Commentary: Recordkeeping as a public good during global pandemic

Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 (1):  Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

 “Circumstances” are beyond control around the world, as COVID-19 continues to rage. To regain control we need data, created as data or extracted from textual or cartographic or audiovisual records and evaluated statistically. As Paul Brodeur, a U.S. science reporter, wrote, “Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off.” The underlying records are full of tears.

The World Health Organization’s Regional Office for the Western Pacific published a very helpful “Medical Records Manual: A Guide for Developing Countries,” and one on electronic health records. It emphasizes that medical records are essential for a patient’s present and future care but also for “the management and planning of health care facilities and services, for medical research and the production of health care statistics.” How each country compiles the statistics varies and to whom the data are made available varies, too.  https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/208125https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/208125 ; https://b-ok.cc/book/1126572/864b5e

As the nature of the COVID-19 spread became apparent, the head of the World Health Organization said to the WHO Executive Board, “Firstly, all member states need to share detailed information of the outbreak as part of their responsibilities under the International Health Regulations (IHR).” WHO collects health data from countries worldwide to make projections and analyses. It has tried to harmonize reporting by creating an International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) which is “used to code and classify mortality data from death certificates” and a number of supplements, including the International Classification of Diseases, Clinical Modification, used “to code and classify morbidity data from the inpatient and outpatient records, physician offices” as well as for surveys and research. Around the world, countries are collecting and sending data on corona cases to WHO, which publishes a daily update. But there are difficulties with the data. Partly it is a coding question; while there may be cases of deliberate under-reporting (see China below) or difficulties of communication, at least some of the problem is misidentification of cases of COVID-19 as pneumonia or another illness. And yet the data is all researchers have for epidemiological research to find cures and vaccines and all administrators have for health-management purposes. (For a comparison of three main sources of data on COVID-19 deaths, see https://ourworldindata.org/covid-sources-comparison.) http://www.china.org.cn/world/2020-02/05/content_75675069.htm; https://icd.who.int/browse10/Content/statichtml/ICD10Volume2_en_2016.pdf 

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet, herself a doctor, warned on 6 March, “”COVID-19 is a test for our societies, and we are all learning and adapting as we respond to the virus. Human dignity and rights need to be front and centre in that effort, not as afterthought.” https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25668&LangID=E

Many human rights organizations are concerned about the widespread use of the data being generated by the COVID-19 crisis, both as a danger to privacy and an excuse for dictatorial powers to impose restrictions on essential freedoms.

*European Digital Rights, an association of civil and human rights organizations across Europe, on 20 March called “on the Member States and institutions of the European Union to ensure that, while developing public health measures to tackle COVID-19, they: Strictly uphold fundamental rights; Protect data for now and the future; Limit the purpose of data for COVID-19 crisis only; Implement exceptional measures for the duration of the crisis only; Condemn racism and discrimination; Defend freedom of expression and information.” https://edri.org/covid19-edri-coronavirus-fundamentalrights/

*A coalition of 13 U.S. human rights organizations wrote to all members of the U.S. Congress, “Individuals must retain certain fundamental rights over the data collected from them during or as a result of the crisis, and whatever increased access to personal data is allowed to companies and the government during the emergency should be removed once the emergency has passed.” https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/Covid-Response-Privacy-Protections-Letter-3-20-with-Signatories.pdf 

            *Privacy International announced it is tracking the global response to COVID-19 because, “Tech companies, governments, and international agencies have all announced measures to help contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Some of these measures impose severe restrictions on people’s freedoms, including to their privacy and other human rights. Unprecedented levels of surveillance, data exploitation, and misinformation are being tested across the world.” https://www.privacyinternational.org/examples/tracking-global-response-covid-19

            * Business and Human Rights Resource Centre created a “Depth Area” on its website to report “the latest news on the implications of the outbreak for business and human rights. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/covid-19-coronavirus-outbreak?mc_cid=35a0fc334b&mc_eid=151854dc7e 

Each of these groups could point to UDHR Article 29 (2) in support: In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society. 

Keeping records is an essential service during this pandemic. The data generated will save us, now and in the future. Perhaps as never before, we recognize recordkeeping is a public good.

Commentary: Write On: The Guatemala police archives case

From its first meeting in January 1946 until 13 February 2020 the UN Security Council never had a debate focusing solely on transitional justice. Thanks to the Belgium government, which presided over the Council in February, this long drought is ended. And, said the International Center for Transitional Justice, “The high turnout of member states was positively surprising, as more than 60 speakers signed up to present their official statements. A few minutes before the debate started at 10 am, the Security Council chamber was filled for a session that lasted into the evening.” https://www.ictj.org/news/landmark-unsc-discussion-transitional-justice

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, opened the session with a statement she delivered by video from Geneva. She began by saying, simply, “We know that lasting peace is interlinked with justice, development and respect for human rights.” She noted the recent developments in Sudan (see below) and referred to her own experience in Chile. Then she turned to the situation in Guatemala, saying:

Guatemala stands out for its landmark final report of the truth commission “Memoria del Silencio’ (1999). The report provided an authoritative record of human rights violations during the conflict, giving a voice to the victims and analyzing the dynamics underlying 36 years of conflict. It was instrumental in advancing victims’ rights, including in several high-profile judicial cases on conflict-related sexual violence and other crimes, which have resulted in orders for victim-centered and transformative reparations. Sadly, much of this progress is now at risk." https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25552&LangID=E

As readers of this News know, the situation of archives in Guatemala is precarious. Court cases still entangle the former national archivist and the former director of the police archives. The records of the truth commission and the records of the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (Comisión Internacional contra la Impunidad en Guatemala, CICIG) are both in the United Nations archives in New York with no public research access to them. In Guatemala the Archivo General de Centroamerica (the national archives) continues to be cruelly under-resourced in staff, funds, and facilities. The police archives (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, AHPN) is moribund. 

In July 2019 Guatemala’s Human Rights ombudsman filed an amparo (a request for the protection of legal rights) with the Supreme Court of Justice to ensure preservation of and access to the police records. When no decision was forthcoming, on 3 February 2020 the Ombudsman together with representatives of the prosecutor for human rights and the Association of University Students, in a public hearing renewed the request.

To the surprise of many people, on 3 March the Supreme Court announced its judgment in favor of the Ombudsman’s position. Basing its reasoning on Article Two of the American Convention on Human Rights, it said that the Ministry of the Interior must not “threaten the integrity” of the police archives. The Ministry of Culture, which is the home of the Archivo General, must develop a plan within four months to restore the archives staff to numbers sufficient to carry on the work, the Congress must work on a revised archives law, and the government should obtain advice from national and international archivists. As human rights activist Kate Doyle commented, it is a very good resolution, but “we have to remember that (1) The government still has the option to appeal and (2) There is a big difference in resolution and action (within the AHPN).” http://www.prensacomunitaria.org/archivo-historico-de-la-policia-nacional-hay-una-disputa-silenciosa-para-que-no-se-conozca-el-pasado/?fbclid=IwAR061EbU6sZwYGbhYZ3fjc9A8hay6Vvl7OcGptA_lS8wnkwUa9vLOeAa4So; https://www.prensacomunitaria.org/csj-ordena-al-ejecutivo-resguardar-y-garantizar-el-funcionamiento-del-archivo-historico-de-la-policia-nacional/?fbclid=IwAR3WqxpZ3T6CAxbyEyawWWtIvvO38wxaDjOhXZi-ZehX4KDBym8A58vuGnY

If you wonder, as I often do, whether all the writing and policy statements on archives and human rights make a difference, the decision will reassure you. On page 42, footnote 68, the Court cites the 16 June 2019 statement published by the International Council on Archives on the Guatemalan police archives; on page 49, footnote 78, the judges cite the Rule-of-Law Tools for Post-Conflict States: Archives published by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2015; and on page 51, footnote 79, the judges refer to “The Administration of Justice and the Human Rights of Detainees:  Question of the impunity of perpetrators of human rights violations (civil and political)” known commonly as the  Joinet-Orentlicher principles. So to all of us concerned with archives and human rights: Keep writing. And thanks to all the colleagues who sent information on the Court and the decision.

Commentary: Archives and the Wind of Madness

Some daCys a mighty wave of dread washes up. I’m not alone in the feeling, it seems: in his 4 February press conference, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, “I have spoken recently about winds of hope. But today a wind of madness is sweeping the globe.” He was talking, of course, about the realm of peace and security, but the unpredictable instability affects archives and archivists, too. Here are some of the current situations where archivists are in danger or where archives are in danger or both.

A case where both archives and archivists are in danger is in Lebanon. UMAM Documentation & Research, a nongovernmental organization in Lebanon, holds materials relating to the 1975-1990 civil war, including the missing persons from it, as well as significant cultural records (newspapers, film, business records and personal papers). During the recent civil unrest and due to UMAM D&R’s overt political stands in favor of the popular protests, anti-protest rioters broke into the compound where UMAM D&R is located in Beirut’s southern suburb. They were restrained by the intervention of local people and persuaded not to damage the building and its contents. Threats have been made against the UMAM founders. (Personal communication)

Archivists are also in personal danger. In Chile Alajandra Araya, the director of the archives at the University of Chile (Archivo Central Andres Bello), a history professor, and a member of the human rights group at the university, is being prosecuted as an “accomplice of disruption and burglary” at the public school Liceo 7 Teresa Prats in Santiago. As part of the ongoing social revolt that started in Chile in October, students were occupying the school (a “toma”). Araya went to the school on 5 November to mediate, but during the event the police, acting with the authorization of the director of the school and the municipal authorities, entered, shooting. See below the declaration of solidarity with Professor Araya. Thanks to Valentina Rojas for the information. Declaración de solidaridad con la académica Alejandra Araya, profesora de la Cátedra de Derechos Humanos, Universidad de Chile; https://www.latercera.com/la-tercera-pm/noticia/acab-la-sigla-la-polemica-una-escuela-autodefensa-archivo-andres-bello-la-u-chile/974746/ ; https://ecoledeschartes.tumblr.com/post/190494197307/archives-archivistes-et-crise-au-chili-quelques 

In Guatemala, as reported in SAHR News 2019-11, former national archivist Anna Carla Ericastilla and former police archives head Gustavo Meono are both under pressure. Currently, Ericastilla is asking a labor tribunal to order compensation for her unjustified dismissal from the archives; in a separate action, a hearing on her request for dismissal of the criminal complaint against her was held in November, but a decision has not been made. (Personal communication)  

Also in Guatemala there is a hovering danger to personnel who worked for the former UN-sponsored International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG). A legislative commission issued a 17-page report saying CICIG had violated rights and exceeded its mandate to investigate. The commission president called CICIG staff members “criminals.” UN Secretary-General Guterres responded with a statement saying both CICIG and the Guatemalan justice sector officials who worked with it “contributed to the eradication of corruption and impunity.” He urged the Guatemalan authorities to protect the safety of former staff members of CICIG, which would include those who worked on managing the documentation of crimes. Fortunately, a digital copy of the CICIG records is in the United Nations Archives in New York. https://www.prensalibre.com/guatemala/politica/informe-de-comision-pide-que-el-mp-gestione-ordenes-de-captura/ ; https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/statement/2020-01-10/statement-the-spokesman-for-the-secretary-general-efforts-support-the-fight-against-impunity-guatemala-scroll-down-for-spanish

Then there are archives in danger. In Quito, Ecuador, the building housing the archaeological and art collections, the library and photographic collections of the Ministry of Culture was declared at risk of collapse. Plans were already drafted for a new facility in the outskirts of the city, but a broad coalition of groups demand that the government promptly transfer the materials to another building in the center of Quito. Thanks to Antoon De Baets for the information. https://www.elcomercio.com/opinion/patrimonio-peligro-opinion-columna-columnista.html

There are the unknown, uncertain dangers to archives, too. The Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) ended on 19 January, as the Organization of American States, which had supported the program, was unable to reach agreement with the government for its renewal. The OAS issued a statement saying that together with the Attorney General’s Office, the activities of MACCIH resulted in the prosecution of 133 people in 14 cases and “above all, in strengthening national capacities to combat corruption and impunity.” However, the fate of the sensitive records of MACCIH was not specified.   https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-003/20

Similarly, in Sri Lanka new president Gotabaya Rajapaska explained that “missing persons are actually dead” and that “after the necessary investigations” the families of missing persons will be given a death certificate. In 2015 a temporary presidential commission on the missing said it had received 23,568 submissions, including approximately 5,000 from families of security forces personnel. An Office of Missing Persons was established in 2018 to investigate the disappeared; with the arbitrary issuance of death certificates, what will happen to the Office and its records is not clear.  https://www.presidentsoffice.gov.lk/index.php/2020/01/17/un-resident-coordinator-delighted-with-presidents-sustainable-development-programs/?lang=en; http://nirmin.gov.lk/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=127:office-on-missing-persons-omp&catid=9:projects&lang=en&Itemid=208; https://www.icj.org/sri-lanka-presidents-remarks-on-missing-persons-are-an-affront-to-victims/  

So what are we to make of this wind? Does it reflect a growing understanding by political elites that archives have power? Or does it simply reflect the international zeitgeist, the authoritarianism that seems to be increasing? Whatever it is, we cannot simply shake our heads and move on: our colleagues, their archives and their institutions need support.

Commentary: Year in Review

We, Janus-like, both look forward to a new decade and look back at the events of the year just past. Here are items from each month of the News in 2019 that, taken together, illustrate the diversity of human rights issues that involve archives. Best wishes for the year ahead!

January.  Some U.S. police departments are finding it too expensive to manage and store the records of the body cameras their officers wear.

February.  Facebook employs about 15,000 persons as “content reviewers” to moderate posts and delete those containing hate speech, violent attacks, graphic pornography and other images; this review takes a psychological toll on the reviewers.

March.  The European Court of Human Rights, citing Soviet KGB documents, issued a landmark ruling that Soviet repressions against Lithuanian partisans can be treated as genocide. The case is on appeal.

April.  The president of the recently concluded Tunisian Truth and Dignity Commission said she regretted very much the “sore lack of documents” provided to the Commission from the archives of the political police.

May.  In Guatemala the Historical Archives of the National Police (AHPN) was under threat from the Minister of the Interior; the situation has moderated since May but remains unstable.

June.  The nongovernmental Syrian Legal Development Programme published “The Human Rights and Business Toolkit for Syria” to help human rights defenders identify human rights issues linked to business activity and hold “perpetrators of business-related human rights abuses to account.”

July.  Akevot, a nongovernmental organization in Israel, published a report on the “Ministry of Defense mechanism to conceal archival records in various archives,” including those needed for understanding the 1948 displacement of Palestinians.

August.  The High Court of Bangladesh ruled that “women need no longer declare if they are virgins on marriage certificates.”

September.  Studies using criminal history records from the U.S. and Denmark found that a significant percentage of offenders who gave a DNA sample upon arrest were less likely to reoffend after release.

October.  A court in Northern Ireland ruled that oral history interviews of former Irish Republican Army members about events during the “Troubles” could not be used as evidence because both interviewee and interviewer had a “clear bias.”

November.  Climate research using satellite imagery, LandScan population data, and artificial intelligence found that within a mere three decades rising sea levels could regularly flood lands currently home to 300 million people.

December.  Records of the University of Cape Town’s medical school enabled researchers to find the living descendants of 9 San and Khoe persons whose 100-year-old skeletal remains are housed there. At the request of the families, the University facilitated research into the native San and Khoe people and will return the remains to the families.

Commentary: News at 10!

It began this way: At the 2009 meeting of the International Council on Archives, national archivists were wary of the 6-year-old Human Rights Working Group. They seemed fear that if a body with the ICA’s name pointed to human rights abuses by governments, it would make it difficult for them to continue supporting ICA. As the incoming chair of the HRWG, I took the stage at the annual business meeting and promised that the Group would look at human rights issues in all sectors of society, not just governments. The way I thought to keep my word was to send out regular reports about human rights in international news. I put out the first issue of HRWG News in December 2009 which, as you look at the issue number above, means this issue completes a 10-year run of monthly releases.

That first issue was only two pages in length, and it announced that the next issues of the newsletter would discuss the Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and highlight examples of records essential to exercise those rights; those became commentary topics through July 2012. The next set of commentaries focused on the Principles of Access to Archives, which the ICA adopted at its August 2012 annual meeting. Since that run was completed in June 2013, the commentary has simply focused on a topic in the news. To mark the 10-year anniversary, a list of commentary topics will be posted to the SAHR website. The compilation of the commentaries on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I issued in 2018 for the 70th anniversary of the UDHR, can be found there also.

Early on I began to separate items into sections for international, general, bilateral/multilateral, and national news. Individual country and bilateral items form the most prominent part of the News; over 150 countries have been featured at least once in the 10 years. But increasingly human rights in business and in medical treatment and the related records have assumed greater importance in the coverage. I always include news from international organizations, as that information is often lacking or buried in national news media yet has broad impact. 

Deciding how to characterize a news item is difficult. Do you, for example, think an item on how DNA is used in research on criminal cases should be listed under privacy, technology or medical news? Is an item on the war in Yemen part of the general wars in the Middle East or is it separate (right now it is separate)? Early issues had all news about UN Special Rapporteurs under the UN heading, but as I heard from people that they read only the news items on the countries in which they were interested, I started moving UN and other international news that applies only to one country to the country item. The yearly indexes for the News, which I began keeping in 2013, show how shockingly inconsistent I have been. Yearly indexes for 2016-2018 will be posted to the SAHR website.

After a reader told me that some of the summaries were too brief to allow him to decide whether to read the whole story, I started adding more text to some items, adding work for the translators. Coverage changes; for instance, a few years ago I dropped reporting on any but extraordinary data breaches—there were just too many. I try to avoid using links that lead to sites for paying subscribers only; often I can find an open site that carries the same story and I will cite that.

Over the years I have been asked how I put the issue together. I am always grateful for leads to articles, and I thank the tipsters. But mostly it comes from reading: a dozen daily newspapers in paper or on line and several dozen other electronic news sources, some daily, some weekly, some biweekly, some monthly. I always use and am enormously thankful for Peter Kurilecz’s RAINbyte, Documentary Heritage News from Library and Archives Canada, and the monthly Crisis Watch from the International Crisis Group; without them this News would be poorer.

The News has many unseen helpers. Until her untimely death in 2017 Cristina Bianchi translated it into French. Since that time the major work of French translation has been done by Remi Dubuisson and Myriam Erwin. Before 2015 some of the News was translated into Spanish by Roman Lescano; since that time Paloma Beneito Arias, Valentina Rojas and Blanca Bazaco Palacios share that task. A number of people have served as webmaster, getting the News onto the ICA page, including Teresa Fallon, Kate Blalack and, currently, Roman Lescano. Thanks to all of them for this time-consuming, unrecognized but incredibly devoted work.

Distributing the News has been complicated. I post the News to the ICA listserve, but the ICA is unable to maintain a subscription list for non-members. Consequently, UNESCO, through the good offices of Jens Boel, made an important contribution by distributing the issues through 2017 to a mailing list it maintained. Since then, thanks to Giulia Barrera, the National Association of Italian Archives’ online archival magazine Il Mondo degli Archivi has taken over, reformatting and distributing the News to a mailing list it maintains. Thanks to all these people and groups.

And, above all, my thanks to all readers everywhere. May the next ten years find more examples of archives affecting positively the human rights of each of us, anywhere we live and work and have our being.

Commentary: Human dignity and the dead in the Caesar photographs

On the evening of October 31, I walked into a Hong Kong hotel seeking food and was confronted with a shining white skull—artificial, but startlingly realistic. It was, of course, decoration for Halloween, the night when certain traditions say spirits rise from graves and cavort in the world. From apparently pagan roots, Halloween in various countries has become a festival, a commercial celebration, a costume party, a time to watch horror movies: in other words, fun.

It is a testament to the ability of humans to compartmentalize that when we see a skull on a reception desk we smile but we demand that photographs of the dead are handled with the utmost discretion. Consider the issue of the Caesar photographs. In 2014 a Syrian military police photographer, given the cover name “Caesar,” managed to leave Syria, bringing with him on a computer thumb drive 53,275 images of approximately 11,000 dead bodies of people tortured and killed while in Syrian military detention. He told a three-person Inquiry of eminent jurists that the reasons he was ordered to take the photographs were “[f]irst to permit a death certificate to be produced without families requiring to see the body thereby avoiding the authorities having to give a truthful account of their deaths; second to confirm that orders to execute individuals had been carried out.” At that time of the Inquiry’s report, the photographs were entrusted to the “Syrian National Movement.” https://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1390226674736/syria-report-execution-tort.pdf

On 21 September 2017, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) and a number of Syrians called the “Caesar Files Group” filed a criminal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe against senior officials from the Syrian intelligence services and the military police for crimes against humanity and war crimes. The Group gave the Prosecutor “a set of high-resolution images and metadata” that “can be used to verify the photographs and provide further information about them. This adds to the evidentiary value of the images and paves the way for further investigatory steps.” In June 2018, the “German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof) issued an international warrant against Jamil Hassan on the basis of the so-called Caesar Files, their metadata as well as witness statements by Syrian torture survivors. Hassan was the head of the Syrian Air Force Intelligence Service until July 2019 and therefore responsible for torture in thousands of cases.”  https://www.ecchr.eu/en/case/caesar-photos-document-systematic-torture/

Meanwhile, the nongovernmental Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) obtained “about 6,189 Caesar photographs” and is working to determine the identity of the people photographed (the images have only numbers, not names). So far SNHR has identified 801 persons, including 2 children and 10 adult females. It decided not to publish the photos it has because, it wrote, this “would involve many violations, perhaps the most prominent of which is the violation of victims’ and family members’ privacy . . the publication of such distressing photos may cause further trauma and pain to the tens of thousands of families whose children are still forcibly disappeared. In addition to this, most of these graphic photos of individuals killed under torture contain shocking and distressing scenes and we believe that disseminating them without very good cause is a violation of human dignity.” http://sn4hr.org/blog/2019/10/21/54362/

Atrocity photographs are, unfortunately, increasingly common, from videos of Islamic State murders published on line to images of police brutality captured by cellphone cameras. They are important as potential legal evidence, for resolving the fates of persons, and for the history of the event and the human community. Some of them are public immediately, such as the images broadcast by the gunman who killed two people and injured two more in Halle, Germany (see below). But managing the records of undisclosed atrocity photographs such as those Caesar had requires a sensitive, serious consideration of their impact when made public, the privacy rights of the families of the persons pictured, and the need to show the public the evidence of crimes. Surely if it is possible to bring closure to a family by making the photos available to the family for review while protecting their privacy, that is the just course of action, while denying access to the general public. SNHR and others who hold such archives have a most serious responsibility when they grant access.

Commentary: Who are you? The tattoo solution.

In the 18th century Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, suggested that people should tattoo their name, address, and date of birth on their wrists: “Who are you, with whom I have to deal? The answer to this important question would no longer be liable to evasion.” While Mr. Bentham’s suggestion was ignored—and today’s tattoo fashion is far from name and address—the identification of a person is an enduring problem. Documents—passports, identity cards, medical records, driver’s licenses, marriage contracts, birth certificates—many people have one or all of these.

Except when they don’t, or when the documents they have are not trusted by the person who asks, “Who are you?”

For example, in Berlin a man was arrested for killing a former Chechen separatist commander on 23 August. According to the New York Times, he had a Russian passport and, yes, arm tattoos but “investigators believe the name is fake.” An anonymous email to the Berlin police suggested the man is a former major in the St. Petersburg police department named Vladimir Alekseevich Stepanov; the Times found his name in “court and government records in Russia” and “also ran searches through millions of images on numerous photo databases and located two potential photographs of him,” but then Fontanka.ru, a Russian news website, said Mr. Stepanov was in prison and published a “current photo of Mr. Stepanov, which does not seem to resemble the suspect in custody in Berlin.” So who is he?  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/world/europe/berlin-murder-russia.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fkatrin-bennhold&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

For another example, migrants of all ages often have few and sometimes no documents. Human Rights Watch issued a report on the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the French Hautes-Alpes. It conducted interviews between January and July with 61 juvenile migrants as well as others who interacted with the children and reviewed the records of evaluations of 36 children by the government, 13 juvenile court judgments, and 2 guardianship offers. The children told them that they “felt they had not been heard” during their interviews with French authorities, “a conclusion reinforced when they saw the reports prepared by the examiner.” HRW found that “many [of the children] are refused formal recognition as children after flawed age assessments” and “police have also harassed aid workers, volunteers, and activists who take part in search-and-rescue operations in the mountains.” Among other recommendations, HRW urges the government to presume that the “birth certificates and other identity documents obtained abroad” that the child has “be presumed valid in the absence of substantiated reason to believe they are not” and to treat the children as the juveniles they are. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/09/05/subject-whim/treatment-unaccompanied-migrant-children-french-hautes-alpes

And then there is this: “A new Chinese app that lets users swap their faces with celebrities . . in a video clip racked up millions of downloads,” Reuters reported, but sparked “new concerns surrounding identity verification.”  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech-zao/chinese-face-swapping-app-goes-viral-sparks-privacy-concerns-idUSKCN1VN0G9

  Governments hold a monopoly on issuing documents of legal identity, and government archives around the world hold literally billions of examples. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 is “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”  It does not say where and how that registration is to be maintained and made available to the person asking, “Who are you?” Tattooing is looking better all the time.

In the 18th century Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher, suggested that people should tattoo their name, address, and date of birth on their wrists: “Who are you, with whom I have to deal? The answer to this important question would no longer be liable to evasion.” While Mr. Bentham’s suggestion was ignored—and today’s tattoo fashion is far from name and address—the identification of a person is an enduring problem. Documents—passports, identity cards, medical records, driver’s licenses, marriage contracts, birth certificates—many people have one or all of these.

Except when they don’t, or when the documents they have are not trusted by the person who asks, “Who are you?”

For example, in Berlin a man was arrested for killing a former Chechen separatist commander on 23 August. According to the New York Times, he had a Russian passport and, yes, arm tattoos but “investigators believe the name is fake.” An anonymous email to the Berlin police suggested the man is a former major in the St. Petersburg police department named Vladimir Alekseevich Stepanov; the Times found his name in “court and government records in Russia” and “also ran searches through millions of images on numerous photo databases and located two potential photographs of him,” but then Fontanka.ru, a Russian news website, said Mr. Stepanov was in prison and published a “current photo of Mr. Stepanov, which does not seem to resemble the suspect in custody in Berlin.” So who is he?  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/world/europe/berlin-murder-russia.html?rref=collection%2Fbyline%2Fkatrin-bennhold&action=click&contentCollection=undefined&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection

For another example, migrants of all ages often have few and sometimes no documents. Human Rights Watch issued a report on the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the French Hautes-Alpes. It conducted interviews between January and July with 61 juvenile migrants as well as others who interacted with the children and reviewed the records of evaluations of 36 children by the government, 13 juvenile court judgments, and 2 guardianship offers. The children told them that they “felt they had not been heard” during their interviews with French authorities, “a conclusion reinforced when they saw the reports prepared by the examiner.” HRW found that “many [of the children] are refused formal recognition as children after flawed age assessments” and “police have also harassed aid workers, volunteers, and activists who take part in search-and-rescue operations in the mountains.” Among other recommendations, HRW urges the government to presume that the “birth certificates and other identity documents obtained abroad” that the child has “be presumed valid in the absence of substantiated reason to believe they are not” and to treat the children as the juveniles they are. https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/09/05/subject-whim/treatment-unaccompanied-migrant-children-french-hautes-alpes

And then there is this: “A new Chinese app that lets users swap their faces with celebrities . . in a video clip racked up millions of downloads,” Reuters reported, but sparked “new concerns surrounding identity verification.”  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tech-zao/chinese-face-swapping-app-goes-viral-sparks-privacy-concerns-idUSKCN1VN0G9

Governments hold a monopoly on issuing documents of legal identity, and government archives around the world hold literally billions of examples. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 16.9 is “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”  It does not say where and how that registration is to be maintained and made available to the person asking, “Who are you?” Tattooing is looking better all the time.

Commentary: Before the Water Comes: Mapping for Preservation

After the heart-breaking reports of Hurricane Dorian’s devastation in the Bahamas, I emailed Patrice Williams, the director of the National Archives, and asked, “Are you and your colleagues okay after hurricane Dorian? Did you have damage to the archives?” She replied that both the colleagues and the archives are safe, as they were out of the direct path of the storm. “Whew,” I thought. But we know that a national archives does not hold all important records: business records, archives of faith-based institutions, school records, archives of all sorts of nongovernmental institutions, local notary and land transaction records, personal papers in homes and bank boxes—these are all vulnerable and the damage to them cannot be determined with a quick email.

 It is not clear what effect global warming had on the violence of the Category 5 hurricane that was Dorian, but it is unquestionable that climate change is real, with no cessation in sight. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2018 report showed oceans warmer than estimated (see HRWG News 2018-10 and 2019-01); for a recent analysis of the warming world, see https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-world/. Along with warmer oceans, climate change brings the melt of ice caps and glaciers, leading to sea level rise. As the National Geographic explains, “The most recent special report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says we can expect the oceans to rise between 10 and 30 inches (26 to 77 centimeters) by 2100 with temperatures warming 1.5 °C. . . . Another analysis based on NASA and European data skewed toward the higher end of that range, predicting a rise of 26 inches (65 centimeters) by the end of this century if the current trajectory continues.” That will mean permanent flooding in thousands of populated areas, not only on the coasts but also along the rivers that lead to the sea. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/sea-level-rise/

 We know that in the wake of disasters people need documents. The foresighted Syrian project called The Day After copied court and land records in Aleppo, Syria, and took copies out of the country to save them from manmade disaster. But people also need records of marriages, education, employment, affiliations, health. And communities need the documents of heritage in order to root themselves in their culture.

 Archivists have thought a great deal about coping with disasters, such as floods and hurricanes that result in (usually) temporary displacement. And archivists have given some thought to disaster preparedness, too. But inexorable climate change requires a longer strategy. Archives of all kinds will have to assess the risk, decide how to mitigate that risk, and take action, which may take years to accomplish. Does the archives move? Does it stay in place but send security copies to another location, either in the country or outside? Does it need evacuation plans? Will building changes, like a seawall, be enough?

 To begin, archivists must to understand the scope of the changes that are coming. One way to do this is to map. The first step would be to map the locations of the archives in the country or province, including in government offices, major businesses, faith-based organizations, schools, and so forth. No mapping project will find all of them, but it should be able to locate the major ones. Next overlay that map with the best projections of sea level rise, such as in the forthcoming IPCC publication Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (https://www.ipcc.ch/). With that information in hand, a council of stakeholders can assess the nature of the risk and decide on actions that need to be taken to prevent mass loss of archives.

 As the world’s climate continues its rapid change, we can be certain that not all archives will be as lucky as the National Archives of the Bahamas was this time. We archivists need to get ready to preserve the records of our civilizations.

Commentary: "as only archivists can do"

“As only archivists can do,” said the prosecutor. The case was in Italy, but it could have been in Guatemala or Bangladesh or anywhere. Here is the story:

  In January 2017 a tribunal in Rome sentenced two former heads of state and two ex-chiefs of security forces from Bolivia and Peru, two military officers from Chile, and a former Uruguayan foreign minister to life imprisonment for their involvement in the coordinated, cross-border system of repression known as “Operation Condor.” The case involved the “disappearance” of 42 dual citizens – 33 Italian-Uruguayans, 5 Italian-Argentinians and 4 Italian-Chileans. And although the court convicted the five, it acquitted all other defendants (14), of whom eleven were Uruguayan.

 During that trial Giulia Barrera, senior archivist at the national archives of Italy, was an expert witness for the prosecution. At the beginning of the trial, the prosecutor encouraged the court to read at least a few crucial documents regarding the creation of Operation Condor and suggested the court also read the transcript of the testimony of “historian and archivist” Giulia Barrera, who provided tools for understanding the value of such documents “as only archivists can do.” The prosecutor said Dr. Barrera analyzed the documents with “specific technique and made an assessment of the value of sources” so that the documents could be incorporated in the trial with full confidence about their value. The prosecution then presented U.S. declassified documents and documents from the archives of Paraguay, Uruguay and other sources. The court considered these documents crucial evidence of the existence of Operation Condor and of its criminal nature.

 The decision in the first trial was appealed, and the Court of Appeal combined it with other related cases, several of which concerned persons who were kidnapped and killed in international illegal repressive operations carried out in the framework of Operation Condor. Archival documents again played a crucial role. During the appeal trial no witness was admitted, but the lawyer for the State of Uruguay was able to present new archival documents that were recently declassified in Uruguay, including the personal military file of Nestor Troccoli, a Uruguayan Navy officer with dual Italo-Uruguayan citizenship who fled Uruguay to escape trial and took refuge in Italy.

 On 9 July 2019 the Court of Appeal sentenced all 24 defendants to life imprisonment for the murder of Italian citizens (Italo-Chilean and Italo-Uruguayan) who were “disappeared” in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay in the 1970s. Only one defendant, Troccoli, was present; the rest were sentenced “in absentia.” Finally, justice.

 As only archivists can do, indeed.

 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/southern-cone/2017-01-17/operation-condor-condemned-life;  https://www.republica.com.uy/plan-condor-uruguay-da-vuelta-juicio-en-roma-y-logra-prision-perpetua-para-trece-represores-id718206/;  https://www.presidencia.gub.uy/comunicacion/comunicacionnoticias/sentencia-tribunal-apelaciones-italia-plan-condor ; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/08/italian-court-jails-24-over-south-american-operation-condor The entire trial was recorded by “Radio Radicale” and is available here https://www.radioradicale.it/processi/1266/processo-dappello-contro-i-responsabili-delloperazione-condor

 Note: The June commentary suggested that the “critical test of the right to be wrong must be whether acting on the belief hurts others.” Antoon De Baets wrote to say that the right to be wrong is supported in General Comment 34 on States parties' obligations under Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The only legitimate grounds for restricting the right to freedom of expression listed in the ICCPR are (a) For respect of the rights or reputations of others; and (b) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals. Paragraph 49 of the General Comment says, “The Covenant does not permit general prohibition of expressions of an erroneous opinion or an incorrect interpretation of past events.”

Commentary: Holes in the Poles and the right to be wrong

They appeared in the doorway, two middle-aged men in dark suits, white shirts, dark ties. Dick, my boss in the office of U.S. Presidential archives, asked how he could help them. “We know,” one said, “that ships from outer space have landed on the White House lawn in every Administration since Taft and you are hiding the records.” No, Dick replied, space ships had not landed on the White House lawn, there are no records of such events, and the archives was not hiding such records from the public. “You lie,” they said. After a little more discussion, the men explained that there are holes at the North and South Poles that lead to sub-tropical paradises where space ships fly in to refuel. That led Dick to suggest that they talk with the archivist who handled the records of polar explorations. They did. That archivist had just participated in an expedition to Antarctica; he told them he had been to the South Pole and there was no hole there. “You lie,” they said.

 Many people are concerned about fake information posted to social media (see https://www.journalism.org/2019/06/05/many-americans-say-made-up-news-is-a-critical-problem-that-needs-to-be-fixed  and items below in the technology section). But at least as worrying is the trend to believe things that are demonstrably wrong, disbelieving government (space ships did not land on the White House lawn), experience (I was at the South Pole), or professionalism (we did not hide records).

 A core human right is the freedom of belief. But does that entail the right to be wrong, to believe an untruth in the face of truth? A representative of the British Red Cross Society said that since the August 2018 outbreak of the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo its workers have heard “more than 33,000 individual rumours, observations and beliefs related to Ebola,” such as “The Ebola virus doesn’t exist; it’s a virus that was made to eliminate the Congolese.” How, he asked, “do you fight a disease people don’t believe in?” http://news.trust.org/item/20190620142457-zkby8/

 The Wellcome Global Monitor polled people in 144 countries on beliefs about vaccines, which again and again have proven effective. It found that in France one in three people think vaccines are unsafe--the highest rate in the world--and nearly one in five believe they aren’t effective. “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), reluctance or refusal to vaccinate is now one of the top ten major threats to global health. One manifestation of this is that even people in high-income countries, with good healthcare systems, are dying from easily preventable diseases.” https://mosaicscience.com/story/how-france-persuading-its-citizens-get-vaccinated-measles-antivax-vaccines-vaccination/?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=6d5d1a258a-MR_COPY_08&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-6d5d1a258a-149736437

 To be sure, there is an enormous difference between believing in holes in the Poles and believing that Ebola does not exist. The critical test for the right to be wrong must be whether acting on the belief hurts others. Believing in space ships is unlikely to harm anyone, but failure to treat a communicable disease surely can. There are limits to the right to be wrong.

 Archivists know that the records we manage contain both truths and untruths, and when we provide a certified true copy of a document we only assure the recipient that it is a true copy, not that the information in the document is true. But we do hold records that are demonstrably true: that a treaty exists, that a person was appointed to a university post, that the efficacy and safety of a vaccine was tested before it was put on the market. And we hold records showing that an action or transaction was based on false information, prejudice, and fear. Our task is to ensure that the original record is protected, knowing that a copy of it can be manipulated in many ways and its information can be believed, disbelieved or ignored. But if you do happen to have a reliable, original image of a subtropical paradise at either Pole, let me know.

Commentary: "Expect the machines to take control"

Ask a classroom of university students to list the researcher advantages of digital archives, whether digitized or born digital, and you get predictable answers: available without respect to location, time of day, age, physical mobility, or political system--in other words, democratic access. Some savvier students may say it helps preserve papers and photographs because they aren’t handled. A few may complain gently about the thousands of hits they get for a simple query, but most are happy to search without having to develop a search strategy. They fail to note that the actual researcher is a machine.  

 The broad uses of artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasingly sophisticated algorithms employed raise significant issues for researchers, for human rights and for archives.  

 Consider this: According to the Daily Mail, the European Union plans to introduce “swarms of AI driven robots that can patrol borders by surveillance of the sea and land.” The robots’ data will be fed to a control room where it will be linked to data from “static sensors.” An algorithm will then identify “threats” to be sent to “border authorities” and “operational personnel.” A leader of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control told the Italian magazine Il Manifesto the group wants “to prevent two functions of the machines: target selection and targeting.” AI systems for facial recognition are known to incorporate bias: according to researchers at two U.S. universities “three commercially released facial-analysis programs from major technology companies demonstrate both skin-type and gender biases.” In tests, “the three programs’ error rates in determining the gender of light-skinned men were never worse than 0.8 percent. For darker-skinned women, however, the error rates ballooned — to more than 20 percent in one case and more than 34 percent in the other two.” So how accurate will the EU robots be in identifying border crossers, smugglers, and polluters, the targets of the EU programs? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7022589/Swarms-automated-drones-controlled-AI-patrol-Europes-borders-using-powerful-sensors.html; http://news.mit.edu/2018/study-finds-gender-skin-type-bias-artificial-intelligence-systems-0212

 Or think about this records issue: A non-profit organization in California developed an algorithm which “can, at the touch of a button, delete the criminal records of thousands of people,” Digital Journal reported. Called “Clear My Record,” the algorithm examines “thousands of lines of conviction data and determines eligibility [for destruction] within minutes.” The developer says it could “clear 250,000 convictions throughout California by the end of 2019.” Let’s hope the algorithm was taught records retention rules.  http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/justice-algorithm-wipes-the-criminal-past-of-thousands/article/548754

 Or this structural archives issue: A records management official in a government agency that is installing an artificial intelligence system to manage the agency’s records from retention to retrieval to destruction was asked if the AI system eventually would be transferred to the national archives along with the records. He said he thought that the national archives would never hold AI-powered records, that the records would stay permanently in the agency and be managed by it with the national archives having solely a monitoring role.

 Or this freedom of information issue: Is an algorithm employed by a government reachable as a record under a freedom of information act? Italy has a case on point. After a national public exam to hire teachers, the Italian Ministry of Education used an algorithm to assign teachers to schools. A legal battle followed, as teachers unhappy with assignments demanded to know how the algorithm worked. Italy’s highest administrative court decided that the algorithm was an administrative document, created by humans who gave it specific instructions, and therefore was covered by the right of access law. (Thanks to Giulia Barrera for the information.) https://parer.ibc.regione.emilia-romagna.it/notizie/algoritmi-delle-pa-una-sentenza; for the court decision see https://www.giustizia-amministrativa.it/portale/pages/istituzionale/visualizza/?nodeRef=&schema=cds&nrg=201704477&nomeFile=201902270_11.html&subDir=Provvedimenti

 Finally, in addition to concerns about bias in targeting as a human rights issue and destruction and retrieval as archives issues, AI adopters are realizing that “training” a major AI system is a massive task. Moreover: As reported in n a new paper, researchers at a U.S. university “performed a life cycle assessment for training several common large AI models. They found that the process can emit more than 626,000 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent—nearly five times the lifetime emission of the average American car (and that includes manufacture of the car itself).” So in addition to the complex intellectual task of training, there is an environmental impact. https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613630/training-a-single-ai-model-can-emit-as-much-carbon-as-five-cars-in-their-lifetimes/

 The Council of Europe (CoE) has taken a step to address the human rights concerns that arise from the machine as researcher. CoE’s Commissioner for Human Rights issued “Unboxing Artificial Intelligence: 10 Steps to Protect Human Rights.” Step 7, on data protection and privacy, says member states should have legislative safeguards when AI systems are used to process “genetic data; personal data relating to offences, criminal proceedings and convictions, and related security measures; biometric data; personal data relating to ‘racial’ or ethnic origin, political opinions, trade-union membership, religious or other beliefs, health or sexual life.”  https://rm.coe.int/unboxing-artificial-intelligence-10-steps-to-protect-human-rights-reco/1680946e64 Now we need to think how those principles will apply to archives.

 As long ago as 1951Alan Turing, the brilliant World War II era British mathematician and computer visionary, wrote in the essay Intelligent Machinery, A Heretical Theory, “It seems probable that once the machine thinking method had started, it would not take long to outstrip our feeble powers… They would be able to converse with each other to sharpen their wits. At some stage therefore, we should have to expect the machines to take control.” http://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/intelligent-machinery-a-heretical-theory.pdf

 It’s time to take notice.

Commentary: Hold 'em

Hold ‘em or fold ‘em? Use it or lose it? In the popular card game poker, hold ‘em [them] means you play with the cards you have and fold ‘em means you throw them down and quit. Use it or lose it is a popular culture phrase, often referring to sexual activity by senior citizens. Both phrases have something to teach us about archives of conflict.

 As the wars in Syria, Iraq and perhaps Afghanistan decrease in intensity, demands increase to hold perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity accountable for their actions. Enormous quantities of information have been amassed by official bodies such as the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria and a host of private groups including the Commission for International Justice and Accountability in Syria and Iraq, the Syrian Justice and Accountability Center, the Syrian Observatory, the International Bar Associations’ eyewitness to Atrocities app, and others. There is no dearth of evidence.

 Realistically, the International Criminal Court will not handle cases arising from these conflicts; it prosecutes high-level officials and military leaders, not the majority of persons who committed crimes. The courts of local and national governments are too weak or corrupt to be fair. Yet victims want a justice process. https://syriaaccountability.org/updates/2019/04/17/prosecuting-isis-in-northeast-syria/?utm_source=SJAC+Weekly+Update&utm_campaign=e2fc334ad1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_10_02_56_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0a7405c641-e2fc334ad1-90540617

 A troubling element is the recent decision by the International Criminal Court on Afghanistan. In November 2017 the ICC Prosecutor asked the judges “for permission to open an investigation into alleged war crimes committed in the Afghan conflict, including by the U.S. military,” Justiceinfo. net reported. In March 2019 the U.S. Secretary of State announced, “If you’re responsible for the proposed ICC investigation of U.S. personnel in connection with the situation in Afghanistan you should not assume that you still have, or will get, a visa or that you will [be] permitted to enter the U.S.” In April the visa of the ICC prosecutor was revoked; the ICC judges decided to deny the Prosecutor’s request to open an investigation. A recently departed ICC prosecutor said that “the information about alleged crimes by the CIA was very strong,” and in the wake of the decision “we may see a situation where alleged criminal activity under international law that has been acknowledged by the U.S. government and documented by other courts, government, NGOs and victims go unprosecuted.”   https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/live-feed/40582-us-in-first-sanctions-against-icc.html ;  https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/04/05/US-denies-entry-for-ICC-prosecutor-under-new-ban/7091554464008/ ; https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/tribunals/icc/41098-reality-check-for-the-icc-in-afghanistan.html

 So the world is accumulating an ever-increasing amount of evidence on crimes that go unpunished, from Sri Lanka to Papua to Rwanda. The list of only UN investigations into serious international crimes is long—Congo, Myanmar, Burundi, South Sudan, etc.--and the records exist; see http://libraryresources.unog.ch/factfinding/chronolist. Add to that the records of the nongovernmental organizations that monitor conflicts and we have persuasive records of atrocities committed. Should we say that because this evidence can’t be used now, we will lose the opportunity to hold accountable (use it or lose it)? Or do we believe that, in the longer term, there may be a path to justice (hold ‘em not fold ‘em)? 

 We are seeing some evidence that many years later persons can be held accountable. Both Peru and Romania are beginning trials for crimes committed in the 1980s; Argentina recently completed a trial on events in 1976 (see items below). Sudan’s dictator, long under ICC indictment, is now in jail; whether he will be transferred to The Hague is unclear. Having records of the atrocities committed is essential, perhaps especially for delayed justice. So to archivists who manage records of conflicts and investigations, the advice is: Hold ‘em.

Commentary: Summer is icumen in--and so is climate change

“Sumer is Icumen in,” sang 13th century Brits. Today both summer and climate change are “icumen in.” The UN Secretary-General, alarmed by the World Meteorological Organization’s report on “rising global temperatures and disastrous consequences,” announced a Climate Action Summit to be held in New York on 23 September. He told Heads of State, “Don’t come with a speech, come with a plan.” https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/sumer-is-icumen-in; http://www.eurasiareview.com/31032019-un-chief-calls-for-urgent-action-to-address-dangers-linked-to-climate-change-analysis/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29; for report see  https://gallery.mailchimp.com/daf3c1527c528609c379f3c08/files/82234023-0318-408a-9905-5f84bbb04eee/Climate_Statement_2018.pdf

 The Observer Research Foundation, an Indian nongovernmental “think tank,” analyzed the world’s “capacity for climate justice.” Pointing to “extreme weather events and rising average temperatures,” it said “the socio-economic effects of climate change include the potential mass migration of individuals and communities in the future.” Coastal communities in the U.S. and Bangladesh have already been forced to move (see item in HRWG News 2019-01); nations like the Maldives, with an average elevation of just a meter and a half above sea level, are in danger of needing to move entire populations if the international community continues its “lacklustere global effort to curb human-induced climate change.” http://www.eurasiareview.com/14032019-capacity-for-climate-justice-analysis/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29

 When people and institutions (commercial, faith-based, educational, medical, non-governmental, governmental, inter-governmental) move, records need to move with them. Archives buildings housing historical records may be located in vulnerable sites and need to be moved. And moving things is hard. Good advance planning is fundamental if the records are to be safely relocated. (For a brief overview of the complexities of preserving records during a planned move, see “Moving Archival Records: Guidelines for Preservation” by Gabriella Albrecht-Kunszeri and Maida H. Loescher, Comma, The International Journal on Archives: 2001/3/4.) But planning assumes we know where records are. And ironically, although archivists are the proponents of knowledge about records, often we don’t. A project in the United States to create a map of archives encountered a significant amount of difficulty—and that did not include mapping the locations of records still in the hands of the creators.

 What we need now--all over the world but especially in locations under threat from climate change—is to map the location of historical archives and current records and to overlay that map with maps of climate change impacts (for example, the map of sea level change https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-level/key-indicators/global-mean-sea-level ). That would allow us to identify the materials that need to be either relocated within the nation or, as a last resort, stored (digital copy or analog) in an external safe haven. 

 Who can do such mapping? National archival institutions, archival associations, universities—in short, any entity with persons who have the skills and time to do it. Donors such as foundations could be tapped for funds. UNESCO should pay a role in promoting the project. And when a regional or national map is completed, stakeholders should gather to decide how to proceed with far-sighted, informed, realistic preservation measures. As the Secretary-General said, we need to stop talking and come together and plan. 

Commentary: A road paved with records

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

“The Road Not Taken”

Robert Frost (U.S. poet), 1915

 During the past decade young men and women from all over the world took the road to ISIS in the Middle East. Most were Muslim, some were not; most were men, some were women; some went to Syria, some went to Iraq and other countries with ISIS affiliates. After arriving in Syria, some burned their passports.

 Now that the ISIS jihadist group is cornered in Syria, some members, captives, and people swept up in the group’s territory are fleeing and surrendering. Held in various jails and detention centers, they include children born while their mothers were with ISIS. Some detainees want to return to their native lands where their parents are anxious to see their children and grandchildren. The return, however, is controversial in the home countries, whose officials worry that these ISIS adherents may not have renounced extremism and will be a danger to national security.

 In late 2017 Iraq and Russia announced they were setting up a joint database listing Russian-speaking children “whose parents are believed to have been killed while fighting in Islamic State group ranks” and who are in “government-run children’s homes in Baghdad” in order to return them to relatives in Russia. Russia estimated there are “around 500 children” from “Russian origin or from former Soviet Union countries” in these homes. When the Iraqi government receives official documents from the Russian Embassy in Baghdad “proving that those children are from a Russian origin” the Iraqi Higher Judicial Council decides whether the child should be sent to Russia and the Immigration Department “stamps the passport.” How many of these children have been transported has not been reported. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Iraqi-Ambassador-to-Russia-on-Bringing-Them-Home-Campaign-20170923-0013.html?utm_source=planisys&utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&utm_content=36

 Unlike that situation, today’s potential returnees are adults and sometimes adults with children. According to the Washington Post, France is considering bringing home more than 100 former Islamic State fighters, with their families, while Belgium’s government is fighting a judge’s order to “repatriate six Belgian children along with their mothers, former Islamic State sympathizers who twice travelled to Syria.” https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shamima-begum-19-who-joined-isis-to-lose-uk-citizenship-1996814  It is relatively easy for a government to determine whether a person was issued a passport, and in most countries there are birth registrations and school records and social services and census data that show citizenship. But two examples show the complications that may arise when a government considers a return.

             * Shamima Begum, born in the U.K. to Bangladeshi parents who are naturalized citizens, ran away from her home in 2015 to join ISIS. She wants to come back. In the U.K. it is only possible to strip someone of U.K. nationality if they are eligible for citizenship elsewhere “and it is thought Ms Begum could be a Bangladeshi citizen because she was born to a mother believed to be Bangladeshi,” reported BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-47310206. Consequently, the U.K. Home Office sent a letter to her parents, saying she was stripped of U.K. citizenship and barred from return. An immigration lawyer told the Washington Post that children of Bangladeshi parents are automatically citizens at birth but this ends at age 21 “if they do not make an effort to retain that citizenship.” https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/shamima-begum-19-who-joined-isis-to-lose-uk-citizenship-1996814  Shamima has not done so; unless she acts, in two years she could be stateless. The nationality of her infant son, whose father is Dutch, is also in question. The Guardian reported that the Dutch Immigration and Naturalisation Service said “to live in the Netherlands with a Dutch national, a spouse or partner would need a resident permit – which would require a valid passport or other travel document,” neither of which she has.  https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/mar/03/shamima-begum-dutch-husband-wants-to-take-teenager-to-netherlands

 *If that case is not complicated enough, look at the case of Hoda Muthana. She was born in the U.S. on 28 October 1994 to Yemeni parents. Her father was a Yemeni diplomat at the United Nations, and he “surrendered his diplomatic identity” either in June 1994 before his daughter was born, making her a birthright U.S. citizen, or in February 1995, which would make her a Yemeni. After Hoda’s birth both parents got residence “green cards” and stayed in the U.S. Hoda got a U.S. passport in 2004 and a renewal in 2014, just before she went to Syria and joined ISIS where she publicly burned her passport. She now wishes to return. The U.S. government revoked her passport in January 2016 saying it had been issued in error: she was not a birthright citizen because “the US Mission to the UN’s records showed that Muthana’s father didn’t lose diplomatic status until months after Hoda was born.” A further complication: she has a small son whose father is Tunisian; it is not clear where her son is a citizen.  https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/22/18236309/hoda-muthana-isis-citizen-trump-pompeo

 Passports, birth records, green cards, naturalization records, border control records, video evidence of actions on behalf of ISIS: whichever path is chosen, it is paved with documents. And that makes all the difference.

Commentary: Documentation for the Disappeared

“We went to the hardware store. My father and I waited in the pickup while my husband went in. He never came out.” That was all the Guatemalan woman said to me, simply, without explaining what happened next, but we can guess: the increasing concern, the decision to go into the store and find him, the questioning of the clerk, the panic, the decision to go home not to the police, the calls to family and friends, the wait to see if there is a ransom demand, the deadening realization that he is not coming back, the juggling of finances to cover needs, the heart-rending decision to ask that he be declared dead so that life can go on.

 Resolving disappearances is crucial to the health of any society and the stability of its government. And yet, as the attorney general of El Salvador admitted (see below), although disappearances in the country had increased by 10% in 2018 to 3,514 cases, El Salvador still has “no institutionally agreed methodology to count disappearances.” To begin to fill this methodology need, the United Nations Committee on Forced Disappearances drafted “Guiding Principles for the Search for Disappeared Persons,” now under revision. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/SearchDisappearedPersons.aspx

 Records are a critical resource in the search for the disappeared. The revised Guiding Principles should insist that the records of each investigation must be managed competently from the start of the investigation to the disposition of the records when a case is closed. This is particularly important if the investigating authority is a temporary body rather than a regular part of the government or if it is faced with thousands of cases. The investigating authority should have a robust records management system both to handle the evidence it obtains on a case and to provide evidence of the work done by the authority with regard to the search. The authority should have a records schedule that states clearly what will happen to the records when a case is closed (whether by return of the disappeared person, retrieval of remains, or administrative procedure) and states which archives will receive the records of the authority, including both administrative and case-related records. The public, both persons who are searching for disappeared relatives and those who want to know how the authority carried out its mandate, has a right to know what will happen to the records.

 The Guiding Principles must apply to the records of both government and non-government entities. The Principles should acknowledge that business records often contain information needed for resolving human rights cases. Three recent examples:

*In December 2018 a court in Argentina convicted two former executives of a local Ford Motor Company plant of involvement in the 1976 kidnapping and torture of 24 workers employed by Ford at their factory on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Among their acts, the men were accused of providing photographs, home addresses and other personal data of the victims to agents of the dictatorship so they could be abducted.

*Also in December 2018, a Brazilian appeals court upheld the 2015 ruling against the Swiss agribusiness company Syngenta for the 2007 murder by Syngenta’s contract security firm of a member of a rural workers group that was protesting at Syngenta’s genetically modified food experiment site.

*After Colombia in August 2018 charged 13 former executives of United Fruit (Chiquita) company with using death squads to kill persons interfering with the work of its plantations, a nongovernmental organization in Washington, DC, published profiles of the 13 men “drawing on available public sources and a 48,000 page trove of the company’s internal records gained through [a] successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.” 

 We all wish there would be no need for the Guiding Principles, that no one would go into a hardware store and never come out. But until that wished-for day arrives, we need a good protocol for handling cases of the disappeared. No attorney general ever again should say, “We have no methodology to count disappearances.”

Commentary: The Year in Review

As we start a new year and look back on the tumult of the one just past, here are items from each month of HRWG News in 2018 that, taken together, illustrate the diversity of human rights issues that include archives. Best wishes for the year ahead!

 January.  One of the twins born of a Canadian surrogate mother from the mixed sperm of two male donors was found, through DNA testing, to be the child of the U.S. citizen donor, so the child was automatically a U.S. citizen and entitled to a U.S. passport, and the other twin, born of an Israeli donor, was not.

 February.  Setting an important precedent, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued an advisory opinion that a healthy environment is a right “fundamental to the existence of humanity” and that States must avoid causing “significant” environmental damage inside or outside their territory and provide access to information related to potential environmental harms.

 March.  The Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan took over 230 detailed individual witness statements and gathered over 58,000 documents, including confidential records, covering incidents in South Sudan since December 2013, but warned that “every day . . . documentary evidence is lost, concealed or destroyed.”

 April.  U.S. police compared DNA collected from a 1980 crime scene with DNA data on the genealogy website GEDmatch and found distant relatives of the suspect, who was arrested.

 May.  A study found that physicians who use stigmatizing language in their patients’ medical records may affect the care those patients get for years to come.

 June.  Using massive quantities of video footage of the February 2014 protests in Kiev, Ukraine, a research team reconstructed the deaths of three protesters to identify the sources of the bullets that killed them and created a composited video that was accepted as evidence by the criminal court hearing a case against five police officers.  

 July.  Germany’s Federal Court of Justice ruled that heirs should have access to the Facebook accounts of the deceased.

 August.  Israel’s Justice Minister instructed the Israel State Archives to release some 300,000 files relating to the children of Yemeni immigrants, whose disappearance after their arrival in Israel over a half century ago has been at the center of a lingering controversy.

 September.  India’s Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the government’s massive biometric identification and registration project, Aadhaar, but with restrictions.

 October.  The Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway, used 20 years of statistical studies on the relationship between education and political violence and found the “lack of male education appears to be the strongest predictor of conflict.” 

 November.  A Canadian judge ruled in favor of access to records of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, citing the ICA position on access.

 December.  DNA tests on ancient remains in Australia and on samples from Indigenous people living in the area where the remains were found show clear links; this may enable repatriation of Indigenous human remains when provenance documentation is lacking.  

Commentary, A birthday gift for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

What do you give a 70-year-old for a birthday? If it is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, turning 70 on December 10, the answer might be a bit of reinforcement.

 The drafters of the Declaration were clear: this was a universal declaration, not a United Nations declaration, although the group worked under the aegis of the then-new UN. The Preamble of the Declaration proclaims that “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” Records are essential to protect these rights and to obtain recourse when these rights are violated. The nexus between human rights and archives is strong and complex.

 The Declaration was a statement of aspirations, but it lacked any means of enforcement. Work on an enforcement mechanism started soon after the declaration was adopted, leading to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which established treaty responsibilities of the signatory States. But what about violations by non-state actors, particularly by transnational corporations and business entities? Today the damage done to health, economic stability, cultural properties, and social well-being by corporate entities is undeniable. It is easy to see the effects on workers and communities that are co-located with an industrial site, but increasingly the impact is on all of us. As readers of HRWG News know, there has been a long list of failed attempts to hold multinationals accountable for human rights violations.

 The United Nations recognized this problem, and in 2011 the UN Human Rights Council endorsed the “UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,” a set of guidelines for States and companies to prevent, address and remedy human rights abuses committed in business operations. But, like the Universal Declaration, these Guiding Principles have no enforcement mechanism. There is a current proposal to adopt a legally binding instrument “to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises,” but its passage is far from sure. 

What does all this have to do with archives? The Guiding Principles, for all their words and the extended commentary, say NOTHING about the need for good corporate records in order to monitor the operations of the business, to ensure that there is a reliable record of the actions and transactions, that there is an effective retention of records that provide evidence of corporate actions that could reasonably be assumed to impact human rights. Not a word. Yet simply reading the document shows that the Principles cannot be upheld unless a business has a robust records management and archives program, preserving the records that demonstrate the institution’s compliance with—or lack of compliance with—the guidance.

 We need to assure that both transnational corporations and national companies have robust records programs. We need to support corporate archivists, whose paychecks come from the company, to insist on retention of records with a human rights component. And we need the international financial institutions to incorporate in their financing agreements both the requirement that the client consent to be bound by the Guiding Principles and that the client consent to maintain a trustworthy archives regime to ensure accountability processes.

 That would be a truly useful 70th birthday present for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Commentary, Geography and the fate of archives

We spent much of the last two decades talking about the use of archives in situations of transitional justice, focusing on the four pillars of holding accountable, ensuring no repetition, learning the truth of what happened, and providing reparations. We looked at a country’s traumatic, undemocratic past, but  exhibited an often naïve faith that its future would be more democratic than its past regime permitted. Now, however, we need to face the bleak reality that some countries go in the opposite direction, that a brief experience of a less repressive regime may be succeeded by the imposition—abruptly or by incremental steps—of a new repressive form of government or new repressors with a revival of the old form of government. 

In the face of this fragility, archivists need to think about the steps archives in countries sliding into neo-repression should take to protect their holdings. Obviously the type of archives makes a difference: government archives have certain constraints, while the archives in nongovernmental organizations, businesses, faith-based organizations, and private archives have different sets of issues to confront.

 The working group assembled by swisspeace to discuss archives at risk has made important progress in developing a protocol for handling archives that need a security copy outside the country. (The draft “Guiding Principles for Safe Havens for Archives at Risk” will be considered by the International Council on Archives at its meeting in late November.)  But seeking a safe haven is a step that often is taken only when an emergency is at hand.

 What should archivists do in countries where democratic rule is shaky but an emergency is not yet at recognized? Here are a few suggestions:

 *Identify the most important part of the holdings and identify which part of the holdings may be most at risk in the case of civil unrest or of a governmental confiscation. These may not be the same materials. A constitution or an ancient codex may be the most significant holding but may not be in danger, while routine lists of members of faith-based organizations may be.

 *Note whether the holdings at risk are copied; if not, decide whether they should be copied and whether a copy outside the country is necessary now.

 *Study the physical security of the archives building and the holding areas. Be alert to places where arson could be set easily. Think about who provides the security (the police, a private company) and its reliability. Think about who provides computer services; think about the strength of firewalls.

 *Agree upon who will decide to close the building abruptly in the face of unrest.

 *Agree upon who will take over the administration of the archives if the current administrator is forced to leave abruptly. Have a backup to the backup, too, as it is not unknown to have both the archivist and deputy archivist under threat.

 *Decide what to tell donors, including what the archives will do if faced with a legal demand to turn over the donor’s materials.

 “Geography is fate,” the Greek philosopher Herarclitis allegedly said. We know that is true for us as individuals, whether we are born to privilege or poverty, for example, how far we live from health care and good schools. And we know it is true, too, for the natural environment, as seas rise with climate change and storms grow stronger. It is also true for archives that are physical entities: the risk to their survival depends on geography, including what political system the archival institution exists within. In the face of unsettling events and tenuous times, archivists need to consider carefully whether the geography where they live will put the holdings at risk or will contribute to their safety.

Commentary, The DNA Dilemma for Archives

Ostraka aren’t pretty, but in their day were they ever powerful! These little pieces of pottery were used by a citizen (male, free man) of Athens in the fifth century B.C.E. to vote on the person in the city that he wished to be expelled. After these ballots were counted, they were thrown away. While we think of ostraka as objects (from which the English word “ostracize” is derived), they are documents: they have a base (pottery), an impression on the base (a name scratched on it manually) and convey information (he’s the one I want out of here).

 Archives usually have associated objects that don’t meet the criteria of a document: a glove in a court case file, a model in a patent application, a lock of hair among a set of personal papers. But some associated objects, like ostraka, have the characteristics of a document. Human rights investigators at sites of bombings may find pieces of weaponry with identifying numbers on them. These show maker and model: conveying information over space and time, on a metal base with an impression made by mechanical casting when the weapon was produced. These fragments alone they don’t tell us who used weapon, just as ostraka do not tell us if the person named was actually expelled, but they have evidentiary value.

 Smaller and even mightier than ostraka, DNA samples amplify the power of small material. Clearly the result of the analysis of a DNA sample is a document, whether recorded in a database or on a spreadsheet or in a report. But what of the sample itself? The language of DNA analysis talks about “reading” the DNA, and the elements of the DNA are chemical bases (a different sense of the same word archivists use to describe a document). DNA certainly conveys information over space and time, but there is no “impression on the base” as the classic definition of a document requires: the information is encoded within the DNA by natural process. In other words, DNA conveys information, but in an entirely different way than a document in archival terms. If, then, the DNA sample is an “associated object” but not a document, the sample is unlikely to be covered by institutional regulations for deciding whether or not to retain it. This question is not trivial: a recent investigation using DNA in the Netherlands found a Dutch prosecutor ordering the “voluntary sampling of up to 21,500 Dutchmen based on familial profiling, and the obligatory sampling of 1,500 men of special interest to the case,” the New York Times reported. https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/17-500-dutchmen-gave-dna-samples-for-murder-probe-now-an-arrest-20180828-p5005e.html  The results of these analyses are records of the prosecution, to be disposed of in accordance with Dutch rules, but what should happen to the samples?

 This is an extreme case, of course; in a more usual situation there would be one or more samples and an analytic report. If the sample is destroyed, it would be impossible to re-examine the DNA for possible use in a future review of evidence. One option is to preserve the DNA and the data that links the sample to the analysis as long as the person can be presumed alive, perhaps adding a few decades as a margin. But is that long enough for scientific researchers looking at populations for genetic characteristics (see, for example, the ALS item under United States below)? Is it long enough to satisfy the interests of people tracing their heritage, both for family history and for medical information?

 If archives need to hold DNA samples for extended periods of times, along with the analysis and the metadata linking the two (for example, a table linking the number on the sample’s vial to the report and the person), are archives equipped—physically and technically—to do this?  Unlike the ostraka which, like most baked pottery, are virtually indestructible, DNA samples are susceptible to all the deterioration of a body. Any archives that is the potential recipient of DNA materials needs to think now about its decisions on retention of DNA samples and its capacities for the care of this small, powerful evidence.

Commentary, Coincidence, correlation, causation, and records of courts

Coincidence, correlation, causation. Within 16 days of each other in late May and early June, Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba’s conviction was overturned on appeal by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and four former senior military officers in Guatemala were convicted of crimes against humanity. That was a coincidence. Both court decisions created political upheavals in the countries involved. Whether that is correlation or causation is more complicated.

Despite a voluminous case file and a conviction in the lower court, on June 8 the ICC appeals judges, by a 3-2 decision, overturned Bemba’s 2016 conviction for war crimes in the Central African Republic. He flew back to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), on August 1, to be greeted by “throngs of people—many in T-shirts, hats and scarves bearing his likeness,” according to Reuters. Bemba quickly followed his “thunderous welcome” (as African Arguments reported) by filing to run for president in the election scheduled for December. The DRC constitution sets a limit of two terms for the president, which expired in 2016 for the current president, Joseph Kabila, but he did not step down. At Bemba’s return, his supporters chanted, “Kabila, know that Bemba is back,” and “hours before the deadline to register candidates,” Kabila’s party announced that its presidential candidate would be Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, who is under European Union sanctions for his role in the crackdown on protests in 2016 when Kabila did not depart. In addition to Bemba, more than a dozen other men have filed to run for president. But is there a correlation—that is, a relationship between two or more things—between Bemba’s triumphant return and Kabila’s decision to step aside?

Bemba appears to be favored to win the election. African Arguments called him “a deeply flawed candidate,” but urged the public to “get behind Bemba,” because “a rough and muddy diamond is more valuable than certain despair.” Bemba has spent the last ten years at the ICC, and as Olivia Bueno pointed out in an opinion piece for the Open Society Justice Initiative, most Congolese “never believed in Bemba’s guilt.” With the court sitting far away and most of the public unable to see the hearings, understand the language of the court (physical and legal), hear the witnesses, read the transcript or review the evidence, the process lacked credibility to the Congolese voter. The record is there, but it is distant. Until international courts figure out how to share their proceedings with the affected populace (there is substantial literature on court “outreach” problems) and court archives begin providing more of the evidence on line, judging the actions of a man like Bemba and weighing his suitability to be your president will be based on serious information gaps. https://www.ijmonitor.org/2018/08/impact-of-the-bemba-acquittal-already-seen-in-the-democratic-republic-of-congo/; https://www.reuters.com/article/us-congo-politics-bemba/supporters-of-congo-opposition-leader-bemba-await-his-return-home-idUSKBN1KM42C; http://africanarguments.org/2018/08/10/drc-congo-time-opposition-get-behind-bemba/

Unlike the distant Bemba trial, the Molina Theissen case dominated Guatemala news during its three-month trial and unanimous May 23 verdict. Again, the trial record is enormous--even the court’s judgment ran to 1,075 pages. As Jo-Marie Burt and Paulo Estrada wrote in a three-part examination of the judgment, “Official military documents, international treaties, and domestic jurisprudence were fundamental to the court’s determination,” and the judges “referred to convictions handed down by Guatemalan courts for the enforced disappearance of Fernando Garcia and Edgar Enrique Saenz Calito, the Spanish Embassy massacre, the Maya Ixil genocide, and the sexual violence and sexual and domestic slavery against Maya Q’eqchi women in Sepur Zarco, among others.”

The consequences of the judgment came quickly. As gAZeta pointed out, in the Garcia and especially the Molina Theissen case, documents from Guatemala’s Historical Archives of the National Police (AHPN) were used by prosecutors to show that the victims were detained by police who handed them over to military units: “conclusive documentary evidence.” Many former members of the military and police units active during Guatemala’s long and bloody civil war are today overt or covert powers in the government. They don’t like the possibility that existing documentation could be used against them in some future public process. So, it is perhaps neither coincidence or correlation but cause that, following the Molina Theissen trial and with more cases hovering in the future, the police archives was removed from the oversight of the national archives (Archivo General de Centroamerica) and reassigned to the vice minister of culture for “Patrimonio,” and the founding executive director of the police archives, Gustavo Meoño, was informed that his contract (which expired on July 31) would not be renewed. One of the most puzzling elements of the changes is the assignment of a member of the Guatemala office of the United Nations Development Program to be the director of AHPN. Neither of these newly responsible persons is known to have archival experience. The representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia wrote to his social network that the changes were “a strategy to silence the archive,” a statement that was subsequently removed from the posting but had already been picked up by the press. 

In the wake of these events, a group of individuals and nongovernmental organizations created a petition, asking questions about the situation and demanding a guarantee that the police archives will be preserved and continue to be open for use by institutions, organizations and individuals, and that the investigations undertaken by the archives’ staff will continue. The petition, open for signature, is an annex to this issue. The U.S. nongovernmental organization National Security Archive is collecting institutional and individual signatures to be forwarded to Archives without Borders, which will coordinate the international response and the presentation of the petition to the responsible officials. 
http://www.gt.undp.org/content/guatemala/es/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2018/08/COMUNICADO/archivo-historico-de-la-policia-nacional--ahpn-/ ;  https://www.ijmonitor.org/2018/08/the-molina-theissen-judgment-part-i-overview-of-the-courts-findings/;  http://gazeta.gt/category/especial-ahpn/ ; https://m.eldiario.es/politica/ONU-Archivo-Historico-Policia-Guatemala_0_800020021.html; http://gazeta.gt/gustavo-meono-brenner/