Introduction
This chapter presents an overview of the current status of recordkeeping in international organizations and the challenges facing the archival community in this specific sector. It presents some reflections on recordkeeping practices, their developments, and future perspectives on a transnational environment. Moreover, it looks at recent innovative approaches and refers to relevant standards, norms, and tools that evolve around international archival practice. Finally, the chapter offers some critical reflections and observations on developments in archival access and research, grounded both in disciplinary theory and methodology, as well as the author’s experience as an archival professional and practitioner.
Since the establishment of the first entity that could be defined as an international organization, the Commission Centrale pour la Navigation du Rhin (CCNR), by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the landscape of international organizations has seen a constant growth. Particularly with the establishment of the United Nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, the number and variety of international and regional organizations have expanded greatly. In the long list of international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) currently largely outnumber intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), although both continue to flourish worldwide. The European Union, as a regional political union of states that developed from a unique community model, holds a particular position in transnational cooperation. International organizations have evolved around activities determined by their member states and their mission statement. They respond to multi-faceted dynamics and the requirements of modern, globalized societies. Their political aims cover a broad spectrum, ranging from political to economic and scientific to ecological, philanthropic, and cultural activity areas, thus integrating all fields of human interaction.
Intergovernmental organizations have been created on the basis of treaties, conventions, or other internationally recognized contractual arrangements signed by national governments. These organizations hold specific privileges and immunities that organizations operating on a national level do not. Non-governmental organizations are usually registered in the country that hosts their headquarters but have international missions and objectives. Both IGOs and NGOs may have a network of field or project offices in addition to their headquarters.
Working under international or European law and within the specifications of contracts with host countries, the records and archives of international organizations may be inviolable and exempt from the law of the territory where the organization’s headquarters are located. The legal personality of international organizations impacts the management and preservation of their records and has consequences for all areas, from the storage locations of paper records to the hosting of storage servers for cloud services.2 The main principles for records governance are the inviolability of the premises and archives, the protection of the physical archive and control of external access, and the fact that archival materials cannot be removed or altered by external entities or persons. This independence is crucial for archivists in international organizations to fulfil their responsibilities.3
Scholarly publications recognize the emergence of international organizations as a political feature characteristic of the twentieth century. Along with these organizations has come a new type of global actor, the “expatriate” official, a role that has received attention in numerous publications, fiction books, and autobiographies. Much less attention has been paid, however, to the birth of a new type of records manager and archivist in international organizations.4
While pursuing different objectives, international organizations record their actions and decisions in written documents that are managed by records and archives services. These organizations and their collaborators have an impact on the lives of billions of people under global initiatives such as the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, or in supranational regional blocs that unite, for example, the European Union (EU), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or the African Union (AU). Their stakeholders comprise national governments and citizens, as well as other partners and associates in public and private bodies.
Since its establishment in 1945 as a specialized UN agency, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has taken responsibility for archival development and the global archival community. Through various important initiatives, UNESCO has been a key contributor to the professionalization and internationalization of archivists. Its first act in this direction was the establishment of the International Council on Archives (ICA) in 1948, which became the reference point for the archival community in the coming decennia and continues to be the main international hub for archivists to this day. Via the International Council on Archives, UNESCO has been undertaking activities for the promotion of access, the effective use of archives in member states, and the development of archival methods through education and training worldwide.
As a first methodological activity, UNESCO, in close cooperation with the ICA, initiated the Records and Archives Management Program (RAMP) with a series of studies to advance the global archival profession in 1979.5 Subsequently, UNESCO introduced a 1992 cultural heritage programme for the documentary sector: “Memory of the World,” which links memory and heritage, thus highlighting the unique character of (mainly archival) documents as possessing a heterogeneous memory with differences in terms of creation, structure, materiality, and intention.6 In November 2011, UNESCO endorsed the ICA’s “Universal Declaration on Archives,” the first universal statement from the United Nations recognizing the unique global value of archives for humankind.7
But how do archives and archivists in international organizations see themselves and how can they best be described? Do they require a definition beyond a list of the characteristics of the classical denominations of space, administration, and material, but within an international political and legal context? Do these archives apply methods other than those deriving from cultural and social sciences and taught at universities or archival schools as part of media, information, or knowledge management studies?8
This chapter seeks to address the above questions, along with various other questions regarding international archival practice. Recordkeeping in international organizations is based on classical historical, technical, and legal aspects of archives, yet in practice it adds a specific transnational character with its methodology and a particular character in the cultural, educational, and linguistic spheres. The chapter is intended as a companion to the research articles in this publication and focuses on the topics of archival education and training, standardization, and access and research.
Archival education and training
Archivists have a long professional tradition and a broad methodological basis to draw upon. In some European countries, archival methods were taught at state-run advanced training schools attached to national or state archives, while in others archival science was taught at universities. Sometimes, both models existed in parallel. To the present day, these two models persist, with curricula for archival education defined at a national level. Maria Guercio stated in 2010 that “the archival schools and educational programs in the Library and Information Schools vary in different countries and depend on the juridical contexts and on the national traditions.”9 The long tradition of archival education in Europe did not evolve on the basis of a common culture or uniform political aim, but in heterogeneous organizational structures, disconnected one from another.10
The education that archivists receive varies from continent to continent, from country to country, and from university to university. In countries where archival methods have evolved around public institutions, education focuses on the history of administration. In countries where the records preserved date from the ancient period and cover a range of civilizations, the emphasis is placed on philological disciplines and ancient languages. Lastly, the structure of a programme also depends on other factors, such as the focus of the programme of the specific university or school, trends in the information management sector, technological developments, the profile of educators, and the resources available. These different approaches towards archival education are summarized by Luciana Duranti as four models: the historical model, which places archival science within the discipline of history; the philological model or the traditional European model, which focuses on diplomatic studies and palaeography as the main elements of the curricula; the managerial model (the most recent one), which considers archival theory as falling within the domain of information management and information; and finally the scientific/scholarly model, which is mainly taught in university courses.11
At first, only a few archival schools and universities opened their courses to an international public. This began to change during the pioneer age, when courses were first established within a region. For instance, the University of New South Wales, established in 1973, was the first Australian university to educate archivists from neighbouring countries as well as those from Australia. Archival education was seen as critical for the development of the profession in the whole region as no other such courses existed at the time. While the course was designed around the needs of Australian national archivists, the target audience was extended to staff members of national archives from cross-regional countries in Oceania, South-East Asia, and Africa.12
UNESCO also played an important role in the development of archival education. Through the ICA, it launched a major project in the mid-1960s in Africa, e...
