IAW2026 Online Case Study Session: Archives for Accountability: Rule of Law, Truth, and Transitional Justice

From Testimony to Accountability: Building the Reckoning Archive for Justice by Raji Abdul Salam

This case study explains how The Reckoning Project builds a secure, witness-centred archive to support atrocity-crime documentation, truth-telling, and accountability. It highlights TRP’s trauma-informed method for collecting testimony and turning it into structured records that preserve both personal narrative and evidentiary value.

The presentation focuses on how to preserve living evidence while protecting survivors, maintaining context, and ensuring long-term legal and historical use. It introduces TRP’s Correct, Concrete, and Coherent methodology, along with secure data handling, multilingual documentation, and the separation of sensitive metadata.

Its main argument is that archives are not only places of memory, but also practical tools for justice. TRP’s archive helps strengthen evidence, identify patterns of abuse, and resist denial and disinformation, while keeping human judgment and survivor agency at the centre.

Transforming Records into Justice: Archives and Accountability at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia by Tola Peang and Ruth Whittaker

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) is a UN-backed hybrid tribunal within Cambodia’s legal system, established to prosecute Khmer Rouge crimes. Its design created a distinctive environment that mobilised diverse archival materials for criminal accountability. Today, the ECCC Archive is publicly accessible and ISO 9001:2015-certified.

This case study explores how archival records supported legal accountability at the ECCC. The Court managed a large, multilingual, and multiformat archive that was central to its proceedings – but records did not automatically constitute evidence. Rather, they required procedural validation. The ECCC demonstrates that accountability depends on how archival materials are transformed into legally operative evidence.

Our study clarifies how archives function as tools of accountability in a legal setting. It will fill a key gap in professional discourse by explaining how archival materials can move successfully from history into evidence, and ultimately into judicial reasoning.

This study analyses the ECCC’s evidentiary framework: Parties submitted formal lists of proposed evidence, after which the Chamber assessed admissibility based on relevance, reliability, and procedural efficiency. Admitted materials acquired evidentiary status only when “put before the Chamber” and relied upon in judicial decision-making.

The study also examines how the Court addressed challenges including fragmented provenance, incomplete chains of custody, and the use of copies and translated materials.

The ECCC shows that archives do not inherently produce legal accountability; rather, their effectiveness depends on structured processes. It offers a practical model for courts, truth commissions, and human rights mechanisms on how to transform archives into instruments of justice.

The File Hidden Among the Clothes: Recovery, Authenticity, and Best Practices in Documents on Human Rights Violations by Cecilia Jazmín García Novarini

This case presents the process of donating and processing the “Guillermo Bernasconi Collection,” a collection of Argentine military intelligence documents saved from destruction by a conscripted soldier. The objective is to demonstrate the need to implement sound archival practices when handling documents containing information on serious human rights violations.

The methodology applied was based on compliance with the acquisition policy and processing protocol of the National Memory Archive (ANM). Through an interview with the donor and preliminary research, the provenance and method of acquisition of the documents were identified. Both the account and the personal documentation supporting the former soldier’s role provided the necessary authenticity to present this collection as evidence of the repressive actions that the armed forces attempted to conceal. Furthermore, the documentation was described in accordance with the ISAD(G) standard, integrating the conscript’s personal records into the collection as guarantees of authenticity. The process culminated in the digitization, addition of metadata, and publication in the online catalogue based on the Access to Memory (AtoM) system, allowing the public to consult the documents in their original context of production.

Through this case study, we seek to demonstrate how identification, the reconstruction of the context of production, and archival history validate fragmentary documents that the dictatorial government attempted to eliminate. Finally, this paper aims to highlight the work of the National Archive of Memory during its phase of professionalization and implementation of international policies and standards for archival management.

Document Management as a Foundation for Transitional Justice: Designing a Management System for the Archive of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared in Chile by Joaquín Pinto Godoy

The Archive of the Association of Relatives of the Disappeared (AFDD) is one of the most emblematic tangible testimonies to the promotion of human rights in Chile and around the world. The AFDD is an organization founded in 1975 by relatives of victims of enforced disappearance during the Chilean civil-military dictatorship. As a result of its social, political, and legal work, it has compiled textual, photographic, and audiovisual documents that express its demand for Truth, Justice, Reparation, and Historical Memory.

Thanks to its archive, the AFDD has provided information for legal cases involving victims of the military regime and for the National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. Its documentary heritage was added to UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2003 and was declared a Historic Monument by the Chilean National Monuments Council in 2024.

Currently, the AFDD aims to catalogue its entire collection. However, it lacks the adequate resources to carry out this work, hindering its management and access. To strengthen the technical processing of the collection, this project proposes the development of a document management system adapted to its institutional context.

It examines the origins and typology of the series of Files on Detained and Disappeared Persons, which reflects the organization’s early awareness of the value of archival documents as evidence to ensure the rights of the disappeared. The descriptions of the documentary units in the series are incorporated into a database management system built on national and international standards, creating a tool for information control and retrieval for the internal management of the AFDD Archive. This system is designed to serve as an on-site reference database, aiming to continue the AFDD’s contribution to Chile’s transitional justice processes.