January: Archives and archivists in danger
Some days 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.
February: Guatemala and archives in danger
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.
March: COVID-19 and archives
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.
April: Prison records of releases during COVD-19
Prison sentences are shortened for many reasons: commuted, pardoned, paroled. The COVID-19 pandemic has added a new one: furloughed. Governments around the world, worried about the spread of the virus to crowded prison populations, are freeing prisoners. They seemed to have support for this from the High Commissioner for Human Rights, who in late March said prison authorities should “examine ways to release those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19, among them older detainees and those who are sick, as well as low-risk offenders.” Governments heard that—and expanded on it.
The International Crisis Group’s April “Crisis Watch” shows, for example, that:
*Cameroon’s president released prisoners “to limit spread of COVID-19 in prisons;”
*Iran “extended furlough of prisoners temporarily released in March to 20 May;”
*Nicaragua released “1,700 prisoners ahead of Easter celebrations;”
*Myanmar’s president “announced [the] country’s largest ever prisoner amnesty, releasing some 25,000, more than a quarter of total prison population, very few political prisoners included,” and released “hundreds of detained Rohingya who faced court cases for travelling within the country without permission” but then “returned [them] to displacement camps in Rakhine;”
*Somaliland’s president “ordered release of 574 prisoners;”
*South Sudan “ordered release of 1,400 inmates to reduce prison overcrowding;”
*in Eritrea the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Eritrea and Amnesty International both “called for release of prisoners from overcrowded prisons amid COVID-19 pandemic.” https://www.crisisgroup.org/crisiswatch#overview
It is one thing to release “regular” prisoners, but quite another to release those accused of crimes against humanity. In Chile, in what the Council on Hemispheric Affairs said was “an extraordinary step backward,” the Court of Appeals in Santiago “granted release and sentence reductions to 17 State actors convicted of crimes against humanity perpetrated against thousands of Chilean citizens during the Pinochet dictatorship.” This was immediately condemned by human rights groups, and well over 100 people signed an open letter protesting impunity in Chile; they worried that more releases would follow: “Pinochetista legislators are pressuring the . . government to grant those among these prisoners who are over 75 years old the benefit of house arrest, measures presently being studied with regard to the coronavirus.” https://www.eurasiareview.com/24042020-open-letter-with-100-signatures-opposes-release-of-pinochet-era-perpetrators-of-crimes-against-humanity/
In late March 2020, the Association of Defense Counsel practicing before the International Courts and Tribunals urged the UN International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals to grant the early or provisional release of persons sentenced to imprisonment by the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (ICTY and ICTR) in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three persons convicted by ICTY of war crimes during the Balkan wars of the 1990s requested early release; the president of the Mechanism rejected the request, which was “applauded” by representatives of Bosnian war victims. A man convicted by ICTR of crimes against humanity and genocide argued that “the coronavirus pandemic requires that the Early Release Application be granted without further delay.” The Mechanism rejected that also. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/04/08/hague-court-denies-early-release-to-unrehabilitated-convicts/; https://jrad.irmct.org/view.htm?r=246957&s=
The issue came into sharp focus on 6 April when former Chad president Hissene Habre was given a “60 day leave” from prison in Senegal where he has been serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity imposed by a special Senegal/African Union court. A Senegalese judge ordered him to stay “at his home in Ouakam, a district of Dakar, and . . to return to prison on its expiry.” An association of victims of the Habre regime strongly objected. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/chad-president-temporarily-released-jail-due-covid-19-200407070630471.html
The UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence waded into this controversy, issuing a statement and advice to governments on 29 April: “Urgent measures to protect against COVID-19 in overcrowded jails should not lead to impunity for persons convicted in many countries for serious violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, genocide, or war crimes.” He noted that individuals convicted of such acts “usually enjoy conditions of detention established for security reasons that avoid mass contact, which places them at an advantage in terms of safety and health compared to other persons deprived of their liberty.” He concluded that if it is impossible to have “safe and healthy detention conditions,” as a last resort “temporary house arrest should be granted, with appropriate controls. . . . However, the individuals must return to prison once the emergency situation has passed, to serve the remainder of their prison term.” https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=25840&LangID=E ; https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/TruthJusticeReparation/Pages/infonotecovid.aspx
Thinking through the documentation of these mass releases, permanent or temporary, is instructive. With smaller releases, such as the Chilean case, it is possible to add the Appeals Court decision to the file of each individual. But releasing hundreds or even thousands based on a presidential order means careful individual documentation is unlikely. Does a lack of documentation pose a danger for the person released, because existing records will show that he or she should be in prison but is not? Could this lead to re-arrest? If the situation is one of conditional release, as with Habre, what documentation is created to show where he is? Is a tracking system in place that will trigger officials to bring him back to prison on the specified date? And the Rohingya, freed from prison but sent to a camp—what records exist of this?
Prisoner records cannot, of course, tell the full story of the releases; that will be in the files of the politicians and administrators. But it is essential that both the decision to release and at minimum a list of those to whom it applies and what conditions it imposes are documented. In the future these are the records that will allow the public to know what the government did and to hold it accountable for its actions in the time of COVID crisis.
May: Archives in the age of COVID-19 and public protest
It was hard to decide how to treat the massive coverage of the coronavirus and the protests, from Hong Kong to New York and beyond, in this issue of SAHR News. You will find some items on both topics below, but they cannot and do not represent anything like complete coverage of the linkage between human rights and the convulsions of medical and social and economic upheaval. To keep track of the many statements made by “56 United Nations special procedures, 10 UN human rights treaty bodies, 3 principal regional human rights systems (each with various components), and their respective ‘parent’ intergovernmental organizations” on issues of human rights in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Justice Resource Center created a webpage that very helpfully provides links to them all. https://www.justsecurity.org/70170/mapping-the-proliferation-of-human-rights-bodies-guidance-on-covid-19-mitigation/
Many archives and historical organizations are documenting the worldwide social impact of the coronavirus pandemic, from Singapore to Sao Paulo, from memoirs to street signs, and historians are urging on these plans (see, for example, the presentation by Georgetown University history professor Ananya Chakravarti). And just as this effort was well underway came the immense movement spurred by the killings of innocent black men in the United States and the insistence that Black Lives Matter and the desperate need to document this, too. As the Society of American Archivists said, “Archives workers should follow current guidance on ethical recordkeeping and archiving of social movements during this time of crisis, with special care taken toward the protection and safety of Black Lives amidst anti-Black violence perpetrated by the police.” These dual extraordinary efforts, now stretching over weeks and months, both stress and energize the collecting institutions, especially when many staff members of these organizations have been self-isolating during the pandemic and now find themselves in huge crowds of demonstrators exercising, as Article 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, their “right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.” https://www.nlb.gov.sg/GetInvolved/ContributeCreate/DocumentingCOVID-19.aspx; https://duetocovid19.com/; https://speakerdeck.com/ananyachak/archiving-covid-19-a-guide; https://offtherecord.archivists.org/2020/06/02/saa-council-statement-on-black-lives-and-archives/
As these robust collecting efforts go forward, the records created by existing institutions continue to come to archives. Some of these transfers will simply continue regular practices, but archives will see changes, too. Take, for example, the records of bankruptcies. Bankruptcy is on the rise. Latam, the largest airline in Latin America, filed for bankruptcy in May, as did Colombia’s Avianca, one of the world’s oldest carriers. Fashion retailers, like Canada’s ALDO and the U.S.’s venerable J.C. Penney, filed for bankruptcy. So did the rental car company Hertz and the importer Pier 1 Imports. Travel and tourism, oil and gas sectors all face mounting debts. Add to this the local barber shops and bodegas, pizza places and individuals that face bankruptcy and the stream of bankruptcies we now see may become a flood. Writing in The Conversation a group of professors warned, “Without more aid to individuals soon, U.S. bankruptcy courts will likely face a tsunami of filings, not only from average Americans but companies as well. This will clog up the system.” Other countries may face this also. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-28/big-bankruptcies-sweep-the-u-s-in-fastest-pace-since-may-2009; https://www.reuters.com/finance/deals/bankruptcy; European bankruptcy registers track the spread of filings in the European Union: https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_insolvency_registers-110-en.do; https://theconversation.com/bankruptcy-courts-ill-prepared-for-tsunami-of-people-going-broke-from-coronavirus-shutdown-137571?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2013%202020%20-%201620515551&utm_content=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversation%20for%20May%2013%202020%20-%201620515551+Version+A+CID_c118a7ec5cf4a27ea808a9c4984dba74&utm_source=campaign_monitor_us&utm_term=Bankruptcy%20courts%20ill-prepared%20for%20tsunami%20of%20people%20going%20broke%20from%20coronavirus%20shutdown
Because bankruptcy in most countries involves a court or a court-like government institution, a wave of new bankruptcies means government archives will need to manage massive new quantities of bankruptcy records. These records currently may be scheduled for destruction or for partial retention in the national system, but given the important role that bankruptcy will play in understanding the effects of the pandemic on people and institutions, government archives need to review the decisions they have made on bankruptcy records to see if these disposal instructions will be adequate for documenting this era. Add to the bankruptcy records the massive increases in medical records of COVID-19 cases (from both private and government facilities) and records of scientific research on the coronavirus, and new accessions will push the capacity of archival storage.
Archives have a central role to play at this critical time. Archivists must ensure that the record of individual and institutional responses to both what nature has done to humankind and what humans have done each other are available for research in the long years ahead.
June: Power to commemorate, power to restrict social media
Who gets to decide? Sociologists and political scientists debate this; historians ask who decided in the past. This question is at the heart of two current controversies: who decides what statues stand and what names are on buildings and who decides what content Facebook and its cousins can carry. The issues are different, but they both go to the nature of power in our societies.
Statues have come down or been defaced or challenged, including those of Christopher Columbus, Belgium’s King Leopold II, and Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts. The name of a U.S. President—Woodrow Wilson, internationally known for his role in the League of Nations—was removed from a school at Princeton University (Wilson had been Princeton’s president). Discussions of removing the names of Confederate generals from U.S. military bases is live. The flag of the U.S. State of Mississippi was “retired” because it incorporated a Confederate symbol. Some of these outcomes were the result of direct public action, some by decisions of elected political or, in the case of universities, academic bodies. No matter who is deciding, it is a wave powered by the public.
The major social media companies—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Reddit—are under pressure to moderate the content on their platforms: to remove hate speech and messages encouraging terrorism, invading privacy, offering pornography and promoting child sex abuse, to name only the most prominent. In the U.S., where all seven companies are headquartered, Section 230 of the Federal Communications Decency Act immunizes website operators against defamation claims arising out of third-party content. (“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 U.S.C. §230(c)(1)). The companies have established what Facebook calls “Community Standards” for postings (https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objectionable_content). Adherence to the standards is enforced by artificial intelligence algorithms and hired “monitors” whose work exposes them to abusive, violent and just plain gory content. Unlike the direct public pressure in the statue and names cases, public pressure on the social media companies is indirect. For example, Facebook is now under financial pressure from other for-profit companies that are pulling their advertising from the platform because those companies are themselves under pressure from civil rights groups who want hate speech blocked (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/01/facebook-frustrates-advertisers-as-boycott-over-hate-speech-kicks-off.html). In sum, the high-level decisions are made by a for-profit social media company answerable to shareholders, and the decisions are implemented by thousands of laborers whose work exposes them to both burnout and long-term psychological trauma.
While it is clear that hateful, abusive material increasingly has been removed, problems have arisen. Facebook famously took down the iconic photograph of a Vietnamese girl running from napalm burns (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/sep/09/facebook-reinstates-napalm-girl-photo) and an Australian photograph from the 1800s of aboriginal men in chains (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/15/facebook-blocks-bans-users-sharing-guardian-article-showing-aboriginal-men-in-chains); both were restored after press exposure. Thomson Reuters Foundation reported on the growing concern by human rights groups that war crimes evidence on social media is “threatened by AI [artificial intelligence] moderation” on the sites. A researcher for the Syrian Archive, an NGO that preserves video from conflict zones in the Middle East, said, “Our research suggests that since the beginning of the year, the rate of content takedowns of Syrian human rights documentation on YouTube roughly doubled [from 13 to 20 percent].” (https://www.sightmagazine.com.au/features/16164-lost-memories-war-crimes-evidence-threatened-by-ai-moderation)
What have archives to do with all this? In the statuary and naming matter, archives hold the documentation of the erection of the statue or the naming ceremony, usually replete with glowing encomiums of the life of the person honored. But archives also hold the records of the larger life of the person, including evidence of actions and attitudes that may not be reflected in or may be at odds with the public tributes. Archives have to make these larger materials publicly available for research, allowing a reasoned decision-making process for determining whether the commemoration of the person meets contemporary community moral principles. And archives provide the evidence that can contextualize a statue or name that is allowed to remain in place and hold the records of the reconsideration of the placement or the public actions that led to the removal.
The institutional archives of the social media companies will hold the records of the development of the community standards and the pressures that lead to revisions of the terms. Governments, businesses and other institutions may preserve in their archives the social media posts of the staff members; individuals may keep a copy of private postings. Other archives, such as the Syrian Archive mentioned above, will try to capture and preserve content critical for understanding crimes against humanity. But just as the social media companies take down a certain kind of posts, the commercial companies are also the arbiters of how long they will maintain the cat and dog pictures, the vacation snaps, and the daily chats. If you want it saved, they seem to say, do it yourself.
So, we are left with public power, spontaneous or deliberative, to decide on the commemorations with which we live. And we co-exist with the private power that decides which messages we receive via social media. Two current concerns and two powers, public and private, separate and unequal.
July: Equality, equity, and equal access to archives
“Do you know the difference between equality and equity?” the young teacher asked. When no one responded, she flashed on the screen a picture of two children, one taller than the other, trying to see over a solid board fence. “If you give them both equal stools, this happens,” she said, showing the taller one peering over the fence, while the shorter one was still below the top. “That’s equal treatment.” Then she showed an image of the two children, standing on stools of different sizes, both able to peek over the fence. “That’s equity,” she said. In other words, equal does not always compensate for inherent differences.
Equal access to records is an archival mantra—and one of the profession’s most misunderstood phrases. The ICA Principles of Access to Archives clarifies it, saying in Principle 5:
5. Archives are made available on equal and fair terms.
Archivists provide users with just, fair and timely access to archives without discrimination. Many different categories of persons use archives and access rules may differentiate between categories of users (for example, the general public, adoptees seeking information on birth parents, medical researchers seeking statistical information from hospital records, victims of human rights violations), but the rules apply equally to all persons within each category without discrimination. When a closed item is reviewed and access to it is granted to a member of the general public, the item is available to all other members of the public under the same terms and conditions.
This statement is amplified in Principle 8, reading in part:
8. Institutions holding archives ensure that operational constraints do not prevent access to archives.
The equal right to access archival records is not simply equal treatment but also includes the equal right to benefit from the archives.
Archivists understand the needs of both existing and potential researchers and use this understanding to develop polices and services that meet those needs and minimize operational constraints on access. In particular, they assist those who are disabled, illiterate or disadvantaged and would otherwise have significant difficulties in using archives. . . .
Users, whether visiting the archival institution or living at a distance from it, can obtain copies of archives in the variety of formats that are within the technical capacity of the archival institution. Institutions may make reasonable charges for copying service on demand. . . .
The COVID-19 pandemic requires archives—like other public service institutions—to rethink the way services are provided. With travel restricted, either by government edict or by personal choice, the numbers of researchers able to visit those research rooms that are open will certainly diminish, at least for the duration of the health crisis. If archival holdings are already digitized, there is no problem. But vast quantities of archives are still in their original formats. What then?
Assuming that at least a few staff members are available to retrieve records, a plausible answer is to scan on demand and provide the records either by posting to a website or by providing direct personal delivery. Limited staff members will necessitate establishing service priorities (many archives already have these, but they may need review in the present circumstances), and here’s where equal access comes in.
*If the archives is within the institution whose records it preserves—for example, the archives of a government, the archives of a corporation—normally service to the parent institution comes first, and that priority is likely to persist during the pandemic.
*Then there is the requester who needs a copy of records to establish rights and benefits; she needs timely access (see below, for example, the U.S. item on the problems a man just released from prison had in trying to get basic documents and the Syrian item on the impact of closure of the civil registry system). This category includes researchers and attorneys working on human rights cases for groups as well as for individuals.
*And we have research by academic users and the general public. Here the travel problem—always a consideration, but usually because of cost not disease—becomes a critical factor. Some researchers want access to a single file while others need access to a plethora of series and fonds. If these researchers are not able to physically come to the archives, telling them, “The reading room is open; come on in,” may be equal treatment but not equitable treatment.
Protocols for handling all these researcher needs, multiplying as the virus wears on, are essential. The COVID conflagration causes us to reflect on the real roots of equal access to archives.
August: Uncertain statistics
Nearly 100 years ago, an English judge was quoted as saying, “The government are very keen on amassing statistics. They collect them, add them, raise them to the Nth power, take the cube root and prepare wonderful diagrams. But you must never forget that every one of these figures comes in the first instance from the village watchman, who just puts down what he damn pleases.” (Sir Josiah Stamp, Some Economic Factors in Modern Life. London, P.S. King and Son, 1929)
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened public awareness of the importance of statistics. How many positive cases were reported today? How does that compare with yesterday or a month ago? What is the percentage of tests that find a person who has COVID? How does my city compare with another, my country with another? How many people have had to be hospitalized? How many intubated? And, finally, sadly, how many people died? To these will soon be added questions about the statistical results of trials of vaccines: How many people took trial vaccines? How many had adverse reactions (side effects)? Is that enough information to be sure the product is safe to use? How many doses of an approved vaccine can be manufactured quickly and safely?
With these questions comes uncertainty about the answers to the statistical questions. For instance:
*El Faro reported that a leak of official information from Nicaragua’s Ministry of Health showed that 9,683 citizens were infected between February and July, “three times more than what was officially reported by the Government.” A doctor who analyzed the data said he was sure the government had the data on the cases but “for whatever reason that we cannot easily understand, they chose to lie to the population, change the data, and include different data.”
https://elfaro.net/en/202008/internacionales/24765/Data-leak-reveals-that-Nicaraguan-government-lied-about-the-impact-of-COVID-19.htm?utm_source=DB+El+Faro+_English&utm_campaign=c367ab3feb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_22_01_08_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3ec9190c89-c367ab3feb-363082696
*BIRN reported that the head of the Turkish Medical Association in Ankara accused the Turkish government “of not releasing the real numbers of daily COVID-19 registered cases and deaths related to the virus,” saying the health ministry “announces 1,500 daily cases . . but this is even less than the numbers in Ankara alone.” Medical associations were quoted as saying “one of the major problems was that doctors and other medical workers have become physically and psychologically exhausted,” implying that recordkeeping is not given priority. A member of the junior opposition party in the country said simply, “The government chose the economy instead of health.” https://balkaninsight.com/2020/08/28/turkish-government-accused-of-hiding-real-covid-19-figures/?utm_source=Balkan+Insight+Newsletters&utm_campaign=4f99b38ec4-BI_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4027db42dc-4f99b38ec4-319725265
*The United States “offers vanishing few details on how the disease is spreading,” Nature said, with experts arguing that “political meddling, privacy concerns and years of neglect of public-health surveillance systems are among the reasons for the dearth of information in the United States.” The director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Division of Infectious Diseases said “she had concerns that potential COVID-19 vaccines are being rushed through the approval process.” She feared that the push to release a vaccine is creating a “data-free zone or data-arguable zone.” https://www.al.com/news/2020/09/uab-expert-says-rushed-covid-vaccine-is-pushing-scientists-into-data-free-zone.html
*By contrast, South Korea has “a coordinated network of public-health centers in 250 districts that send information rapidly to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost every day for the past seven months the Center “updated its website with near-real-time information on local outbreaks.” Its “attention to data correlates with its overall success at controlling the outbreak,” Nature wrote. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02478-z?utm_source=STAT+Newsletters&utm_campaign=04a35670e2-MR_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_8cab1d7961-04a35670e2-149736437
Political choice, economics, exhaustion, privacy, failure to fund the health statistics system: all of these factors are in play. What is not in question is the importance and necessity of statistics, used today and preserved for future study. While as recently as 25 years ago some archivists argued that statistical databases were not real records to be preserved by an archives, that position has largely, if not entirely, faded. Archivists realize that saving data is critical, not only to support studies of health, social structures, police behaviour, and an endless list of issues, but also to show what policymakers knew and what they did with that knowledge. Archivists must preserve and protect the statistics of that village watchman. Our very lives may depend upon it.
September: Treaties and agreements with non-state bodies
Treaties, accords, pacts and compacts, covenants, agreements: the world is awash in formal unanimity. If it seems that treaties, pacts and the like are becoming more frequent, that’s probably because we have more States to accommodate: 51 when the UN was established in 1945, 193 UN members today. (Of course, going back even further, at the end of the 19th century about 70% of the world’s population lived in empires--British, French, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and so forth—so there were many fewer entities to contract with each other and their provisions would cover wide swaths of the earth, in contrast to many agreements today.)
The month of August 2020 saw the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel sign “normalization” agreements for greater future cooperation; the media variously called the three documents a pact, peace treaty, accord, declaration, and normalization treaty. https://www.axios.com/trump-israel-united-arab-emirates-bahrain-016fa0c6-24e8-41fa-bdc1-00eb0546d636.html; for the texts: https://search.aol.com/click/_ylt=A0geKIzb6XxfgUUAv0RpCWVH;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzIEdnRpZAMEc2VjA3Ny/RV=2/RE=1602050651/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.cnn.com%2f2020%2f09%2f15%2fpolitics%2fisrael-uae-abraham-accords-documents%2findex.html/RK=0/RS=Jgarp.l_ITMSsI.q5i6SJ0Qg9nw-
The month of September saw Kosovo and Serbia sign separate statements agreeing to “economic normalization” between them. Exit News wrote, “It is unclear whether leaders provided each other with a copy of their respectively signed document. It is also unclear what kind of powers these documents would hold, beyond an informal understanding between parties.” For the texts see https://exit.al/en/2020/09/04/kosovo-and-serbia-signed-separate-pledges-not-an-agreement/
The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which went into force in 1980, defined “treaty” as “an international agreement concluded between States in written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation.” That would seem to cover both the Bahrain-Israel-UAE and the Kosovo-Serbia “agreements.” https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969.pdf
August and September also saw existing treaties at the center of a number of debates over their terms:
*Mexico needed to use troops to defend the release of water from two dams, water which under a 1944 treaty must be provided to the United States. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-09-11/mexican-water-wars-dam-seized-troops-summoned-at-least-one-killed-in-dispute-about-water-sharing-with-u-s
*China and Japan disputed ownership of the Senaku/Diaoyu Islands, which a scholar at the Japan Institute of International Affairs, writing in Japan Forward, said “were legitimately transferred to Japan through the Okinawa Reversion Treaty of 1971.” She pointed to “the fundamental importance of archival records and data to study territorial histories” because “they play a pivotal role in confirming identities, long after memory has faded.” https://japan-forward.com/archives-shows-chinas-claims-on-senkaku-islands-are-rooted-in-distortions-of-history/
*Negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan on the operation of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Nile River are stalled and tensions are high over the water rights Egypt claims was granted to it by the 1929 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty and the 1959 Agreement between Egypt and Sudan. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/africa-in-focus/2020/08/05/the-controversy-over-the-grand-ethiopian-renaissance-dam/
*In 2015 China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States made an agreement with Iran to limit Iran’s movement towards developing nuclear arms, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Although the United States withdrew from the JCPOA in 2018, in August it announced that it is reimposing sanctions under a JCPOA provision known as “snapback,” arguing that Iran has not kept the commitments it made under the agreement. https://www.cfr.org/article/flawed-us-effort-revive-iran-sanctions
After treaties are signed, what happens to the record copies, the ones needed when controversies arise? Article 102(1) of the United Nations Charter says, “Every treaty and every international agreement entered into by any Member of the United Nations after the present Charter comes into force shall as soon as possible be registered with the Secretariat and published by it.” Article 80 of the 1980 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties reiterates the provision for UN registration and provides the option that the contracting parties may designate a depository to hold the official copy. The two options also are found in the 1986 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties Between States and International Organizations or Between International Organizations (for example, agreements between the World Bank and a State). https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_2_1986.pdf
The requirement to “register” a treaty with the United Nations usually has meant depositing a copy. Shelf after shelf of treaties are stored in the United Nations Archives, rarely used but secure.
A plain reading of Article 102(1) suggests the provision also applies when a member State “agrees” with a non-State body. For example, in late August a “peace agreement” was signed (formally adopted 3 October) between the transitional government of Sudan and “the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), an umbrella organization of rebel groups from various Sudanese conflict zones, but was not fully signed as two key groups had not added their signatures,” Middle East Eye reported. Since the government of Sudan is a signatory, if no depository is mentioned (the agreement does not appear to be on line at the time of writing), the agreement should be deposited in the UN Archives. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sudanese-leaders-and-rebel-groups-agree-peace-deal For another example, what about the 2016 peace accord between the government of Colombia and the FARC? The two parties have copies of the agreement; the government presumably keeps its copy in the national archives or foreign ministry archives, but where does the FARC keep its copy? Should a copy be at the United Nations? Or, for a third example, in 2012 Myanmar signed a treaty with the Chin National Front. Assuming again that the government has a secure copy, is there a copy with the United Nations? Where is the Chin copy?
The reason a State would deposit a copy of a treaty with the UN is found in Article 102(2): “No party to any such treaty or international agreement which has not been registered in accordance with the provisions of paragraph 1 of this Article may invoke that treaty or agreement before any organ of the United Nations.” Without the “registration” the State would be barred from appealing for recourse for violation of the contract provisions to the International Court of Justice, the World Trade Organization, and similar bodies. (The International Criminal Court is an “independent judicial body” not part of the UN, so this would not apply to initiating proceedings before the Court.)
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, States have signed numerous treaties with non-State actors. These agreements are often made in the aftermath of civil war or other social conflict, aiming to create a framework for managing future relations and a path for orderly problem-solving. In these cases, if the State chooses not to file its copy of the agreement with the UN (for example, if it does not want an external party adjudicating the execution of its provisions) or if the non-State party does not trust the State to register the treaty, the non-State party would rely on its copy to determine whether the State is faithfully executing the provisions. Today there is no officially recognized third party to hold that non-State copy. Such State/non-State agreements are not the type of documents that generally fall under an “archives at risk” category, and yet they need a safe haven. It may be too much to expect the United Nations Archives to hold compacts submitted by non-State entities, but a security archives does need to exist in a trusted location, safe from tampering. Can a security guarantor be found?
October: Memorialization: dividing and healing
Elon Musk is one of the world’s richest people. He owns Tesla, which makes electric autos and is developing self-driving ones, and SpaceX, which not only puts satellites in orbit but is trying to make travel to Mars feasible. According to a recent issue of The Economist, he has another firm called Neuralink which aims to make it possible to move objects by the power of thought and to allow “a future in which memories can be downloaded and stored elsewhere, and human beings can form a ‘symbiosis’ with artificial intelligence.” https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/09/02/elon-musks-vision-of-the-future-takes-another-step-forward
Downloaded memories is something archivists know a lot about. Memory is what a living person holds in the mind about people and events. Preserving those memories can be spontaneous—think of the millions of people documenting their experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic—or carefully planned, such as the Montenegrin Parliament opening a Documentation Centre to “collect material related to the 1990s Balkan conflict and the role played in them by Montenegro” and the project by the Srebrenica Memorial Centre and BIRN Bosnia and Herzegovina to film interviews with 100 surviving witnesses of the July 1995 genocide of Bosniaks from Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces. Archives preserve documented “downloaded” memories. https://balkaninsight.com/2020/10/05/montenegro-parliament-opens-war-crimes-documentation-centre/?utm_source=Balkan+Insight+Newsletters&utm_campaign=0d6d2c7238-BI_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4027db42dc-0d6d2c7238-319725265; https://balkaninsight.com/2020/10/29/srebrenica-memorial-centre-and-birn-launch-genocide-testimony-project/?utm_source=Balkan+Insight+Newsletters&utm_campaign=8d211fa61f-BI_DAILY&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4027db42dc-8d211fa61f-319725265
When evaluating and responding to contemporary atrocities and defending human rights, a central issue is obtaining and preserving the sources needed. While information can be oral, information as a long term source is physical: paper, photographs, email, desktop productions, databases, satellite images, video and audio recordings. Memories can certainly be transmitted orally; indigenous groups show that multigenerational transfer of memory is a vibrant tradition. But to use memory as part of the sources for history and for human rights justice processes, it must be converted into one of these formats—an interview, a testimony, a survey form, the wiretap of a conversation, for example. A lawyer who draws up a contract based on an oral agreement will say she “memorializes” it. Once memory is captured, it can be used and reused far into the future after the person is no more. There are many considerations in documenting memories, including importantly not retraumatizing people who have experienced great violence. But there is an immutable time value to it: memories fade, people die, some people experience temporary amnesia.
Memorialization is different from memory per se: it is a structural representation, a trigger for the memory of the past. It is usually a public expression--a statute, a memorial marker (like a tombstone), a museum, a commemorative event, among others--whereas memory is inherently an individual attribute; its representation can be entirely private, as a diary, or public as a social media posting. A recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence provides examples and recommendations for memorialization (see item below).
The insistent problem, however, is that memorialization can divide as well as heal. Across the world in 2020 we have seen untold numbers of memorialization features torn down: statues of racists tumbled, buildings renamed, tombstones defaced. One generation’s or one group’s memorialization may be anathema to another. Downloading memories, especially if they are turned into a public memorialization, is more complex than Elon Musk’s high tech initiative might realize.
November: Archives affected by climate change—an ICA demonstration project
December 10 is Human Rights Day. This year’s theme, as designated by the United Nations, is “Recover Better–Stand Up for Human Rights.” The UN explains: “This year’s Human Rights Day theme relates to the COVID-19 pandemic and focuses on the need to build back better by ensuring Human Rights are central to recovery efforts. We will reach our common global goals only if we are able to create equal opportunities for all, address the failures exposed and exploited by COVID-19, and apply human rights standards to tackle entrenched, systematic, and intergenerational inequalities, exclusion and discrimination.
Building back better means facing up to climate change and its impact on us all. And facing up is hard to do: a professor at the University of Kassel, Germany, told DW, “In evolutionary terms, are not built for this kind of danger. We react to a rustling in the bushes with lightning speed. But the threat posed by climate change is abstract.” https://www.dw.com/en/how-can-we-wrap-our-brains-around-the-climate-crisis/a-55497883?maca=en-newsletter_en_bulletin-2097-xml-newsletter&r=6716266686607715&lid=1668615&pm_ln=59965
One way we may all wake up to the facts of climate change is when it starts affecting our sleep. Sleep, you say? A team of researchers from Denmark, Germany and the U.S. obtained “sleep entries collected over a two-year period from September 2015 through October 2017 from 47,628 anonymous fitness band users who electronically consented for their data to be processed for research purposes.” They matched this data to that of the nearest weather stations in 68 countries and obtained local daily meteorological data from 2015 to 2017. They found that “increasing night time temperatures amplify the estimated probability of obtaining a short night of sleep, measured with standard definitions for insufficient sleep.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07161
So sleepy archivists around the world will have to face the risk to archives from the various effects of climate change. The ICA Section on Archives and Human Rights, concerned about the risk that climate change poses, decided to develop a pilot project as a demonstration of what archivists can do to understand the impact on their institutions and holdings. We believe it will help archivists develop a climate-focused planning process for mitigating the effects of climate change on archives.
The pilot project began with mapping all known archives in one climate danger area. Vitor Fonseca and Silvia Moura, two distinguished Brazilian archivists, used public sources to create a spreadsheet listing all 81 known archives in Rio de Janeiro, recording the information elements of the International Standard for Describing Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH) and the latitude and longitude (geophysical coordinates) for each institution. This was meticulous work, for which we thank them most heartily.
The second stage of the project will, with the assistance of a geographer, plot the locations on a map and overlay the maps of predicted sea level rise onto the maps of the archives, using estimates from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change. Other overlays could include maps of predicted temperature rise and precipitation change (both drought and deluge). https://www.ipcc.ch/ Yet another overlay may use the World Bank Global Carbon Atlas map showing the country’s emissions, which in turn predicts the rapidity of the climate crisis. http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions Additional maps could be created matching predicted climate change effects to the physical type of materials held (for example, to look at the impact of increased dust on electronic records holdings).
Archives are at risk. Archives—at the heart of the work of institutions, cultural heritage and memory of people—need to be protected from the effects of climate change, whether inundation or increased dust from desertification. Archivists, wide awake, can begin to take effective steps—if we know where the archives are located and the type of risk climate change brings to them.
December: 2020 in review
It was a difficult year all right, old 2020. While the December issue’s commentary usually looks at important items—often sad--from the year just past, this year’s commentary reports only good news stories from the year or ones that may bring a smile. Here’s to a better 2021!
January. In a landmark ruling, the United Nations Human Rights Committee said the effects of climate change may trigger the non-refoulement obligations of states where climate refugees seek shelter.
February. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in a Romanian case that a spouse’s breach of internet privacy is a form of domestic violence.
March. In Argentina, public access to the archives of the Ministry of Interior led to an appeals court ruling that the claim of the Pilaga people that the National Police and Air Force committed genocide against them in 1947 was true.
April. The International Conference of Information Commissioners, while recognizing that during the COVID-19 crisis resources may be diverted away from usual information rights work, stressed the importance of the right of access to information and the need for good recordkeeping in what will be a much analysed period of history.
May. After more than two decades, the Amazon rainforest’s Ashaninka indigenous community finally won a lawsuit against the timber companies who illegally deforested the tribe’s land in the 1980s, gaining both money and an official apology.
June. A county sheriffs’ department in the U.S. State of Maryland has an Electronic Storage Detection dog trained to sniff out storage devices like flash drives and cell phones.
July. When Haiti’s chief prosecutor said he didn’t have any documentation about Emmanuel Constant’s part in the 1994 Raboteau massacre or his previous conviction, human rights groups supplied copies of the judgment against Constant and the 23 November 2000 Monitor (the country’s official gazette) where it was published.
August. The United Nations Convention 182 on Worst Forms of Child Labour (such as slavery, prostitution and trafficking) went into effect when the last of the 187 countries that are members of the UN International Labour Organization ratified it.
September. At the opening of a new Malaysian archives building, Sultan Nazrin reflected on the importance of archives, referring to the 2002 International Court of Justice ruling that Malaysia owns the Sipadan islands, which said Malaysia’s Turtle Preservation Ordinance of 1917 showed Malaysia intended “to exercise State functions with respect to the two islands.”
October. No matter what the Brexit agreement said, a document issued to Flanders (Belgium) in July 1666 by Britain’s King Charles II gives 50 Flemish fishing boats access to British waters in perpetuity.
November. Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean committed to a “Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean,” which UN human rights Special Rapporteurs termed a ground-breaking pact to fight pollution and secure a healthy environment.
December. Peruvian police filmed a raid in which police drug-squad members disguised as Santa Claus and an elf swooped into a house in Lima, not to deliver gifts but to capture a suspected cocaine and dope dealer.
