César Osorio Sánchez – Researcher and educator in Transitional Justice, Archives and Historical Memory.
During the last 20 years, the international discourse on human rights has dealt with an essential question for the clarification of crimes against humanity committed in repressive regimes and armed conflicts: what measures must be implemented to safeguard and widely use the files that testify to violations of human rights? The international principles of the fight against impunity -adopted in 1998 and updated in 2005, the reports of the United Nations special rapporteur for the right to truth -especially its report of 2015-, as well as the Instruments of the State of Law of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights [i] have highlighted that the duty rests on the states to remember, and in their fulfillment, the obligation to preserve and establish the most extensive conditions for the public knowledge of the documentary and testimonial legacy of the towns. These legal referents invite the states to consider transitional mechanisms, such as memory laws, an opportunity to implement the highest standards for the protection, access and social dissemination of archives. Truth-seeking policies must be accompanied by archival policies designed from a human rights perspective.
Despite the clarity of these invitations, international experience, and in particular, the experience of the transitional mechanisms in Colombia shows that harmonizing and bringing into dialogue memory policies and archive policies is a task with many obstacles. Thus, although one of the main principles in this relationship between archives and memory policies is that research organizations of the past must have free access to documentation and public information, the experience of the Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Reconciliation (CEV) in Colombia highlights the barriers that persist in this field. This body, the result of the agreements signed by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) in 2016, delivered its final report on June 28, 2022, and with its annexes a document entitled “Experience of the Truth Clarification Commission to access public information” [ii] . Colombia has a General Law on Archives, a Law on Transparency and Access to Public Information, a Law on Victims and Land Restitution, and however, the CEV faced the reluctance of some state entities to give access to public documentation, the lack of archival instruments for information searches on human rights violations; it also faced the unjustified forwarding of requests for information to other state entities, and the ignorance of the legal deadlines for responding to requests for access, among other problems. In short, access to state archives remains tortuous, not only for victims seeking truth and justice, but also for public entities empowered to investigate the impacts of war.
The experience of the CEV recalls the findings of another entity, the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (CNMH), an organization created in 2011 and in charge of launching an Archive on the memories of the Colombian armed conflict. Between 2013 and 2017, this entity set itself the task of building a policy for the archives on human rights violations, and for this, dialogued with social organizations and public officials from various regions of Colombia. In its diagnosis, the CNMH found that problems such as threats to social leaders who sought information about what happened, the lack of training of public officials in human rights, the lack of psychosocial tools for the attention of victims, the absence of training programs on the treatment of archives and the precariousness of the infrastructures – public and civil society – hindered access and preservation of the documentary and testimonial traces of the armed confrontation [iii] . The realities encountered by these institutions show that policies and the management of archives in public institutions can facilitate and also hinder knowledge of the impacts of violence, and also decisively affect the possibilities of demanding human rights, especially of victims and their representatives.
To complicate this map of challenges in memory policies, it is important to add that, in the Colombian context, entities such as the CNMH and the CEV have produced public reports that have dealt with matters such as the effects of violence in the various regions, the effects on populations such as peasants, indigenous people, Afro-Colombian communities, boys, girls, adolescents, the LGBTI population, the effects on political participation, among other dimensions of the armed conflict. Despite this work, archive policies that facilitate and stimulate access are still necessary, not only to public documentation in general, but to the archives formed by these entities in their research work. In societies that aspire to overcome the profound social, cultural and psychosocial impacts of violence, the challenge consists, not only in the collection of documents and testimonies, but also in the public visibility of thousands of stories that, due to the violence, have not been able to come to light. In fact, a large part of the effort of memory managers such as human rights organizations, family associations seeks to break the silence that weighs on the pains that society has experienced, and with that, to overcome the environment of impunity that makes it easier for violent events to be repeated.
Obstacles to access to archives in the experience of Colombia, states that the issuance of legal tools -laws, protocols and institutional circulars- on these topics is necessary, but not sufficient to achieve coordination between memory policies and archive policies. In other words, the path between the rules and the daily life of state entities is long. To overcome these gaps, the real decision to promote changes in the institutional culture is required, as well as public debate and citizen oversight so that the principles adopted in international human rights laws and norms are appropriated and fulfilled within the institution. One of the most visible needs, for example, is to publicly position the idea that, the search for the truth, the critical analysis of what has been lived so that the atrocities of the past are not repeated, demands that the generations, present and future, have the possibility to know and interrogate both the reports of the specialized bodies and the history that is contained in the documents, testimonies and other materials that have been collected by the research bodies. The public discussion on access to archives for the recovery of historical memory must touch, among other aspects: a) the effective conditions for its knowledge and dissemination, especially for victims and organizations of clarification; b) the regime of access to documents and testimonies collected by investigative bodies; and c) the policies required so that the national archive systems work in a coordinated manner in the preservation of this legacy when the documents and testimonies are guarded by non-state memory managers, that is, by people or communities that can contribute to the clarification of the past.
Faced with these issues, it is worth saying that Colombia and Spain are experiencing special moments. On the one hand, Colombia is witnessing a moment in which a relaunch of peace policies is announced, and on the other hand, Spanish society is facing the debate on the implications of the Law of Democratic Memory. I hope that these times are the opportunity for archive policies to become visible as a strategic, core field of political transitions in these countries, and for public institutions, think tanks, and civil society organizations to engage in fruitful dialogues on the policies and measures necessary to safeguard the value of archives as sources of social memory that promotes respect for human rights.
[i] United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OACNUDH) 2015. Instruments of the rule of law for societies that have come out of a conflict: archives. Available at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/HR_PUB_14_4_Archives_sp.pdf
[ii] Commission for the Clarification of Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition (CEV) (2022). Experience of the Commission to access public information. Document available at https://www.comisiondelaverdad.co/experiencia-de-la-comision-para-acceder-informacion-publica
[iii] National Historical Center (CNMH) (2017). The process of forming the Archives of Human Rights of the CNMH and the construction of the Public Policy of Archives of Human Rights, Historical Memory and Armed Conflict: diagnosis and proposals of civil society and public institutions. In Public Policy of Archives of Human Rights, Historical Memory and Armed Conflict. Available at https://www.centrodememoriahistorica.gov.co/descargas/politica-publica-archivo-ddhh.pdf Pages 120-125 .
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