UNESCO/UBC Vancouver Memory of the World Declaration

At last month’s conference, “Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation”, a declaration was adopted addressing the challenge of digital amnesia.  The four page document, made available on UNESCO’s website last week, is an extension of a principle in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  That is, each individual should be guaranteed access to information, including in digital format, and that national policies should be established to promote the right to information, open government and open data.

Also highlighted during the conference and its consequent declaration was the growing importance of industry in digitization and digital preservation among trusted digital repositories.  The conference declaration adopted a call on industry to ensure long-term accessibility to trustworthy information contained in legacy formats.  It further encouraged professional associations work with industry for the development of requirements of systems that embed preservation concern and assist in the development of a cohesive and practical vision of the way forward in addressing the management and preservation of trustworthy recorded information in all its forms in the digital environment.

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Government Restructuring Dismantles the Guatemalan Archives of Peace

Kate Doyle of the National Security Archive and contributor to the blog, Unredacted, has shared some disturbing news with AW that is sure to upset many archivists and disrupt Guatemalan civil society. The Secretary of Peace, Antonio Arenales Forno stated that by June 29 the government would, “cancel [labor] contracts for which I see no justification and end the functions of an office that I find makes no sense.”

Doyle has worked with files of the Guatemalan National Police Archives in a recent trial against officers who perpetrated violence and government repression against activists during the 36-year internal conflict that ended in 1996.  The Peace Archives comprise of documentation that provided material for this trial, inter alia. Specifically, the archives house government files from the civil war.  The archives were just conceived in 2008, preceding an access to information law passed the same year.  The FOI law was intended to create openness and government transparency.  This recent announcement to dismantle the archives is a step back for human rights defenders engaged in truth and reconciliation, open memory, and right-to-know initiatives.

However, in Doyle’s article for Unredacted, the Secretary of Peace defends his decision, admitting that “he was unsure what the government would do with the institution’s extensive digital archives, suggesting they may be transferred to the General Archives of Central America” among other government institutions.  The Secretary told the press that the redistribution of the files is part of the broad restructuring of the government.

In cases of transitional governments, the issue of the trustworthiness of stewards or custodians of material documenting human rights violations is crucial from the perspective of the archival community. Trudy Huskamp Peterson, Chair of the ICA Human Rights Working Group, stresses that if the incumbent government archives cannot be trusted, then an intermediary repository, managed by trusted groups or individuals should be created.  Currently, the Secretary has not announced any concrete plan toward housing the files to be redistributed making it difficult to assess the impact of the restructuring.  Peterson goes further to state:

But if these are government records, they should eventually go back into government hands.  Part of the restructuring of a government to prevent the recurrence of conflict and to protect human rights has to be the revitalization and modernization of the governmental archives system.  Each country has to have the capacity to manage its court records and military records, records of diplomacy and records of land title.  As part of rebuilding government structures after a period of civic trauma, we have to find ways to persuade governments and donors that rebuilding archives is also crucial.*

Other professionals argue that while trust is a strong factor in determining the custody of records documenting wide-scale abuse, the argument should go further to state that is it the trust of survivors and victim’s families that is paramount.  By all accounts, the commonly suggested alternative to government custody are grassroots organizations and other NGOs represented by survivors or those directly affected by the crimes.

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* Excerpt taken from New Tactics Dialogue on Archiving Human Rights for Advocacy, Justice & Memory

Archivist Contests Kremlin on Possession of Dossier on Holocaust Hero

Raoul Wallenberg, a diplomat during the Holocaust, saved thousands of Jews in Hungary before he disappeared in the custody of Soviet secret police.  He has been considered a hero but definitive information on his demise was never acknowledged by the Soviet government.  Now, Anatoly Prokopenko, former chief of the Soviet Special Archive, has told the Associated Press that he believes the Kremlin has been hiding files on Wallenberg concerning the diplomat’s arrest and death.

Prokopenko has since been fired from his post since his discovery of the file and attempts to reveal the information. The corrupt handling of the file (during the time of Glasnost, no less, when Prokopenko was encouraging researchers to pursue the Wallenberg topic) conveys the need for more transparency in Russia…

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FOI Legislation Often Outdated and Ignored in Developed World

AP released an investigative article last month on the contradictions of what they term, “right-to-know” laws, or what information professionals usually dub Freedom of Information (FOI) or Access to Information legislation.  The  news source found that developing democracies with newly established FOI laws are better at fully addressing access to information requests from the public, citing Guatemala and India as cases.  European and North American countries however fared less adequately in this regard. US FOIA officials in the Department of Justice attribute their inadequacy to an inability to tackle the challenges that come with the emergence of electronic records.  AP suggests that FOI laws founded in developed countries early in the formation of FOI legislation are showing their age.

In developing democracies where FOI laws are in use, the ideal of giving voice to ordinary people by enabling them with the right to know information has been realized.  However, the successful execution of these laws is not without its costs.  AP shows that in India retributive crimes arise against ordinary citizens who seek answers  through the use of right-to-know laws. These individuals normally seek justice in holding accountable corrupt authorities who in turn terrorize them for exercising their right to information.

In light of the harm these laws can engender for those who use them, there is still a long road ahead for developing democracies beyond right-to-know laws.  Such transparency laws are not guarantees of open societies that will protect its citizens despite the new powers they offer them…

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Ghana – A Case for FOI & Archives

This past August, Ghana’s ongoing push to pass an information bill has again been delayed.  Efforts to implement such a bill have encountered road blocks as there has been a lot of bandying about which government body is structured well enough to execute the functions of the bill.

In principle, the information bill would allow the public domain to access information on finances, business relationships, and individual citizens. According to an article in Daily Guide Ghana, “Democracy advocates uphold right to information laws as necessary ingredients for the promotion of good governance, transparency, and accountability.”  This is especially true for a country that is establishing democracy and shows signs of a fast growing economy as Ghana has started oil production last year.  The vote passing of the bill would represent another step towards a solid democracy and anti-corruption efforts.

At the heart of any access to information or freedom of information act or law is effective record-keeping within public bodies and private agencies.  At the same time, exemption clauses have been drafted primarily to protect the interests of government.  Exemptions to the bill, as with any FOI legislation, define the breadth and depth of how much information is actually disclosed.  The exemptions in this case have been described by critics are far too wide.  This has been another source of contention and delay…

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Related articles on record keeping  issues and good governance in Ghana