Section on Archives and Human Rights - SAHR
SAHR Announces its New Database “Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms Archives Locator” (TRMAL) on International Human Rights Day and Discusses Human Rights Archives
*9 December 2025 *
After a three-year period of expert and literary research as well as technical development, ICA’s Section on Archives and Human Rights is excited to announce its latest project, the Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms Archives Locator (TRMAL to be live in January 2026). The project was developed and coordinated by a number of SAHR’s members with the support of swisspeace, many additional volunteers and a generous grant by ICA’s Programme Commission (PCOM). The site starts with a first set of data that will grad…
Section on Archives and Human Rights - SAHR
SAHR Announces its New Database “Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms Archives Locator” (TRMAL) on International Human Rights Day and Discusses Human Rights Archives
*9 December 2025 *
After a three-year period of expert and literary research as well as technical development, ICA’s Section on Archives and Human Rights is excited to announce its latest project, the Truth and Reconciliation Mechanisms Archives Locator (TRMAL to be live in January 2026). The project was developed and coordinated by a number of SAHR’s members with the support of swisspeace, many additional volunteers and a generous grant by ICA’s Programme Commission (PCOM). The site starts with a first set of data that will gradually be updated with additional sets of archives’ information.
The TRMAL is a unique tool that for the first time allows researchers, conflict-affected citizens, legal scholars and anyone interested to search for the archives that have been created through a diverse range of mechanisms after conflict.
Since 1951, hundreds of commissions have investigated and collected evidence or testimonies related to past human rights violations all over the world. Called Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Investigative Commission or Commission of Inquiry, these missions have been conducted at local, national or international level. They have often published a final report as a defining testimony of wrongdoing. Most importantly, many have constituted a body of records in support of the production of their reports that contain a multitude of voices and details around an important part of history.
But what happens to this wealth of information when these temporary mechanisms inevitably close? Are the records preserved, are they accessible and under what conditions? These were the guiding questions for the content of the TRMAL. With the support of volunteers on all five continents a first set of data of around 130 mechanisms is available, more to be added as the research continues. The database is scalable and open to future additions such as archives of legal bodies or other human rights archives dealing with past atrocities and conflict.
Online Event
On this special day, the commemoration of the universal declaration of human rights, we also invite you to join SAHR and SUV, the Section on Universities and Research Institutions Archives within ICA, for our joint online event on “Human Rights in University and Research Institution Archives”.
Patrick Stawski will present the Human Rights Archive of the Rubenstein Library at Duke University, Csaba Szilagyi, chief human rights archivist at Open Society Archives at the Central European University will give insights into his work, and Karl Magee from Stirling University will talk about the Archiving Residential Children’s Homes project. Jens Boel, chair of SAHR, and Caroline Brown, chair of SUV, will moderate.
The event dates
DATE
10 December 2025
TIME
15.00 CET / 14.00 UK
DATE
10 December 2025
TIME
15.00 CET / 14.00 UK
About
The Section on Archives and Human Rights (SAHR) was formed in 2003 during the Conference of the Round Table on Archives (CITRA) in Cape Town that adopted a resolution on archives and human rights violations. In part, this resolution invited ICA and UNESCO to put in place a preservation programme for archival fonds that would document violations of human rights. ICA established therefore the Human Rights Working Group (HRG). It was renamed in 2019, during the Adelaide ICA congress, the Section on Archives and Human Rights (SAHR).
Next to TRMAL, SAHR has developed a number of publications and projects over the years, among them the online knowledge base on rights and records that also offers an archive to SAHR’s newsletter that is a phenomenal resource on all things archives and human rights as well as the bi-monthly First Tuesday Talks: Exploring Archives and Human Rights.
The Section on Universities and Research Institution Archives (SUV) was founded in 1992. Its main goals are to promote professional and scholarly co-operation and communication between archives and archivists of universities, colleges, academies of science and letters, learned societies and research institutions and to gather, disseminate and exchange information relating to the creation and administration of such archives and support their impact.