Archives : extract from ICRC Annual Report 2007

2-06-2008 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 line with the ICRC’s policy of greater transparency regarding its history, the Archives Division provided the Centre d’application libyen d’études historiques in Tripoli (Libyan Arab Jamahiriya) with copies of ICRC archives containing the names of Libyan nationals enlisted in the Italian armed forces and taken prisoner during the Second World War. In association with the University of Geneva, it organized an international symposium from 18 to 21 April on “Katyn and Switzerland: Forensic experts and investigations in humanitarian crises”.

In 2007, the Archives Division handled more than 2,500 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 the ICRC’s 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 1,000 requests for information on the ICRC’s film and paper archives and received researchers in its reading room for the equivalent of 350 working days. It responded to 1,000 internal requests from other ICRC units. In order to improve accessibility, the ICRC and Memoriav, an association founded to preserve Switzerland’s audiovisual cultural heritage, decided jointly to finance a long-term project to preserve and restore the ICRC’s 16-mm film archives on its activities in favour of persons affected by conflicts from 1950 to 1980.

The purpose of the ICRC’s historical research activities is to make the organization’s history more widely known. In March 2007, the ICRC published a new chapter of its history covering the period 1945 to 1955 in French (Catherine Rey-Schyrr, Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, 1945–1955: De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu).

The Archives Division continued to create the ICRC’s institutional reference files at headquarters and secured an additional 500 linear metres of records transferred from headquarters support units and from delegations.

ICRC Annual Report 2007