Welcome to the SAHR Tuesday Talks, presented by the ICA’s Section on Archives and Human Rights (ICA/SAHR). Our initiative aims to foster dialogue and understanding at the intersection of archives and human rights.
About SAHR Tuesday Talks:
SAHR Tuesday Talks is a dynamic platform for experts, scholars, and practitioners to delve into critical issues surrounding archives and human rights. Held on the first Tuesday of every second month at 16:00 CET (Paris time), these virtual talks, that started in 2021, offer invaluable insights into the role of archives in promoting truth, justice, and accountability worldwide.
If you would like to catch up on our previous talks, please find below the full list of sessions and their recordings.
Upcoming Talk:
To stay informed about our upcoming talks, be sure to check the “News and events” page of the ICA/SAHR. For inquiries and further information, please contact us at sahr@ica.org.
How to Participate:
Participation in SAHR Tuesday Talks is open to all. Simply register for the upcoming event through our website to secure your spot. Join us for thought-provoking discussions, exchange of ideas, and networking opportunities with fellow professionals from around the globe.
Stay Connected:
Follow us on social media and subscribe to the ICA Newsletter or the SAHR Newsletter (via email to sahr-newsletter@ica.org) to stay updated on upcoming talks, featured speakers, and relevant resources. Join the conversation using #SAHRTuesdayTalks and #ArchivesAndHumanRights and be a part of our growing community dedicated to advancing human rights through archival practices.
The social demand for memory, truth and justice in relation to the serious violations of human rights committed by the Argentine State during the last military dictatorship (1976-1983) was part of the demands that human rights organizations made even before the end of the dictatorship. At the same time, the claims regarding the existence and access to documents that account for the terrorist actions of the State have been incessant as they are evidence to establish responsibilities, exercise the rights as well as sources for history. Since the democratic opening in 1983, these demands have had different responses from the state sphere. The public policies followed, the place that Archives have had, and have, in them and the role that archivists have in this context, is the object of this presentation where we will seek to open a dialogue around the possibilities and limitations in the exercise of archival ethics.
Maria Paz Vergara Low will present the Archive of the Vicariate of Solidarity, the role it played during the military dictatorship in Chile and the value it has today and for the future. She will explain how the Archive gives an account of the history of the country, who the victims were, and how repression behaves, thus becoming a documented truth of our recent past. The role that the Archive has played since the return of democracy in 1990 will be explained, being the main source of information for the different Truth Commissions and other instances created by democratic governments to clarify human rights violations during the military dictatorship, and to set up reparatory measures for the victims, as well as for the courts of justice and for the victims themselves, promoting the search for truth, justice and reparation. The Archive’s mission is also to facilitate the recovery and preservation of the historical memory about the human rights violations during the military dictatorship, and to contribute to the education of new generations, so that events as painful as those do not repeat.
It is very exceptional that a movement at the instigation of its founder puts history at the heart of its action and, as a result, takes great interest in its archives, keen to preserve them as best as possible, convinced of their usefulness. It is probably even unique that a founder assigns to his movement the objective of allowing the populations concerned, namely the poorest, to appropriate their archives and thus their history. In 2023, the importance of action with international bodies to have the rights of the poorest recognized was illustrated by an event celebrated by the Movement: these archives were in fact included in UNESCO’s International Memory of the World Register.
The Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) was the first hybrid tribunal created through a joint agreement between the United Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone to try those who bore the greatest responsibility for a civil war which devastated the country from 1991-2002. Following the completion of final appeals, in 2013 the SCSL entered its residual phase (RSCSL), which counts the management of archives amongst its most important functions. The Archives of the RSCSL/SCSL is an extremely valuable collection, documenting the war crimes and atrocities carried out by several warring factions during the conflict. It also represents evidence of the efforts of the Sierra Leonean and international legal community who worked tirelessly to deliver justice, and to demonstrate that perpetrators cannot expect impunity for their actions. These records are important with regards to their impact on both national and international jurisprudence among other convictions, the principle of joint criminal enterprise, forced marriage and prosecution of the crime of recruiting and using child soldiers. During this session, two of the archivists involved in the creation of the RSCSL archives within the Office of the Prosecutor and the RSCSL Registry will share their experiences, impressions and lessons learned on the complex task of securing a complex and sensitive archive for the continued operation of the courts’ residual functions and as a tool for understanding of human rights abuses.
Elena Zhemkova will talk about the main questions related to Memorial records and archives and their use for supporting human rights: 1) how have them been collected and used, mainly by victims of repression or human rights abuses; 2) which are the most important threats against Memorial and its documentary heritage, have any of the records been destroyed or seized within the judicial and political attacks against Memorial?; 3) how Memorial archives are being protected and preserved in the current Russian political situation; 4) what has been the role of Memorial in the fight for opening the public archives of the former USSR; 5) which is the position taken by Memorial on the Ucrania war.
Song Pheaktra will introduce the various categories of documents left behind by the Khmer Rouge when they left the S-21 prison (including so-called confessions; biographies; photographs; guard notebooks and name lists of over 18,000 prisoners), which have now been digitised and made available on the museum's web site. Helen Jarvis will then go on to discuss how these archives provided crucial evidence of the crimes committed in two major trials: the world's first genocide tribunal in 1979, later verified in more detail in the recently concluded hybrid Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. These archives were inscribed on both regional and international registers of UNESCO's Memory of the World, and the museum was the recipient of the 2020 UNESCO/MoW Jikji Prize for preservation of documentary heritage.
The Mutual Support Group emerged in early 1984 and for 40 years has worked accompanying victims and relatives of the practice of forced disappearance of people that occurred in Guatemala. In addition, he has worked in support of human rights, transparency and strengthening the rule of law. Created and developed by wives, sisters, daughters, mothers and other relatives of illegally detained and disappeared people, in the course of these four decades it has collected, among other activities, information about this type of crimes against humanity.
Mauricio Katz and Catherine Romero will reveal how the files of the Colombian Truth Commission were archived and made available to inform the public where the files are today for consultation, investigation, and other uses as part of a first stage of individual and collective reparation in respect of the right to the truth and non-repetition inherited by the Truth Commission within the framework of the transitional justice process that Colombia is undergoing today. They will highlight the main challenges and achievements obtained when presenting the contents of the archives and their particularities. They will close with an exchange about the lessons learned from the Colombian experience.
The book shows the close relationship between human rights and archives, which play a crucial role in providing evidence and giving effect to the principles of the right to truth, justice and reparation. The genesis of the book and its objectives will be presented, and the most significant stages in the parallel history of archives and human rights will be recalled, from the principles of the French Revolution to the emergence of international criminal justice. Significant progress has been made over the past 20 years and the importance of archives for the right to truth is now recognized by the Human Rights Council and regularly recalled by United Nations special rapporteurs. The different uses of archives, particularly in countries in transition to democracy - judicial, political, reparatory, memorial, educational, historical, preventive - are illustrated in the book by 17 case studies from Africa, Asia, from Europe and Latin America and analyzed by experts. The lessons to be learned from these cases will be exemplified. The role of the archivists has changed over the last decades and they are now called upon to play an active role in the defense of fundamental human rights, by first and foremost allowing access to documents which relate to violations of these rights.
Dagmar Hovestädt was the spokeswoman of the Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Records (BStU) from 2011 to 2021. Currently she heads the department outreach and research at the Stasi Records Archive at the Federal Archives in Germany. As part of her duties, she implements strategy on continued research into the Stasi records as well as on public education, exhibitions, events and the development of the historic site of the Ministry for State Security into a "Campus for Democracy". She is part of an initiative to form an international human rights archive network and is speaking and writing on the role of archives in transitional justice. She received a master’s degree in communication and political science from the Berlin Free University in 1991, after which she worked as a journalist in Berlin from 1989 to 1999 and for German media from the USA from 2000 to 2011.
As a direct result of the Peaceful Revolution of 1989 the records of the Ministry for State Security, the secret police in the service of the East German communist party SED, were made available to the public, to address the injustices of the communist past in the united Germany. Unlike many other Eastern European countries, the unique post-conflict situation of the unification of the two Germanys allowed for immediate access to these records in support of many transitional justice mechanisms in dealing with the past. This talk will present the special conditions of the German process, the effects upon the role of the archive, and its future potential. After 30 years of active participation in shaping the dialogue about the past, the Stasi Records Archive now part of the Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) seems poised for a continuing role in the safeguarding of democracy and human rights for the coming generations.
This talk presents some of the archival research sources referenced during the investigation of unmarked burial sites located near residential schools in Canada. This research faces many challenges, including fragmented documentary sources, unclear jurisdictions, and the struggle of indigenous communities to obtain the truth.
Raymond Frogner is the Head of Archives for the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba and a member of the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials. He is also co-chair of the International Council on Archives' Expert Group on Indigenous Matters and lead author of the 2019 ICA Tandanya/Adelaide Declaration on Indigenous Self-Determination and Archives. He was previously Head of Private Archives at the University of Alberta where he taught on Indigenous archives, and Head of Private, primarily Indigenous, Archives at the Royal British Columbia Museum. In 2020 he was named a Fellow of the Association of Canadian Archivists.
Between 2002 and 2012, over 12,000 of Rwanda state-supervised community courts judged the alleged perpetrators of the 1994 genocide against an estimated 800,000 Tutsis by government forces, militia and Hutu civilians. The so called Gacaca Archive contains the files created before, during and after the reported 1,958,634 cases tried through these courts. Altogether, the Gacaca Archive comprises one of the world’s largest repositories on transitional justice.
In 2012, Adama Aly Pam was commissioned by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to support the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission of Togo in the management of the archiving component of the statements of witnesses and victims of the totalitarian regime in Togo from 1958 to 2005. These are the victims of rapes, murders, disappearances and assassinations of Togolese.
The Truth Commission was asked to establish the truth about the serious violations of human rights, to explain the historical context of the violence and to preserve the memory in order to guarantee the four pillars which are: the right to know , the right to justice, the right to reparation and the guarantee of non-repetition.
From the Togolese example, the reflection will focus on the archives of terror and it will question the practice of the archivist, the way in which societies try to forget and remember political violence, and the way in which archives are used to heal societies from the traumas of the past.
The objective of this presentation is to share a methodology under construction to identify the potential risks caused by climate change that threaten the sustainability and content of archives in different parts of the world, based on the experiences and learning from our mapping and georeferencing work in two Latin American cities: Rio de Janeiro in Brazil and Santiago in Chile. Although the preliminary results show that less than 2% are located in dangerous geographical areas, we intend to share the process of our research with the aim that more archivists become aware of the importance of this issue in the planning of the internal tasks of their archivists, institutions and, in turn, develop emergency plans to mitigate possible negative effects. Finally, we are interested in stimulating more studies of this type to configure a multinational response to this problem.
During the French Revolution, the right of citizens to consult public archives was proclaimed, but the various regimes which followed tended to regard them as their property and to obstruct this access. It was not until the laws of 1979 and 2008 that the time limits for consulting public archives were clarified and shortened. But the archives relating to certain sensitive periods in French history are more difficult to access. Those from 1940 to 1944 when the French authorities collaborated with the Nazi occupier were made fully accessible in 2015. But obstacles persist to consult those from the period of the wars in Indochina and Algeria.
Speaker: Giulia Barrera
Operation Condor was a secret, illegal cooperation agreement among Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay in 1975 to track down and eliminate political opponents who had taken refuge abroad. After the 1973 coups in Chile and Uruguay, thousands of opponents from these countries fled to Argentina, which already hosted a wide community of Paraguayan refuges; in the following years, thousands of Argentinians took refuge abroad as well. Due to the Condor system of cooperation, once abroad political opponents still were not safe from being forcibly disappeared at the hands of intelligence operatives of their own countries: hundreds of them, in fact, were tracked down and killed. A few of them had Italian citizenship.
During the past decade, Italy tried military personnel who, as part of Operation Condor were responsible for “disappearing” and killing Italian citizens, and convicted 11 Uruguayans and three Chileans. Giulia Barrera testified at this trial, using archival documents to provide evidence of the functioning of “Condor.” Join us as Dr. Barrera describes the role of archival documents in the Italian Condor trial.
Adel Maizi – Archivist and Past President for the IVD’s Commission for the Preservation of Memory
The Truth and Dignity Commission (Instance Vérité et Dignité, IVD) of Tunisia is the only truth commission that was formed following the Arab Spring revolutions, which swept across the Arab region in 2011. After five years of work, 63,000 complaints of violations, tens of thousands of interviews and 12 televised public hearings, the Commission released its final report in March 2019.
Graham Dominy, Former National Archivist of South Africa
Intertwined Challenges: Competing Interests in the Archiving and Accessing of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Record