Toward a Survivor-Centered Approach to Human Rights Archives: Lessons from Community-Based Archives

Abstract

This article proposes a theoretical framework for managing records documenting human rights abuse based on five key principles learned from community archives discourses: participation, shared stewardship, multiplicity, archival activism, and reflexivity. In shifting the focus of human rights archives to these core community-centric values, this paper proposes a survivor-centered approach to such records and argues that survivors should maintain control over the decision-making processes related to records documenting their abuse.