Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions highlights the need for post-conflict societies to have access to - and to use - Truth Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs’) documentation to achieve reconciliation and to work towards a democratic society.

Including international contributions from a range of disciplines, the volume discusses the challenges that surround TRCs’ documentation. Considering the impact of the politicization of documentation, chapters also highlight the lack of political will to democratize information, the lack of dissemination and the preservation infrastructures that hinder access and its effective use and re-use. Arguing that TRCs’ documentation should be used to inform policy, improve governance and to promote justice, healing and reconciliation, the volume considers the ethical challenges involved in disseminating such information. Contributing authors argue that information professionals should play a major role in the planning for the TRCs’ information management infrastructures, if they are to facilitate access, effectively manage the generated documentation, deal with preservation of the compound records and promote the dissemination of the TRC findings.

Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions demonstrates that TRCs’ documentation provides validation of human rights violations and that it helps to promote an understanding of the causes of conflict. As such, it will be essential reading for academics and students working in Archival Studies, Information Science, History, Transitional Justice, and Peace and Conflict Studies

Proscovia Svärd is an Associate Professor at the Department of History, Sorbonne University, Abu Dhabi. She has formerly worked at the Faculty of Science, Technology and Media, Department of Information systems and Technology, Forum for Digitalization, Mid Sweden University. She is also a Research Fellow at the Department of Information Science, University of South Africa (Unisa) in Pretoria. She carried out her Post-doctoral Research at the School of Interdisciplinary Research and Postgraduate Studies, University of South Africa, between 2016-2017 and completed her PhD at the University of Amsterdam. She has a Licentiate Degree in Data and Systems Sciences, BA and MA in Archives and Information Science from Mid Sweden University, Sweden and a BSc in Media and Information Science from Uppsala University, Sweden.

Bonny Ibhawoh is a Professor and Senator William McMaster Chair in Global Human Rights at McMaster University, Canada. He is a United Nations Human Rights Expert with the UN Expert Mechanism on the Right to Development in the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva. With over 30 years of experience as a human rights educator, policy maker and practitioner, he has taught in Universities in Africa, Europe, the United States and Canada. He is the Project Director of Participedia, a global scholarly network on democratic innovation. He is also the Project Director of the Confronting Atrocity Project, a transnational project on restorative justice at McMaster University.