Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

PEOPLE OF INTEGRITY
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Peace Prize winner Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972), a longtime diplomat, a former prime
minister of Canada, and the individual who led the effort to establish a peacekeeping
force—the first UN Emergency Force—during the Suez Canal crisis. The Pearson Center
is recognized as an innovator in the field. Established in 1994 by the government of
Canada, it is a division of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies.
People of Integrity (Kinyarwandan, Inyangamugayo). People of integrity is the term
used to describe those community-elected judges heading up gacaca courts all across
Rwanda of alleged perpetrators of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The Inyangamugayo
(“uncorrupted” or “people of integrity”) are those individuals who their fellow community
members view as trustworthy, honest, and fair—and whose hands are not stained by taking
part in the genocide.
The gacaca courts are nonadversarial hearings based on precolonial village assemblies,
in which the most respected members of the village (“people of integrity”) arbitrated judgments.
In the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, an adaptation of the traditional gacaca,
introduced in 2001, was intended to both speed up prosecutions and hold the hearings in
the exact places where the crimes were committed, thus allowing all of the members of
the local population to attend and take part in the judicial process.
The “people of integrity” are tasked with collecting information about the accused, collecting
the names and opening cases on the newly accused, calling and hearing the gacaca
cases in their locale, and making decisions, based on the evidence collected and testimony
heard, as to whether an individual deserves to be freed, to be sent or returned to prison,
or to have his/her prison term reduced.
Permanent Five. See P-5.
Personnel Continuities. A phrase referring to a perpetrator group’s use of either the
same personnel in carrying out different genocides or the lessons learned in one genocide
by a perpetrator group and put to use in another genocide by the same perpetrator group.
A classic example of this concept put into practice is that of the Germans who perpetrated
the Herero genocide in 1904, the Germans’ involvement in various ways in the
Ottoman Turk genocide of the Armenians between 1915 and 1923, and the German’s
perpetration of the Holocaust (1933–1945).
P-5. The five permanent members (the United States, France, Great Britain, Russia,
and China) of the UN Security Council.
The original permanent members of the United Nations (the United States, Great
Britain, France, the Soviet Union [USSR], and the Republic of China) were among the
victorious nations of World War II. In 1971, the People’s Republic of China was given the
Republic of China’s seat in the United Nations via a UN General Assembly Resolution.
Upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian Federation was given the
seat of the Soviet Union.
The significance of being a permanent member of the Security Council is due to two
major facts: first, each permanent member state—and only each permanent member
state—has veto powers, which can be used to void any resolution. A single veto outweighs
the majority vote. Technically, the vote does not constitute a veto but rather a nay
vote; in reality, though, the nay vote is a veto and automatically “kills” any resolution;
second, the Security Council constitutes the most powerful organ of the United Nations
and has the vitally significant mandate of maintaining peace and security between
nations. Unlike other organs of the United Nations, which only make recommendations