Archives : extract from ICRC Annual Report 2008

27-05-2009 Annual Report

Reports on all ICRC activities, registers of official decisions and legal and operational correspondence have been stored since 1863 in the ICRC’s archives. In June 2007, UNESCO added the archives of the International Prisoners of War Agency (1914–1923) to its Memory of the World Register, in testimony to “the extent of human suffering during the First World War, but also of pioneering action to protect civilians”. The extensive programme launched by the ICRC in 2006 to restore and digitize these archives is to be completed in 2012.

In 2008, the Archives Division handled some 3,200 requests from victims of past armed conflicts and their next-of-kin for official documents such as attestations of detention, mostly related to the Second World War but also concerning the First World War or conflicts that occurred after 1950. Under the rules governing access to ICRC archives, the organization’s records are subject to a protective embargo for a general period of 40 years and an extended period of 60 years. Hence, records up to 1965 have been opened to the general public for consultation.

The Archives Division also replied to some 1,200 requests for information on the ICRC’s film and paper archives and received researchers in its reading room for the equivalent of about 600 working days. Furthermore, in order to improve accessibility, the ICRC and Memoriav, an association founded to preserve Switzerland’s audiovisual cultural heritage, began a long-term project to preserve and restore the ICRC’s 16mm film archives on its activities for people affected by conflicts between 1950 and 1980. The two organizations also discussed a project to preserve and restore ICRC audio archives.

The purpose of ICRC historical research activities is to make the organization’s history more widely known. In January, the Archives Division cooperated with a group of Harvard University researchers interested in preparing a study on ICRC activities during the Korean War (1950–1953). In October, it provided the Centre of Historical Memory, based in Salamanca, Spain, with digitized copies of documents concerning the organization’s action during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).

The Archives Division continued to create ICRC institutional reference files (about 7,000 files a year), and regularly advised ICRC units at headquarters and delegations in the field on management of their records. It also responded to some 800 internal research requests. This year again, 500 linear meters of records were transferred from headquarters support units and from delegations to be secured in conditions optimal for their preservation.

Finally, as part of the project to set up a new electronic professional messaging system, the Archives Division remained actively involved in the revision of the ICRC records management policy.