(Digital) archives, memory and reconstruction in post-Genocide Rwanda (HN)

1994年，卢旺达遭受了一场规模巨大的种族灭绝，并面临着巨大的挑战。种族灭绝是卢旺达近代史上的关键事件，自那时以来，公民和政治生活的大部分时间都集中在正在进行的重建进程上。政府采取了一系列教育和其他干预措施，以促进肇事者和受害者之间的和解以及社区之间的积极关系。其目的是防止今后的冲突，纪念死者和尊重幸存者，建立和保存对这一事件的共同记忆，并创造作为卢旺达人的共同身份。卢旺达现在正在创建一个经济蓬勃发展的现代一体化社会。宙斯盾信托是一家致力于通过教育和研究防止种族灭绝的慈善机构，它收集了关于种族灭绝和种族灭绝后重建的证词和其他文件材料，作为卢旺达种族灭绝档案，既作为实体档案，更特别是作为数字档案，改变了对这些材料的获取。还有一系列其他重要的档案收藏，如果数字化和整合，将大大增加对灭绝种族罪行的了解，并为教育、研究以及公众理解与和解提供更多机会。其中最突出的是加卡卡法院的档案，这些档案以传统的解决冲突的方法为基础，恢复这种方法是为了处理处理大量被告的问题。这些法院的记录形成了6000万页的档案，作为对真相、正义与和解过程的记录，具有无与伦比的重要意义。一个项目正在进行中，该项目由包括伦敦国王学院和宙斯盾信托基金在内的一个财团监督，目的是将这些文件数字化，并创建一个在线档案，提供工具和解释材料。这些发展可以在卢旺达蓬勃发展的数字经济中发挥关键作用。政府正在培育包括信息和通信技术在内的以知识为基础的经济，目标是成为东非的专业知识中心，而数字内容和资产产业是这一愿景的重要组成部分。目前，在很大程度上缺乏管理数字材料所需的技能和知识，Gacaca项目的目标之一是在当地建立这种专门知识和能力。然而，这些举措确实对卢旺达数字档案馆的作用和性质提出了根本性的问题。该网络将利用数字人文领域的两个研究领域。首先将探讨(数字)档案在过渡时期司法中的作用，文化记忆的构建，以及大规模数字化的影响和潜在的变革性影响。这将促使人们审查建立种族灭绝记录数字档案的影响以及这些材料的潜在用途，并使制定专门针对卢旺达情况的政策和程序成为可能。第二个将涉及数字档案的基础设施方面：在卢旺达的文化背景下，哪些形式的档案结构是适当和可持续的，它们与日益增长的数字经济可能有什么关系？我们将在卢旺达和英国举行的两次国际和跨学科会议上探讨这两个主题，因此，我们将为下一步提出具体建议，使该网络关于数字档案的研究的理论、实践和教学方面能够为卢旺达的社会、文化或经济发展做出贡献，并建立新的国际合作，以推动这些合作。特别是，我们将与档案馆、高等教育和科技行业合作，制定卢旺达数字内容技术能力建设路线图，最终目标是为该地区创建一个“卓越中心”。

In 1994, Rwanda suffered a Genocide of enormous proportions, and has faced huge challenges in its wake. The Genocide is the pivotal event in the recent history of Rwanda, and much of civic and political life since then has focused on the on-going process of reconstruction. A range of educational and other interventions has been made by the government to further reconciliation between perpetrators and victims and positive relations between communities. The aim is to prevent future conflict, to commemorate the dead and respect the survivors, to construct and preserve a shared memory of the event, and to create a shared identity as Rwandans. Rwanda is now on its way to creating a modern integrated society with a burgeoning economy. The Aegis Trust, a charity that works towards the prevention of genocide through education and research, has collected testimonies and other documentary material about the Genocide and post-Genocide reconstruction as the Genocide Archive of Rwanda, both as a physical archive but more particularly as a digital archive, transforming access to the material. There is a range of other significant archival holdings that if digitised and integrated would significantly increase understanding of the Genocide, and offer further opportunities for education, research, and public understanding and reconciliation. Most prominent among these is the archive of the Gacaca Courts, which were based on a traditional method of conflict resolution that was revived to deal with the problem of processing large numbers of accused. The records of these courts form an archive of 60,000,000 pages, and are of unparalleled significance as a record of the process of truth telling, justice, and reconciliation. A project is underway, supervised by a consortium including King's College London and the Aegis Trust, to digitise the documents and create an online archive, with tools and interpretive materials. These developments can play a key role in the burgeoning digital economy in Rwanda. The government is fostering a knowledge-based economy including ICT, with the aim of becoming a hub of expertise within east Africa, and digital content and asset industries form an important part in this vision. Currently, the skills and knowledge required for managing digital materials are largely lacking, and one of the aims of the Gacaca project is to build this expertise and capacity locally. These initiatives do however pose fundamental questions about the role and nature of digital archives in Rwanda. The Network will draw upon two areas of research in the digital humanities. The first will explore the role of (digital) archives in transitional justice, the construction of cultural memory, and the impact and potentially transformative effect of mass digitisation. This will provoke an examination of the implications of creating digital archives of records of the Genocide, and of potential uses of the materials, and enable the establishment of policies and processes specific to the Rwandan context. The second will address the infrastructural aspects of digital archives: what forms of archival structures are appropriate and sustainable in the cultural context of Rwanda, and what might their relationship be to the growing digital economy? We will explore these two themes in two internationally and interdisciplinary conferences in Rwanda and the UK, and as a result we will make specific recommendations for next steps in which the theoretical, practical and pedagogical aspects of the Network's research around digital archives can contribute to social, cultural or economic development in Rwanda, and also build new international collaborations that can take these forward. In particular, we will develop a roadmap for capacity building in digital content technologies in Rwanda, in collaboration archive holders, higher education, and tech industries, with the ultimate objective of creating a "centre of excellence" for the region.