These documents serve to advance the core values of the “right to the truth” and “right to justice,” which form the normative backbone of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal (KRT). Over 500,000 pages of DC-Cam documents have been provided to the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), including the Office of the Co-Prosecutors, the Office of the Co-Investigating Judges, the Defense Support Section and Defense teams, Civil Party lawyers, and the Office of Public Affairs. These documents provide crucial evidence in the prosecution of senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.

In collaboration with Yale University and New South Wales University, DC-Cam uses four extensive databases to manage and catalogue its documents for the purpose of wide dissemination, both locally and abroad. The databases include biographic, bibliographic, photographic and geographic clusters and are equipped with an online search engine. In addition, DC-Cam has established an access list of documents, accompanied by a user-friendly search engine, which allows interested members of the public to access all of the documents in DC-Cam’s archives more broadly and effectively.

To provide public online access to the entirety of DC-Cam documentation, DC-Cam is digitizing its documents and uploading them onto the Internet. DC-Cam is also planning the development of an optical recognition system that would allow for identification of certain Khmer characters and symbols in the original documents. This would facilitate more convenient and efficient research and thus contribute to a better understanding of Khmer Rouge history. In addition, DC-Cam intends to collect documents from a variety of newly opened communist archives.

Because human rights, democracy and reconciliation depend on a clear picture of the past, and documentation is the cornerstone to historical clarity, DC-Cam is committed to the mission of building its archive and making it publicly accessible and available for future generations.