Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

as well as those who tortured them, and ultimately convinced all of them that they should
meet and tell their side of the story in the very same place, the former S21, which is now
a genocide museum. This film, which relates the aforementioned process and meeting,
was the recipient of the International Human Rights Film Award.
Supplement to the Agenda for Peace. On January 3, 1995, UN Secretary-General
Boutros Boutros Ghali (b. 1922) submitted his “Report of the Secretary-General on the
Work of the Organization” formally entitled “Supplement to an Agenda for Peace:
Position Paper of the Secretary-General on the Occasion of the Fiftieth Anniversary of
the United Nations,” which was officially adopted by the General Assembly on September
15, 1997. Designed to strengthen the United Nations’ role as the premier international
peacekeeping body, its 105 points covered such topics as preventive diplomacy and peacemaking
(26–32), peacekeeping (33–46), postconflict peace-building (47–56), disarmament
(57–65), sanctions (66–76), enforcement (77–80), and financial resources
(97–101). Among the specific points addressed were fact-finding missions, early warning
and mediation systems, troop (both military and police) deployment, negotiation and
arbitration, and judicial settlement. As a continually evolving world body, the United
Nations continues to slowly implement many of Boutros-Ghali’s suggestions, despite very
real and evident setbacks of resolve over such events as the genocides in both the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
Survival International (SI). Established in 1969, SI is a worldwide movement to support
tribal peoples. It stands for tribal peoples’ right to decide their own future and helps
them to protect their lands, environment, and way of life. Through research, field missions,
publications, media outreach, and a grassroots membership, SI works across the
globe to support tribal peoples as they exercise their right to self-determination. It specifically
campaigns for “justice and an end to genocide.” In order to organize and target
action, it has established an Urgent Action Bulletin Letter Writing Network. Urgent
Action Bulletins, which are sent to all members of SI, report on recent and serious abuses
of tribal peoples’ rights. The bulletins invite members to take action by writing to those
in power. SI also publishes a newsletter entitled Survival International.
Survivor Testimony. A specific genre of memoir literature, produced by survivors of
genocides or massacres, in which they recount their experiences. Testimonial accounts, by
virtue of their special status as first-hand narratives by people who lived through the barbarities
of an extreme situation, are the primary link to a genocidal event as viewed from
the survivors’ perspective.
An argument can be put that there is merit in every survivor account, even those that
at first glance would seem to be of little use to the historian of genocide. That said, survivor
testimonies can present problems of reliability on several counts: they are written
after the fact and, being written for publication, they have been subjected to some sort of
editorial process. Such considerations alert scholars to a type of account that perhaps
needs to be read differently from other forms of historical documentation. Survivors relate
their stories in order to convey the essence of what they went through to their audience.
In this sense, their accounts are subjectively true; they might not be accurate in every
detail, but they are what their writers recall as having been the case, and are useful to
scholars less for the fine details that would be accepted in a courtroom as they are for conveying
the textures, smells, sights, and contours of a person’s experience.
SURVIVOR TESTIMONY
413