© Azuz development/Tobiaseigen
Campaign for the recognition of indigenous rights in the Congo.

I serve those who lived in 1600 and I'm serving those who will live in 2200, says Librarian and Archivist of Canada Ian Wilson. He promotes digitization and free acess to archives, which can play a crucial role in the fight against human rights violations.

Ian Wilson, who was elected president of the International Council on Archives (ICA) in July, answers the questions of Jens Boel, UNESCO’s head archivist.

Archives and human right was the topic of the International Conference of the Round Table on Archives (CITRA), a conference that you presided in Cape Town (South Africa) in 2003. Shouldn't archivists leave human rights to politicians?

The archival world is not passive. We are actively engaged in sculpting social memory.

In Cape Town, we looked at the relation between archives, human rights and the protection of minorities. We had the pleasure of meeting Archbishop Desmond Tutu (South-African, Nobel Peace Prize, 1984) who said archives are the bulwark against atrocities we must never forget. He was engaged in this issue and he understands the absolute power of the record.

Under former repressive regimes in South America, colleagues struggled to keep a record of the disappeared, those citizens who had run up against the regime in power and simply disappeared from the face of the Earth.

Democratic countries have similar problems. During decades, the Canadian government supported residential schools, those boarding schools maintained by churches to assimilate indigenous children. The children lost their language, their culture, their family, their identity. The government has apologized to the survivors and we have established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Canadian Archives are very active in making available the existing record about this traumatizing experience. We are also going to work with the Commission to preserve the testimonies and documents families bring forward.

Why is it so important to come to terms with the painful past?

We need to learn. The society needs to understand itself, to look at its strengths and weaknesses as it deals with the challenges of the future. In Canada, we are trying to build a truly multicultural society that respects and engages all cultures… The record on residential schools sat in archives for decades and decades, nobody ever looked at it. Finally the society was ready and began asking questions.

There is an interesting dynamic going on as to how the society engages with its past. Archivists have a role in enabling that and in making sure that we take a comprehensive and very systematic approach to the preservation of the record.

How shall the International Council on Archives (ICA) support human rights?

We are not very structured to do advocacy. However, one thing we passed the motion on in Cape Town was to support our colleagues who work to preserve records under repressive regimes and very difficult conditions.

Maybe we can engage some of the agencies of the United Nations who might be able to assist and put some pressure to bear, to bring the archival dimension to attention. Maybe there is room for us to talk to Amnesty International too.

Do you believe ICA should take a public stand in situations where fundamental “archives rights” are violated? For example, in the case of systematic destruction of records or denial of citizens’ right to have access to archives.

ICA could muster some of its network through one of its key elements: the professional associations around the world. There are ways ICA could monitor the situations, develop the facts and get the news to professional associations, with some advice on how to communicate with the national governments and other bodies involved. All of this depends on capacity and capability, but the capacity of ICA to really pull out together and send out news notes and suggestions is limited. There are things one would like to do and there are things one can do.

What is the role of archives and record management in conflict and post-conflict societies? Do you see issues of governance and building of democracies as priorities for ICA?

We need to study how we can be effective. The Archivist of the United States, Allen Weinstein, and myself have already been to visit with colleagues in Israel and Palestine. We looked at the importance of the shared record to develop understanding of people in a very difficult region of the world who frankly have certain elements of a shared history and a shared documentation.

There are common needs there. Both the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Archives talked to us about training and digitization of records of common interest. The Israeli Archives have been very generous, saying they have certain series of records inherited from the British that they would be delighted to see digitized and shared. They have census records back to the Ottoman empire for that area! Can’t we get them up online and available? There are in Israel significant collections of Palestinian newspapers from the 1920s to 1948 in horrendous condition, brittle and fragile, that need to be preserved. There are ways the international community can work in those situations, but in areas like Afghanistan and Sudan, where it is deeply troubled, I’m not so sure.

What is the relation between archives, truth, memory and history?

To me, archives are the fundamental source material, a mean of communication across time. We allow the generations to talk to each other, we work in the fourth dimension. What we preserve and maintain, what we inherit from our predecessors and what we add ourselves are all part of this communication process. Each generation asks questions about its past, depending on its concerns about its future. To me, archives are essentially about the future.

Human rights issues right now are very important for societies. As I said before, many records on human rights sat on the shelves for decades, for example in Canada, and nobody looked at them. Only when society was ready to look and learn about such things, we began to see these records used.

Truth is a difficult issue. We can never document a society in all its complexities and diversity to get the whole truth.

But I think archives really are about that dialogue across generations. The current population of Canada is about 30 million but I serve 300 million Canadians. I serve those who lived in 1600, I’m serving those who will live in 2200.



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Photo n° 2 : © UNESCO/Dana Ziyasheva
Digitizing ancient manuscripts, Gandan monastery (Mongolia).

Photo n° 3 : © UNESCO/Joie Springer
Archives in Haiti.