Stana Tadic Pantic (Belgrade University )(ONLINE)
The paper sheds light on a lesser-known type of archive: human rights archives. These archives are typically created by non-governmental institutions rather than governmental ones, and they follow specific processes for creation, methodology, and use. The author will present two cases of human rights archives from her home country as examples: the Documentation Center War 1991-1999, established by a group of women anti-war activists, and the Humanitarian Law Center archives. Both organizations have addressed human rights violations during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and have produced a significant amount of documentation during their active years.
This presentation will address two key questions. First, it aims to highlight the specific methods of creating and utilizing the archival material collected by civil society organizations during turbulent times. Second, it will tackle the issue of outdated archival methodologies by providing examples of timely descriptions of archival holdings that deal with human rights violations. In non-state archival institutions like these two, the primary goal is to draw public attention to the content of the archives as swiftly as possible, in accordance with recommendations made by the International Council of Archives.