Fact-finding by human rights non governmental organizations: Challenges, strategies, and the shaping of archival evidence

Archivaria

Volumn 58, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 21-50

  Montgomery, Bruce P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

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EID: 43149088294     PISSN: 03186954     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (55)

1. The principle behind these actions is one of practical consideration - that the most effective way to curb abuses is to expose them to public scrutiny and international criticism. While some governments may choose to ignore international condemnation, the record is clear that the strategy of promoting change through the documentation and reporting of facts has been highly effective. Governments now take NGO investigations and reporting of human rights abuses seriously, knowing that such publicity can have serious consequences for commercial and diplomatic relations or foreign aid to their countries. Because being labeled a pariah nation may carry with it serious international repercussions, the NGO fact-finding and reporting process carries with it significant weight. Without scrupulous attention to research methodology, human rights NGOs would not enjoy the political influence that they do today. The gathering and dissemination of this evidence therefore involves a high stakes game of international credibility that involves a constant challenge to governments who seek to cloak their abuses behind facades of respectability.
2. See Archival Science 2, nos. 1-2 and nos. 3-4 (2000). These two issues contain a series of articles on various aspects of archives, accountability, and power.
3. Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, "Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory," Archival Science 2, nos. 1-2 (2000), pp. 1-19.
4. This point also has been amply demonstrated in Western democracies. In the United States alone, the records generated by presidential administrations and corporate executives have often been used against them in numerous investigations and criminal proceedings. Indeed, the United States Congress passed the Independent Counsel Statute in 1978 precisely to investigate the wrong-doing of powerful officials in the executive branch. From Presidents Richard M. Nixon through William J. Clinton, Congress has repeatedly investigated and subpoenaed the records of the White House, sometimes indicting powerful executive branch officials for civil and criminal wrong-doing. In addition, the numerous scandals and investigations involving WorldCom, Enron, and other major corporations have shown that records and archives know no loyalty and do not always benefit the powerful and privileged in society. Indeed, corporate lawyers understand that records may be dangerous to retain, often advising corporate leaders on the necessity of document destruction as a means of protection. Their modus oper-andi is to leave no self-incriminating trail. There is a wide range of archival literature on these other forms of accountability.
5. Richard J. Cox and David A. Wallace, eds., Archives and the Public Good: Accountability and Records in Modern Society (Westport, CT, 2002).
6. Bruce P. Montgomery's forthcoming book, History Denied: White House Materials and Executive Branch Politics (Lanham, MD).
7. Verne Harris, "The Archival Silver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa," Archival Science 2, nos. 1-2 (2002), pp. 63-86.
8. Dawne Adams, "The Tuol Sleng Archives and the Cambodian Genocide," Archivaria 45 (Spring 1998), pp. 5-26.
9. Bruce P. Montgomery: "The Iraqi Secret Police Files: A Documentary Record of the Anfal Genocide," Archivaria 23 (Fall 2001), pp. 69-99.
10. "Archiving Human Rights: The Records of Amnesty International USA," Archivaria 39 (Spring 1995), pp. 108-131.
11. "Human Rights: A Survey of Archival Sources in the United States and Canada," Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 2 (May 2001), pp. 431-463.
12. "The Human Rights Watch Archives," Peace Review 14, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 455-464.
13. T.A. Adami, "Management of International Criminal Justice Records: The Case of the Rwanda Tribunal," African Journal of Library, Archives, and Information Science 13, no. 1 (April 2003), pp. 1-10.
14. Cox and Wallace, Archives and the Public Good.
15. Verne Harris, "'They Should Have Destroyed More': The Destruction of Public Records by the South African State in the Final Years of Apartheid, 1990-1994," in Cox and Wallace, Archives and the Public Good, pp. 205-228.
16. Greg Bradsher, "Turning History into Justice: The National Archives and Records Administration and Holocaust-Era Assets," pp. 177-204.
17. Laurie S. Wiseberg, "Human Rights Nongovernmental Organizations," in Richard Pierre Claude and Burns H. Weston, eds., Human Rights in the World Community(Philadelphia, 1992), pp. 372-373.
18. Amnesty International USA Handbook (1991), pp. 57-60.
19. Diane F. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness: The Art and Science of Human Rights Fact Finding," Harvard Human Rights Journal 3 (Spring 1990), p. 95.
20. Human Rights in Czechoslovakia (U.S. Helsinki Watch Committee/Human Rights Watch, 1989), p. 1.
21. Most of the political attacks on NGO credibility derive from governments under scrutiny. These sometimes pose significant challenges to the integrity of the human rights fact-finding and documentation process. The aim of these attacks, of course, is to discredit human rights NGO documentation and reporting in order to deflect international pressure and to maintain government domestic and international legitimacy. The common assumption is that countries with the worst human rights records are the ones most likely to challenge NGO investigations. Direct assaults from outlaw or pariah nation states are less likely to be taken seriously by the international community than challenges from the United States or other developed countries that have firmly rooted democratic traditions.
22. Human Rights Watch (HRW) Archives, Americas Watch records, unprocessed, Human Rights Archives at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The HRW archives contain substantial raw interview and investigative data pertaining to the conflicts in Central America.
23. "El Salvador Work Shaped the Human Rights Movement," Human Rights Watch Quarterly Newsletter (Winter 1992), pp. 1-3.
24. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," p. 98.
25. Human Right Watch Quarterly Newsletter (Winter 1992), pp. 1-3.
26. Rita McWilliams, "Who Watched Americas Watch," The National Interest (Spring 1990), pp. 45-58.
27. Americas Watch, Human Rights in Nicaragua: Reagan, Rhetoric and Reality (1985).
28. Morton Kondracke, "Broken Watch: Human Rights and Politics," The New Republic (22 August 1988);
29. Fred Barnes, "The Sandinista Lobby: Human Rights Groups with a Double Standard," The New Republic (20 January 1986).
30. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," pp. 105-106.
31. Amnesty International, Report of an Amnesty International Mission to The Republic of the Philippines, 11-28 November 1981 (1982), pp. 9-13.
32. Amnesty International Archives, case files, Archives of University of Colorado at Boulder.
33. Amnesty International USA Archives, case files, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder.
34. David Weissbrodt and James McCarthy, "Fact-Finding by Nongovernmental Organizations," in B.G. Ramcharan, ed., International Law and Fact-Finding in the Field of Human Rights (Boston and London, 1982), pp. 199-200.
35. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked: The Suppression of Human Rights by the Assad Regime (New Haven and London, 1991), xvii-xviii.
36. Middle East Watch archives, research files, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder.
37. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," p. 99.
38. According to Amnesty International, Decree 46-82 "was issued on 1 July 1982, the day on which General Rios Montt declared a "state of siege" in Guatemala." It established special military tribunals "with the power to impose the death penalty for an extended range of political and politically related offences after summary proceedings which severely restricted legal safeguards of defendants." See Amnesty International USA Archives, case files, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder.
39. Amnesty International, Guatemala: The Human Rights Record (London, 1987), p. 105.
40. "Human Rights News: An Independent Forum for News Related to Human Rights," (20 October 1999, available from human-rights-news@oil.ca, accessed 29 October 1999).
41. Weissbrodt and MC Carthy, "Fact-Finding by Nongovernmental Organizations," p. 208.
42. Amnesty International, Violations of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (1979), pp. 14-15.
43. Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves: The Search for the Disappeared in Iraqi Kurdistan (February 1992); Middle East Watch, Bureaucracy of Repression: The Iraqi Government in Its Own Words (February 1994); and Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked.
44. Physicians for Human Rights, Winds of Death: Iraq's Use of Poison Gas (1989), p. 10.
45. Materials pertaining to the Iraqi situation may also be found in the archives of the Physicians for Human Rights, Archives, University of Colorado at Boulder.
46. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," p. 121.
47. Asia Watch, Evading Scrutiny: Violations of Human Rights After the Closing of Tibet (July 1988), pp. 1-5.
48. Middle East Watch, Syria Unmasked, xiii-xx.
49. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," pp. 122-124.
50. Asia Watch, Assessing Reform in South Korea: A Supplement to the Asia Watch Report on Legal Process and Human Rights (October 1988), pp. 1-6.
51. Asia Watch's recommendations encouraged the South Korean government to: 1) implement policies that would ensure the immediate and unconditional release of all persons imprisoned for the peaceful expression of their beliefs; 2) order independent reviews of all convictions in which credible reports existed concerning serious procedural abuses, including the use of torture to obtain confessions; 3) release without condition fifty individuals who were being held in preventive custody in Chongju Protective Custody Prison; and 4) announce an end to preventive detentions and repeal preventive detention laws.
52. Middle East Watch and the Physicians for Human Rights, Unquiet Graves.
53. Middle East Watch, Bureaucracy of Repression.
54. USA Amnesty International Handbook.
55. Orentlicher, "Bearing Witness," pp. 125-126.