Every year, International Archives Week brings together the global archival community to highlight the vital role of archives in society. In 2026, International Archives Week (#IAW2026) will take place from 8–12 June 2026, organised by the International Council on Archives (ICA) under the global theme #ArchivesForJustice: Rights, Memory & Futures.
As part of this global programme, the ICA is organising a series of online webinars throughout the week to explore how archives contribute to justice in diverse and evolving contexts.
This webinar, Safe Havens for Archives at Risk: Documentation, Memory and Future Justice, organised by swisspeace and the ICA, will take place on Thursday, 11 June 2026 at 16:00 CET (Paris time). The session will explore the importance of protecting human rights documentation and archives at risk as essential resources for future dealing with the past processes worldwide.
Drawing on the Guiding Principles for Safe Havens for Archives at Risk, the webinar will address the practical, ethical and political challenges involved in securing safe havens for vulnerable archives. Bringing together practitioners and archival experts from different contexts, the session will share approaches to safeguarding documentary heritage threatened by conflict, repression, displacement or institutional fragility. Speakers will share practical experiences, lessons learned and reflections on international cooperation in creating safe havens for archives at risk, highlighting both opportunities and ongoing challenges.
The session will be moderated by Jens Boel, Chair of ICA’s Section on Archives and Human Rights (SAHR) and features contributions from Carlos Juárez (Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM), Alexandra Wedl (swisspeace Dealing with the Past Program) and Victor-Jan Vos (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies).
More information on the speaker biographies can be found below.
KEY INFORMATION
Date
Thursday, 11 June 2026
Time
16:00 – 17:00 CET (Paris time). To confirm the date/time of this session in your time zone, please use the following link.
Location
Online.
Language
English. Automated translation of subtitles will be available.
Date
Thursday, 11 June 2026
Time
16:00 – 17:00 CET (Paris time). To confirm the date/time of this session in your time zone, please use the following link.
Location
Online.
Language
English. Automated translation of subtitles will be available.
Speakers
Carlos Juárez
Carlos Juárez is a lawyer with the Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo (GAM) with a degree from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (USAC). He has led many cases of enforced disappearances in Guatemala and at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights. He is the coordinator of the GAM Historical Archive, a project based on the collaboration between GAM and Haverford College. In this role he has supported the digitization of important documents related with human rights violations committed during the internal armed conflict. He is a regular contributor to gAZeta Magazine in Guatemala and a coauthor of “Historical Memory in the Digital Age,” written for the North American Congress on Latin America Report.
Alexandra Wedl
Alexandra Wedl is a program officer in the swisspeace Dealing with the Past Program. She advises civil society and governmental initiatives on issues in the field of dealing with the past, documentation, archives and memorialization in various contexts, including the Safe Havens for Archives at Risk initiative. She holds a PhD in Eastern European History from the University of Basel in Switzerland. Before joining swisspeace, she coordinated civic education programs in Central Asia and Eastern Europe.
Victor-Jan Vos
Victor-Jan Vos is director of Collections and Services of the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide studies in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. He is responsible for a large collection and set of archives that relate to the Second World War, the Holocaust and other genocides. NIOD is a research institute that studies war, Holocaust and Genocide. NIOD combines a tradition of archival research with collection development; based on that tradition NIOD has become a source of reliable knowledge about war, Holocaust, and mass violence worldwide. Currently, NIOD is engaged in collection of archival documents that relate to war and genocide outside of the Second World War (such as colonialism, the Wars in the former Yugoslavia and civil wars in Syria) and is creating an infrastructure for acquiring and managing different types of (digital) documentation about these topics. Victor-Jan studied Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and worked before for KB, National Library of the Netherlands and Europeana.
Moderator
Jens Boel
Jens Boel is the Chair of the Section on Archives and Human Rights within the International Council on Archives (ICA/SAHR). He was the Chief Archivist of UNESCO from 1994 to 2017, and Chair of the ICA Section of International Organizations (ICA/SIO) from 2000 to 2004 and from 2008 to 2012. Jens Boel coordinated the UNESCO History Project from 2004 to 2011. He is co-editor of the book Archives and Human Rights, Routledge 2021 (published in Spanish and French versions in 2023).
