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The role of testimony and documentation is crucial to human rights work in transitional contexts. Such evidence is vital in societies seeking to deal with a pas
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This article proposes a new definition of social justice that is based in liberation theology. It questions the relationship between archival practice and social justice and asks how (and whether) social justice can (or should be) a transformative force in the archival profession. These theoretical questions are examined through a case study of human rights archives. The author travelled to Chile in December 2011 to interview archivists and human rights activists and visit human rights...
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There are dedicated efforts around the world to steward material related to human atrocities, with aspirations to acknowledge, learn from, and perhaps lessen the probability of further harm. Yet for the archivists charged with stewarding these collections, there remain ethically fraught questions of how to do this work. Through this article, we identify systemic, structural challenges that confront efforts to ethically steward collections of trauma. Our scholarly reflections are grounded in...
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Purpose – The purpose of this study is to investigate the cases of “delayed and denied” justice that resulted from a lack of or poor record-keeping in the South African courts and police service with a view to encouraging proper records management. Proper records management plays a significant role in supporting the justice system. Records provide the critical evidence that a particular action or transaction took place and can be used as evidence in a court of law. Without reliable and...
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In this paper, based on conventional and digital ethnography, I first identify three dominant research areas relating to the issues of destruction, use and abuse of archives and records in post-war Bosnia, and discuss their legal, political and ethical dimensions. I then go on to present two ethnographies describing how survivors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and genocide in Bosnia and in the Bosnian refugee diaspora perceive, experience and deal with missing personal records and material evidence...
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There are strong dominant discourses across the intersecting spacings of transitional justice, ‘human rights archives’, and reckoning with the past. The power of these discourses can close down non-orthodox perspectives and fresh lines of enquiry. The dual goals of the paper are to identify such lines of enquiry and tease out loose threads in the dominant discourses. The result is a provocation ranging from the experiences of the Nelson Mandela Foundation to the work of deconstruction, from...
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Reporting on ongoing research, this paper reviews stories, drawn from recent literature as well as gathered through ethnographic research, that people tell about records and recordkeeping during and since the Yugoslav Wars. It focuses on what these stories reveal of the agency and affect of recordkeeping in individual and community lives, particularly in Croatia. The paper concludes with a contemplation of what might be learned from such an approach for the development of recordkeeping...
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How do distinctive historical experiences and political regimes shape human rights archives? How do those archives and those experiences in turn influence the way painful pasts are remembered or forgotten? And what can historical accounts tell us about the wisdom of prevailing norms and practices regarding the management and control of human rights records? This paper explores these questions through a close analysis of the history and politics of the principal archive documenting human...
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Can archives help heal and extend the benefit of therapeutic interventions in a post-genocide environment? We sought to probe this question through an uncommon collaborative documentation and research project linking psychology and archival science: Stories for Hope–Rwanda (SFH). This intergenerational dialogue project between youth and elder pairs in post-genocide Rwanda draws upon a collective narrative model from psychology and both community and participatory models from archives. The...
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This article seeks to raise consciousness within the field of archival studies in order to foster a generative discussion about how descriptive practices might be expanded, approached differently, or completely rethought. It brings together crosscutting theoretical issues and provides practical examples of mediation in order to mobilize these records in support of human rights work. It first problematizes the foundational archival precept of respect des fonds and its sub-principles of...
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The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will complete its proceedings over the coming years, leaving behind an enormous collection of records. The ICTY archive provides a record of conviction and acquittal, prosecution case and defense response – a vast series of contested facts and arguments. The ICTY winds down with a decidedly mixed reputation, especially among the communities of the Balkans, doing damage to the already-discredited idea of a Tribunal capable...
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Records professionals play an important role in increasing the likelihood that business records will be admitted as evidence. This article discusses the business records exception to the hearsay rule and the ways in which business records may be tendered as evidence in Canada. By reviewing Canadian case law, the author examines several criteria that could contribute to a judge’s decision to admit a business record as evidence and identifies ways that records professionals can help their...
