Why the ICA Human Rights Principles Still Matter in 2026
By Cécile Chemin, SAHR Member
27 May 2026
The 2016 ICA Basic Principles on the Role of Archivists and Records Managers in Support of Human Rights provide practical guidance for archivists and records managers as they make decisions that can affect human rights. The Principles build on earlier milestones, including the ICA Code of Ethics (1996) and the Universal Declaration on Archives, adopted by UNESCO (2011).
What the ICA Principles Changed
One of the Principles’ most lasting contributions has been the normalisation of human rights discourse within archival theory and practice. They have helped establish human rights as a central concern in archival practice, affirming that archivists’ decisions about appraisal, preservation, description and access can directly shape whether individuals and communities are able to claim rights, seek reparations and establish historical truth.
The document aligns archival work with foundational international treaties, legal instruments and professional standards. In particular, it draws on the Updated Set of Principles for the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights through Action to Combat Impunity, which explicitly recognises archives as essential to fulfilling the “right to know”. It also places the responsibility on governments and institutions to ensure that records and evidence are preserved and made accessible.
A major contribution of the Principles is their emphasis on professional ethics and archivists’ responsibilities toward society. The document recognises that archivists and records managers do not operate in politically neutral environments. By acknowledging risks such as censorship, political pressure, unlawful destruction of records and retaliation against professionals, the Principles strengthen the ethical identity of archivists as guardians of documentary integrity and public accountability. Destruction, concealment or manipulation of records have come to be understood as a threat to justice and accountability and not merely as administrative failure.
Importantly, the Principles have helped integrate archives into broader discussions of transitional justice and democratic accountability. By linking archives to the "right to truth," they signal that access to records is more than an administrative issue; it is a human right closely tied to dignity, collective memory and legal accountability. In many settings, this connection has made archivists more visible participants in public debates about state secrecy, institutional memory and access to information.
A decade later, these ideas remain highly relevant as archivists confront a plethora of new challenges.
Why They Matter More Than Ever
The challenges facing archives and records management today are more complex than those envisioned in 2016. Rising authoritarianism, weakening international norms, declining public trust, artificial intelligence, climate crisis, digital volatility, misinformation and shrinking civic spaces have intensified concerns about authenticity, accountability and evidential integrity. Records documenting government decisions and human rights abuses increasingly exist within fragile and privatised systems such as social media platforms and cloud services, where they remain vulnerable to deletion or manipulation.
Human rights documentation has therefore become increasingly fragmented and decentralised, with NGOs, journalists, activists, and communities playing a major role in capturing and preserving evidence. While this broadens representation, it also raises new challenges concerning verification, preservation, ownership, and security. These developments are unfolding amid democratic backsliding and political polarisation, where archivists and human rights defenders may face censorship, surveillance or institutional pressure, making reliable records both more vulnerable and more essential.
While the ICA Principles were written for archivists, their extended audience today may be those who do not identify as archivists at all: human-rights defenders, private sector employees, OSINT investigators, NGOs, grass-roots custodians or digital evidence networks. As the creation and preservation of evidence become more distributed and pluralistic, these principles offer valuable guidance to anyone entrusted with protecting the documentary basis of accountability.
Despite all these social and technological shifts, the enduring strength of the ICA Principles lies in the fact that they are fundamentally a normative framework rather than a technical manual. By affirming fundamental commitments to accountability, authenticity, access and human rights, they continue to provide a vital ethical structure, valid across changing political and technological contexts. They reaffirm the core function of archives as trustworthy evidence grounding democratic governance.
Looking ahead
The Principles cover many aspects that are crucial to face the next few years. There are too many to mention here, so I have selected a couple of areas to consider.
a) Archival social justice and professional objectivity are not mutually exclusive. Beyond this too simplistic binary opposition, especially in the context of Human Rights, archivists are above all else committed to accountability, human dignity and the preservation of truth. As Verne Harris has often observed, archive and memory work require practitioners with “strong moral compasses” who are drawn to the work of justice.
As a whole it is obvious that the spirit of the Principles is to guide archivists and records managers to perform their mission with integrity, fairness, accountability and respect. We should continue to promote and share this sense of mission with pride.
b) The Principles mention whistleblowing as well as freedom of association and the imperative here is to strengthen the protections and support for those responsible for safeguarding evidence. Archivists and records managers work increasingly under conditions of political intimidation and institutional pressure, emotional strain and personal risk. Greater attention must therefore be given to professional protection, ethical risk management and psychological wellbeing (trauma-informed practice).
c) While archivists are generally regarded as ‘honest brokers’, they suffer from the growing public mistrust towards institutions as a whole. In this context, professionalism cannot mean gatekeeping expertise or embodying institutional authority without shifting perspectives. It requires openness and a willingness to share knowledge beyond institutional boundaries. This does not mean abandoning traditional archival principles. Rather, it means recognising that professional responsibility includes helping to bridge the trust gap between institutions and various communities through meaningful relationships. As archivists have increasingly engaged in community-based work and supported various archive initiatives, the boundaries between archival institutions and the communities they serve have become more fluid. These collaborations should not be seen as temporary adaptations but as practices that the profession must continue to support and expand, including continuing to provide opportunities for various groups to enter the archival profession without discrimination.
This approach is especially important in the context of human rights work, where trust, credibility and ethical responsibility are central to access to and use of records. Communities affected by conflict, displacement, discrimination or institutional abuse may distrust official institutions or fear how records relating to them will be used. Professional responsibility therefore extends beyond formal archival settings to supporting those safeguarding evidence in community contexts, often with limited resources and significant personal risk. In this context, leadership means not only protecting records, but also engaging with frontline practitioners, thereby encouraging trust and facilitating shared responsibility for preserving evidence and memory.
The ICA Principles are not outdated policy language from 2016. While a lot has happened in 10 years (an understatement!), the Principles are an enduring ethical framework whose central concern, trustworthy evidence, has become even more important in a fragmented and distrustful world.
The archival profession’s commitment to justice matters now more than ever.
The Principles should be seen as a continuing call to action encouraging archivists, records managers and communities to work together to defend the right to truth.
They matter because evidence matters.
Cécile Chemin is Senior Archivist at Military Archives, Ireland and sits on the Irish National Committee of the Blue Shield.
>> Click here to read the Basic Principles on the role of Archivists and Records Managers in support of Human Rights in different languages.
>> Click here to learn more about the Section on Archives and Human Rights (SAHR).
