Monday, November 28, 2011

DECLARATORIA DE BOGOTÁ DE LOS ARCHIVOS DEL SECTOR DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS - NOVIEMBRE 2011

ARCHIVEROS SIN FRONTERAS - COLOMBIA Bogotá D.C. - Colombia info@asfcolombia.org
 En el marco de la I JORNADA DE ARCHIVOS DEL SECTOR DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS: Investigación, Memoria, Desclasificación, Políticas y Acceso, organizada por Archiveros sin Fronteras - Colombia y realizada en Bogotá el 22 de noviembre de 2011, se abordó el tema central de los archivos de los derechos humanos y su relación con la investigación para la reconstrucción de la memoria histórica, el acceso, la transparencia y la desclasificación de los documentos. National Security Archive. National Security Archive, Proyecto Profis GIZ, Redes Locales Ciudadanas, Soft & Di, y la Universidad Externado de Colombia.
DECLARATORIA DE BOGOTÁ DE LOS ARCHIVOS DEL SECTOR DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS - NOVIEMBRE 2011
1. Reglamentar con un enfoque diferencial el tratamiento técnico de los archivos del sector de los derechos humanos, tanto públicos como privados, que permita su pronta organización y utilidad como herramienta para la restitución de los derechos de las víctimas del conflicto armado.
2. Convocar al Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia e instituciones académicas, para que implementen programas de capacitación a las organizaciones gubernamentales y no gubernamentales del sector de los derechos humanos, para que sus integrantes puedan apropiarse de los procesos de organización y preservación de sus archivos.
3. Elaborar una guía de orientación para la organización y preservación de los archivos del sector de los derechos humanos, que también incluya el manejo y custodia de todos los soportes que los integran, entre otros: papel, video, audio, fotografía, fílmico, audiovisual, medio magnético, electrónico y análogo.
4. Solicitar la participación de personal técnico, tecnólogo y profesional formado en la disciplina archivística, para garantizar una adecuada gestión documental del sector de los derechos humanos.
5. Intervenir los archivos estatales fundamentales para la investigación de graves violaciones de derechos humanos, con el propósito de que sean debidamente organizados y protegidos y que su consulta sea facilitada a las víctimas y a sus apoderados. Se recomienda que esta labor la lidere el Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia.
6. Establecer, en el proceso de reglamentación de la Ley 1448 de 2011 Ley de Víctimas, la delimitación de competencias del Centro de Memoria Histórica y del Archivo General de la Nación, respecto de los archivos del sector de los derechos humanos.
7. Comprender que el proceso de construcción de memoria no puede estar cifrado por una fecha de inicio y que ante la vigencia del conflicto se deben analizar sus manifestaciones en la sociedad actual.
8. Propender por que el proceso de construcción de memoria del conflicto sea liderado por las victimas e involucre a los grupos de memoria que trabajan en las diferentes regiones colombianas.
9. Crear espacios de estudio, análisis y concertación para determinar cuál entidad dentro de la cadena de custodia y bajo qué parámetros, se encargará de los archivos generados por las organizaciones sociales defensoras de los derechos humanos, garantizando la integridad, conservación y accesibilidad contando con la voluntad de las víctimas de publicar sus testimonios.
10. Conminar a las entidades estatales a cumplir con la responsabilidad legal, de salvaguardar los archivos a su cargo, con especial atención al sector de los archivos de derechos humanos.
11. Formular por parte del Gobierno las políticas, planes, programas y normatividad que promueva el derecho de acceso a la información pública, de acuerdo con los estándares internacionales.
12. Propender por que se promulgue una ley de acceso a la información en la que la desclasificación de los documentos, establezca períodos límites de tiempo, con base en el tratamiento especial que requiere la información sensible contenida en estos archivos, atendiendo el derecho a la intimidad, la verdad, la justicia y la reparación.
Esta Declaratoria contribuye al fortalecimiento de la discusión sobre la realidad de los archivos del sector de los derechos humanos en medio de una Justicia Transicional, para la construcción de una política pública acerca del tratamiento técnico de estos archivos.

Invitamos a toda la sociedad, en especial a las organizaciones de la sociedad civil, la comunidad archivística y la academia tanto a nivel nacional como internacional, a adherirse a esta Declaratoria.
Nombre
Entidad / Persona natural
Nit / documento identidad Ciudad Firma
 

Diversos expertos del ámbito nacional e internacional acompañaron el diálogo con las organizaciones de la sociedad civil y la academia, para identificar la problemática de los archivos de este sector en cuanto a los aspectos técnicos objeto de la Jornada. Teniendo en cuenta que los archivos de este sector son herramienta para la restitución de los derechos humanos y la recuperación de la memoria histórica, específicamente se trataron temas como la problemática y el papel de los archivos para la defensa de los derechos humanos, los archivos en el marco de la Ley de Victimas, los avances de la Ley de Transparencia que cursa en el Congreso y la experiencia del
Las entidades que participaron en el evento, fueron: Archivo Familia Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, Asociación para la Promoción Social Alternativa MINGA, Centro Alteridad y Derechos Humanos, Centro de Memoria Paz y Reconciliación de la Secretaría de Gobierno de la Alcaldía Mayor de Bogotá D.C., Centro de Investigación Y Educación Popular CINEP, Colectivo de Abogados José Alvear Restrepo, Comisión Colombiana de Juristas, Comisión Intereclesial de Justicia y Paz, Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento – CODHES, Corporación Claretiana Norman Pérez Bello, Corporación Fondo de Solidaridad con los Jueces Colombianos FASOL, Escuela Interamericana de Bibliotecología de la Universidad de Antioquia, Fundación AFFIC Ciencias Forenses al Servicio de la Justicia y los Derechos Humanos, Fundación Karisma, Fundación para la Libertad de Prensa FLIP, Grupo de Normatividad del Archivo General de la Nación de Colombia, Junta de Acción Comunal La Ponderosa, Justapaz Comisión de Paz de CEDECOL, Movimiento Nacional de Victimas,
Los temas fueron analizados y debatidos en cuatro mesas de trabajo. Como resultado se acordó presentar públicamente, ante distintas instancias, las conclusiones reunidas en la siguiente declaratoria para salvaguardar el patrimonio documental que testimonia el conflicto armado vivido en las últimas décadas en Colombia, reconocido en la Ley Víctimas y también para garantizar su organización, acceso y desclasificación.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation


The Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation is a nonprofit, educational organization seated in The Hague. Founded in 2004 by Elazar Barkan, professor and co-director, Center for Human Rights at Columbia University, and Timothy W. Ryback, deputy secretary general of the Académie Diplomatique Internationale in Paris, the IHJR first operated as a project of the Salzburg Global Seminar. In October 2008, the IHJR was established as an independent institute in The Netherlands. The IHJR continues to work in partnership with the Salzburg Global Seminar. Under Dutch law, the IHJR is a non-profit foundation (stichting) eligible to receive charitable contributions.
The IHJR conducts its programs under the auspices of an international Executive Committee chaired by The Honorable Richard J. Goldstone, Co-chairman of the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association and former chief prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
The core of the IHJR activity is the development, funding and execution of multi-year projects and networking initiatives. These are selected by the co-directors in consultation with the Executive Committee. Projects are conceptualized, developed and funded in cooperation with regional partners with local capacity and expertise.
Several key criteria are used in selecting a project or initiative. These include:
  • compatibility with the IHJR mission;
  • the availability of appropriate partners and adequate levels of funding;
  • the potential to produce practical outcomes, e.g., publications, historical commissions, public forums, or other "products" or activities that contribute to reconciliation processes in the region.
The IHJR seeks projects and networking initiatives that can promote positive, forward looking results and intends to inspire others to replicate the work and to build capacity in the region. The themes and modalities for dealing with issues are determined by local and regional partners while the IHJR plays a support and facilitating role.

The IHJR has completed projects for the Middle East and the Former Yugoslavia:

It has ongoing projects in Haifa, Armenia and Kenya, as well as networking initiatives in East Asia, India-Pakistan, Indonesia, Poland and Ukraine:

Former Stasi employees to be banned from working at Stasi archive

The law relating to the records of the State Security Service (Stasi) of the former German Democratic Republic is to be amended, the cultural spokesman for Germany's Free Democratic Party said on Monday.
Reiner Deutschmann told the regional daily Mitteldeutsche Zeitung that Germany's governing coalition had agreed to add a clause dictating that former Stasi employees are unable to work for the authority that now administers the files compiled by Communist East Germany's secret police.
Under the new law, "anyone who officially or unofficially worked for the Stasi is not allowed to work for the authority," Deutschmann told the paper.
It would also retrospectively apply to the 47 former Stasi workers currently working at the archive.
According to Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, the federal commissioner of the authority, Roland Jahn, has joined the Christian Democratic Union and FDP in advocating this change to the 1991 Stasi Records Act. Since taking the helm in March, Jahn has questioned the continued employment of former Stasi workers, claiming it undermines the credibility of the authority.
After several failed attempts at encouraging the employees to leave voluntarily, Jahn commissioned a report into the legality of their employment by the Berlin lawyer Johannes Weberling.
In the report published in July, Weberling recommend a change in the law, with the proviso that the former Stasi employees currently in the agency should be provided with "equivalent jobs [elsewhere] in the federal administration."

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Cambodia: UN-backed tribunal begins trial against four top Khmer Rouge figures

Three days ago a five-judge panel at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a special Tribunal backed by the United Nations and based in Phnom Penh, began the trial against four of the most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime, in power between April 1975 and January 1979.
UN-backed Tribunal begins trial in Cambodia

At least 1.7 million Cambodians are estimated to have died from starvation, forced labour, torture and execution during the rule of the Khmer Rouge, which was followed by a protracted period of civil war.
Wikipedia Khmer Rouge Rule of Cambodia

The ECCC was set up in 2006 and the UN provides assistance through the UN Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT) and participates in the operations of the tribunal.
UNAKRT Webpage

Yale University Library has helped the Documentation Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh to preserve records of the Khmer Rouge state police archives (Santebal)
Preserving Khmer Rouge Archives
Website Documentation Center of Cambodia
Cambodian Genocide Program Yale University

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

CRL and LAMP Support Digitization of Brazilian Human Rights Collection

CRL (Center for Research Libraries) and LAMP (formerly the Latin American Microform Project) are supporting the efforts of the Ministério Público Federal in Brazil to digitize nearly one million pages of the collection Brasil: Nunca Mais, which contains court documents (processos) from Brazil’s Military Supreme Court. These proceedings document the cases of over 7,000 persons arrested, convicted, and/or executed by the Court between 1964 and 1979. Copied in secrecy, the official records document human rights violations by the military government in Brazil during this period.
 Brasil: Nunca Mais

The Brazilian military government was the authoritarian regime which ruled Brazil from 1964 to 1985. It began after the 1964 coup d'etat led by the Armed Forces against the democratically elected government of left-wing President Joao Goulart.
Brazilian military government Wikipedia


Monday, June 13, 2011

UCLA's Armenian oral histories project

An interesting article on UCLA's Armenian oral histories project, led by the historian Richard Hovannissian. The Armenian Genocide conducted by the Ottoman Empire is considered the first modern genocide and resulted in at least 1 million deaths. Despite all the existing evidence, the turkish government continues denying the facts to this day...
Toward an expanded notion of the witness: the promise of armenian oral history collections
Armenian Genocide Wikipedia
Richard Hovannisian UCLA

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

SALALM Chronicles (I)

SALALM is the Seminar on Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials, that is an association of mainly University Librarians that deal with latin american collections.
SALALM Website

Despite this focus on Library materials SALALM groups together institutions with rich archives collections and under the leadership of active members like Marisol Ramos, from the University of Connecticut, has been moving steadily towards a greater emphasis on archives.
Marisol Ramos' blog

SALALM organized an excellent conference on archives last week at Philadelphia, under the title "Preserving Memory: Documenting and Archiving Latin American Human Rights"
SALALM LVI Website

Peter Kornbluh, the famed analyst from the National Security Archive and author of "The Pinochet File" , delivered an impressive keynote address on "Forensic Archivists and Active Archives: Advancing the Cause of Human Rights in Latin America through Archival Investigation", a harrowing visit to the dismal backyard of US politics in Latin America, from Guatemala's Truth Commission to the Terror Archives in Paraguay, passing through the dreaded argentinian Battallion 601 and their fumbled Operation Mexico. An awful truth that has only been revealed through the declassification of confidential US records in application of Freedom of Information legislation and the dogged persistence of institutions such as National Security Archive.
National Security Archive website

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of hearing Peter, I've found in YouTube a complete video of the presentation he gave on a similar topic at the University of Oregon on August 2010. Really worth it!
Peter Kornbluh "Information is Power: Access to Archives and Human Rights in Latin America"

Quoting Peter: "Sunlight is the best disinfectant". Never more true...

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Now it turns out that Franco was not a dictator...

At least if we pay attention to the biography of the infamous General just published as part of the Spanish Biographical Dictionary, a humongous effort that presents 43,000 biographies in 50 volumes and that has been published by the extremely conservative Spanish Royal Academy of History. The scandal increases because they received 6.4 million euros of public money for such a project...
Not much of a surprise if we consider that the entry on Franco was drafted by Luis Suarez, an specialist in medieval (!) history and also active member of the Francisco Franco Foundation, a private institution devoted to the memory of the dictator...
The biography qualifies Franco as authoritarian and lauds his military prowess. The cold-hearted General that took his time to complete an extermination war that guaranteed a virtual cleansing of Spain and established a fierce dictatorship that lasted nearly 40 years is nowhere to be seen in the pages of this dictionary. I'm afraid this is but the first of the attempts at vindicating his grisly memory that are sure to follow after the half-hearted application of the Law of Historical Memory and the nearly certain political change bound to happen after the incoming 2012 elections...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/31/spaniards-outraged-favourable-franco-biography
I enclose the link to the Francisco Franco Foundation just to illustrate the point that such a website would be forbidden in the majority of countries for fascist propaganda...
Website Fundacion Nacional Francisco Franco

Archival Policies in the Protection of Human Rights

This Report drafted by Antonio Gonzalez Quintana is an inescapable reference in the field of Archives and Human Rights. Antonio led the UNESCO/ICA group that produced in 1995 a first report on the manegement of the archives of the state security services of Former Repressive Regimes. This report was expanded into the more complete version launched in 2009, whose translation to english was completed by Margaret Turner.
Archival Policies in the Protection of Human Rights
Antonio Gonzalez Quintana is an spanish archivist with a long and illustrious career in the Spanish State Archives and Military Archives as well as the NATO Archives Committee. He is currently serving as Deputy Director General of Archives of the autonomous Community of Madrid.

The Inner Logic of Evil: from East Germany to Egypt

A very interesting article from "Der Spiegel" on how Herbert Ziehm, a german expert on the Stasi, is advising Egypt on how to deal with the trove of secret police records found at Amn al-Dawla HQ, the Egyptian State Security Investigations Service.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,754856,00.html
Wikipedia article on Egyptian State Security Investigations Service
Wikipedia Article on Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives
BStU (Bundesbeauftragte für die Stasi-Unterlagen) Website

Monday, June 6, 2011

Archivists without Borders

Archivists without Borders is an NGO created in Barcelona in 1998. It has been quite succesful and active in Europe, Africa and Latin America, but until now the language barrier (the majority of member countries share spanish as a language, except France) has prevented its expansion to english speaking countries. My canadian friends at ACA granted me a great opportunity allowing me to speak about this subject in the ACA Conference that just took place at Toronto and hopefully we will have soon good news in this respect...
Currently there are AwB branches in Spain, France, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Chile. Each branch is independent, but all operate with a common International Charter as reference and under the coordination of an International Coordination Council.
Website of AwB Spain
International Charter
Annual Report 2008