The Documentation Center of Cambodia H.Q.: The Sacred Hat Pavilion & Happy 2025!
Dear Friend,
As we enter the new year of 2025, which will be the thirtieth anniversary of the establishment of the Documentation Center of Cambodia (DC-Cam), we wanted to take a moment to reflect upon DC-Cam’s history, its future, and what you personally can do to support atrocity crimes prevention in the 21st Century.
DC-Cam was originally established in 1995 to collect historical artifacts and documentation of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. Our work has been crucial to the proceedings of the United Nations-Cambodia hybrid tribunal, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, and we remain a critical repository for significant documentation of Khmer Rouge atrocities, including mapping of mass graves and prison sites and the oral history of survivors.
However, DC-Cam is more than an archive. Over the years, DC-Cam has become a model for other organizations, countries, and the world in atrocity crimes prevention education. DC-Cam has been a consultant to numerous countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America on the documentation of atrocity crimes, and DC-Cam has been a critical driver of new concepts of justice—e.g., supporting the mental and physical health of survivors of atrocity crimes. DC-Cam has also supported the prevention of atrocity crimes in Cambodia, the Southeast and South Asian regions, and the world.
DC-Cam has expanded from a small, single-desktop office in Phnom Penh to 19 different regional documentation centers, facilities, and historical sites that cover all the provinces of Cambodia. Further, in collaboration with the United Nations’ Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, DC-Cam has developed curricula supportive of atrocity crimes prevention education in other countries in Southeast Asia.
Despite all these successes and achievements, DC-Cam remains humbled by the ongoing, dire needs of survivors of atrocity crimes and their families and the extraordinary challenges with ensuring a sustainable atrocity crimes prevention program for Cambodia, Southeast and South Asia, and the world for the future. In 2025, DC-Cam looks forward to more grassroots action, expanded international partnership and collaboration, and a pronounced advancement of atrocity crimes prevention.
We hope that you will take time this year to visit one of our sixteen provincial centers and three field research sites. We hope that you will also join us as we celebrate this important legacy, and that we can count on your support to realizing DC-Cam’s vision of a permanent DC-Cam atrocity crimes prevention museum-institute for Cambodia, the region, and the world.
Happy 2025! May it be filled with good health, great memories, and many victories.
Youk Chhang
Director
Documentation Center of Cambodia
December 30, 2024
