In the 20th century alone, more than 20 million people died as a result of genocide. Still millions of others endured violence, oppression, and violations of their basic human rights, yet survived to tell their stories. Genocide and atrocity crimes show humanity at its worst. They lead us to question our very nature—what it means to be human. Despite their horrors, they must be documented and they must be studied. In doing so, we hope to understand them. We memorialize their victims. We help prevent their re-occurrences. We discover the striking ordinariness of the perpetrators, and ask what we would have done in similar circumstances. We see heroic actions that show that even in humanity’s darkest moments there is still cause for hope.
Learning about human rights violations is often a complex and labor-intensive process; it is difficult for students and scholars to find documentation that represents multiple perspectives and addresses the full scope of the events. Human Rights Studies Online is a research and learning database providing in one place comprehensive, comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide.
The collection provides primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than 30 additional subjects. Resources for each topic guide users through the full scope of the event, from the historical context that made such violations possible through the international response, prosecution of perpetrators, and steps toward rebuilding.
Content Types: archival footage, books, case studies, diaries and memoirs, documentaries, essays, government/institutional document, interviews, letters, maps, pamphlet, periodicals, photographs, press releases, speeches, testimonies, and more.
Global Events Covered: Afghanistan Conflict; Burma-Myanmar Conflict; Burundi Atrocities; Cambodia Khmer Rouge Regime; Chad Conflict; Chechen-Russian Conflict; Chile Pinochet Regime; Darfur Conflict; Eat Timor Independence Movement; Guatemalan Civil War; Holocaust; Israeli-Palestinian Conflict; Kosovo War; Ottoman Empire and Armenia; Rwanda, Tutsi Genocide; Salvadoran Civil War; Sierra Leone Civil War; South African Apartheid; Sri Lankan Civil War; Uganda Lord's Resistance Army; Yugoslav Wars: Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats; and more.
Topic and Key Word Searches: assassinations, civil wars, conflict management, diplomacy, embargoes, genocide, government aid, government policy, humanitarian aid, human rights, international relations, internment camps, military aid, political prisoners, postwar reconstruction, refugees, terrorism, torture, war, war crimes tribunals, and more.
