A/HRC/12/19 page 4 6. A national archives system is designed to serve its State structure, and when that structure changes, the archives system must be reformed. A strong national archival system is essential in a democracy to ensure that records important to exercising human rights are preserved. The system must include institutions that preserve governmental records and institutions that preserve non-governmental records and personal papers. All of these requirements need to be addressed during the post-conflict period. Strengthening the archival sector should be an important reform goal for a democratizing Government. At the same time the archives system is being renewed, transitional justice mechanisms are eager to gain access to a wide variety of records for their work. 7. Transitional justice initiatives themselves create records. When a transitional justice institution completes its project, it will have assembled a large volume of records. The records of a transitional justice institution are a concentrated, rich source of information for the history of the country and its people and must be preserved and made available to future users. OHCHR is preparing a tool on archives of human rights violations as part of its transitional justice tools series. This tool will be available in 2010. 8. The following discussion focuses on the records and archives that are the most important to transitional justice processes, in particular for the exercise of the right to the truth, but it is important to remember that a much broader variety of records support the assertion and protection of human rights. In particular, this study will focus on: strategies for the strengthening and the reform of archival institutions; suggestions for using archives in transitional justice efforts; and considerations for preserving the records of transitional justice institutions. B. Strengthening archives 1. Varieties of archives 9. Records important to the exercise of human rights are found in the custody of Governments, international intergovernmental bodies and private sector entities. Individuals, too, possess documents that they need to protect their own rights; some of these may also be helpful in asserting the rights of others. 10. Most of the key records for human rights purposes are governmental. This means that strengthening and building capacity in the national archives system is a vital step in a transition process. It also means that governmental access policies are a crucial issue, and new access laws need to be enacted by the legislature following the change of regime. 11. Like Governments, institutions in the private sector own their records, control access to them, and decide what to do with their archives. Records of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are the property of those organizations, which either maintain their archives themselves, or find a trusted custodian to whom to transfer the records when they are no longer needed for the organization’s current work. Businesses, too, need to establish archival procedures, particularly if their work directly impacts human rights.