International Council of Archives

 From 14 to 16 November 2011, Malaga (Spain) was the place to be to debate about archives and Human rights.

This international seminar took place at the University of Malaga and was co-organized by the University, the Junta de Andalucía and the Regional Historical Archives of Malaga. Members of the ICA Archives and Human Rights Group were there: Jens Boel provides us with his feedback.  

The Citizens’ Right to Know

In his opening key-note, the President of the ICA, Martin Berendse, identified some key challenges for the ICA in the field of archives and human rights. First, he thought that principles for professional conduct and social responsibility for archivists and the ICA should be elaborated with regard to support of archives for human rights. Second, he believed that it would be appropriate to develop a genuine policy for the archives of international organisations, ensuring long-term preservation and coherent access rules. Third, he suggested that key human rights documents from all over the world should be identified by the international archives community and proposed for inclusion in the Registry of UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme.

Trudy Huskamp Peterson, Chair of the ICA Working Group on Archives and Human Rights, advocated an extension of the scope of this Working Group from its initial focus on gross political and civil human rights violations to a much wider group of rights. She took the importance of archives and records relating to land rights as an example and demonstrated the universal relevance of this issue, for example for indigenous peoples.

Jens Boel drew attention to the significance of UNESCO’s endorsement of the ICA Universal Declaration on Archives a few days earlier (10 November) and highlighted the context for this UNESCO Resolution, namely the fight against impunity, the citizens’ right to know the past and the building of good governance. The challenge now is to use the Declaration to maximum effect so that archives take their rightful place at the heart of social memory.

Recovery of Social Memory

During the seminar, a number of presentations dealt with the history of the Spanish Civil War and the recovery of social memory. Some papers presented oral history, legal approaches, ICA programme activities, the ICA work on archives and human rights up till now and case studies from other countries, in particular Chile (archives on the disappeared persons after the coup against Salvador Allende on 11 September 1973 and during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship) and Germany (the Stasi archives). A common characteristic of the cases presented is the very considerable importance given to archives. For example, in Germany the staff employed to deal with reconstructing the Stasi records from shredded documents and to respond to queries from the public consists of 1,600 persons. It is expected that the process of reconstructing the shredded records in the 15,000 remaining bags will last another 50 years.

The main conclusion of the international seminar is the observation that that there seems to be a growing international awareness of the exceptional value of archives for the memory of societies, in particular when it comes to difficult and/or important moments of their histories. The seminar demonstrated the importance of bringing scholars working in different areas together to contribute to this process. Several approaches and backgrounds were combined through presentations and contributions from historians, archivists, jurists, archaeologists (for the excavation of mass graves of victims of the terror of the Franco-regime during the Civil War and the military dictatorship), other scholars and associations of families of victims. Various means of presentation were used, including videos and films (documentaries).

A new working group on legal archives? 

Among the conclusions presented by Julio Neira, Director General of Archives and Libraries of Andalucia, the participants proposed to establish an ICA working group on legal archives which could usefully complement the reflection of the Archives and Human Rights Group.  

The organizers announced that the papers of the seminar will be published electronically in early 2012.
 

In the attachments:

• Read the conclusions of the seminar (English and Spanish)
  

• Have a look at the Programme  (Spanish and English). 

Link to the photo gallery