UNESCO Archives: Preserving Our Heritage for Future Generations

Archives are places of discovery that can spark the imagination and enable us to travel across time - and, with the digitization of physical materials, even across space. They are the raw materials from which untold stories, knowledge, and new insights are (re)constructed and transmitted. As such, archives contain the potential to reveal, often in unexpected ways, who we are and how we have acted, and to help us shape a better and more informed present and future. As testimonies of our actions as nations, societies, organizations, and individuals, archives play a fundamental role in ensuring accountability, transparency, justice, and access to information.  

Since 1947, UNESCO Archives has acted as an important and enduring resource for UNESCO and its stakeholders – Member States, partners, researchers, and the general public – who benefit from the preservation of and access to the evidence of our shared history. Visitors are often inspired and even moved by what they find in the archives. In 2017, the archives of UNESCO’s predecessor organization, the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, was inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World register – the first time UNESCO’s own archives were recognized by the programme. UNESCO Archives staff strive to meet the challenges faced by all archives today – such as rapid changes in technologies, and funding and conservation issues – to realize UNESCO’s mission of preserving, protecting, and ensuring continued  access to the world’s, including its own, documentary heritage.  

Watch an interview of UNESCO staff members Fackson Banda, Head of UNESCO's Documentary Heritage and Memory of the World Unit, Adama Pam, UNESCO's Chief Archivist, and Eng Sengsavang, Archivist. The discussion is moderated by Jens Boel, former Chief Archivist, and organized by the Association of Former UNESCO Staff.