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Towards a Human Right in Recordkeeping and Archives

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Diversity, Divergence, Dialogue (iConference 2021)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 12646))

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Abstract

The global Rights in Records for Refugees (R3) and the Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care in Australia research projects have both surfaced the role that rights in recordkeeping and archives might play in actualising the human rights of refugees of all demographics, and Care-experienced children and adults, including Australian Indigenous children and the Stolen Generation. Each has centred and privileged the experiences of those who are disempowered and unable to exercise their human rights in major part due to governmental and institutional recordkeeping policies, practices and technologies. Each has also taken a participatory and critical approach, applying testimonial and instrumental warrant analysis. In this paper, we first demonstrate how rights in records are critical to actualizing human rights and self-determination. We then map and discuss the convergences and divergences of key findings of the two projects, with reference to their contextual differences, similarities and overlaps. Based on this comparison, we propose a new global human rights framework encompassing three high-level sets of rights in records, recordkeeping and archives: Recordkeeping and Archival Sovereignty and Participation; Disclosure and Access; and Privacy and Safe Recordkeeping Places.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The term Recordkeeping refers to the entirety of conceiving, creating, managing, and deriving utility from records in a continuum of use. It subsumes records management and archival administration; embracing the design of sociomaterial systems that deal with records (see [5]).

  2. 2.

    All are referred to for brevity in this paper as ‘refugees’, but in full recognition of the several status categories into which an individual who has experienced forced displacement or fled due to actual or credible fear of persecution might fall or be placed.

  3. 3.

    The term Out-of-Home Care encompasses a variety of alternative accommodation arrangements currently including foster care, kinship care, residential and group homes largely run by the private and not-for-profit sector, independent living arrangements, and other forms of placement. Historically the term covers institutional Care including orphanages and children’s homes run by states, churches and other charitable bodies. We acknowledge that this term is not the preferred terminology of all persons with lived Care experience. We use the capitalized term Care ‘to denote the ironic connotations of manifestly uncaring treatment, without continually enclosing the word in quotation marks’ [14].

  4. 4.

    The summary of emerging themes is drawn from two videos produced at the Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child National Summit 8–9 May 2017 (Setting the Record Straight and An Aboriginal Perspective.

  5. 5.

    Child safety and wellbeing as defined in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Children’s Rights report (2017) includes ‘(i) A right to be heard; (ii) Freedom from violence, abuse and neglect; (iii) The opportunity to thrive; (iv) Engaged citizenship; and (v) Action and accountability for these commitments’.

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Acknowledgements

The Rights in Records by Design Project was funded through an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant DP170100198.

We would like to acknowledge all of the participants in our research, and the emotional, intellectual, professional, and artistic generosity of many organisations and individuals around the globe who shared their time and knowledge, on or off the record, who have made this work possible.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, USA

    Kathy Carbone & Anne J. Gilliland

  2. Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

    Antonina Lewis, Sue McKemmish & Gregory Rolan

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  1. Kathy Carbone
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  4. Sue McKemmish
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Correspondence to Gregory Rolan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Katharina Toeppe

  2. Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Hui Yan

  3. The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Samuel Kai Wah Chu

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Carbone, K., Gilliland, A.J., Lewis, A., McKemmish, S., Rolan, G. (2021). Towards a Human Right in Recordkeeping and Archives. In: Toeppe, K., Yan, H., Chu, S.K.W. (eds) Diversity, Divergence, Dialogue. iConference 2021. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12646. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71305-8_23

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