but for
navigating through media.” -Glifos website
GLIFOS Media Creator is a program specifically designed for the production of rich media
content. By combining a video file and transcript, GLIFOS allows easy navigation through the
media by providing synchronization features as well as search features including the Transcript,
Table of Contents, and Search functions. What’s more, the experience can be further enriched
by the addition of external links – such as images and Google Map locations.
How do I use the site?
Navigate the site using the links at the left or entering a search term (such as a person or place name). You can view all the videos or those labeled with keywords such as type of video (testimony, court proceeding, etc) or thesaurus term associated with the video. You can also view all places, see them on a map, or view all of our still photos.
Each video is synchronized to its translated transcript in a series of time-coded boxes. People, places, and keywords are also synchronized. Click anywhere in these boxes to be taken directly to the associated point in the video.
Some places and keywords also have links to individual pages where you can learn a little bit about them and see a list of all the videos associated with them.
What is a wiki?
A wiki is a website that uses wiki media software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages with a simplified markup language. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites and to power community websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis.
Using a wiki for this project allowed for a number of people on the KGM and UT staff to create and edit individual pages, while ensuring the quality of the work done through available revision histories.
Why can’t I log in?
As of right now, the only people who have access to the log in and editing functions on the wiki are a select group of UT and Kigali Genocide Memorial staff members.
Where did you get the Topics?
Topics/keywords terms are derived from the University of Texas Human Rights Archive Thesaurus Terms for Human Rights Collections, a work in progress which is based on an ontology created by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. The Thesaurus is intended as a means of consistently cataloging materials across this and other Human Rights collections.
Why do only some of the places and topics have their own pages?
In many of the interviews, place names are referred to fleetingly or with little to no context. There is also little known information about previous and present place names and locations in Rwanda. For every single place that was mentioned, staff members at UT made a list and tried to verify places in the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. Those that were able to be verified have their own article on the website.
The Thesaurus is incredibly thorough and extensive. Not all of the main subject headings are relevant to this collection. UT staff picked a few of the most prominent and important-seeming topics and decided to create informative pages for those only.
How do I use the maps?
Click on "Maps" under the Browse menu to the left to see a map with all the locations mentioned in the oral history testimonies. You can also view the locations mentioned in a single testimony by clicking on the "View Map" tab to the right of the video.
How do I find photographs?
Photographs are arranged by subject matter, by the repository in which they are held, and in online albums that reflect the physical organization in which they were found. You can also browse a list of all photos, or search for photos in the search box.
