A/HRC/5/7 page 12 the facts, the preservation of memory and history. The question of archives is closely bound up with the right to information, the fundamental right of each individual to have access to information on the public record relating to himself or herself. 59. Other individual rights can be upheld by using the archives as evidence: public rehabilitation of people convicted on political grounds, families’ rights to know where their missing relatives are, political prisoners’ right to amnesty and victims’ rights to reparation and compensation. 60. Archives also enable every nation to exercise its right to an undistorted written record, and the right of each people to know the truth about its past. 61. As Louis Joinet has very aptly put it,4 “establishing responsibility for human rights violations, allowing justice to be done and victims to know the truth, requires evidence. People tend, however, to overlook the obvious point that much of the evidence comes from archives”. He emphasizes the fundamental role of oppressive regimes’ archives as political, legal, historical and testamentary sources, and the need for action to ensure that they are kept, handled and used in secure conditions. 62. The topics of the preservation of and access to archives bearing witness to violations are also broached in the set of principles (principles 14-18). “The right to know implies that archives must be preserved. Technical measures and penalties should be applied to prevent any removal, destruction, concealment or falsification of archives, especially for the purpose of ensuring the impunity of perpetrators of violations of human rights and/or humanitarian law” (principle 14). “Access to archives shall be facilitated in order to enable victims and their relatives to claim their rights” and “as necessary, for persons implicated … for their defence” and “in the interest of historical research” (principle 15). 63. At its thirty-seventh session, the International Conference of the Round Table on Archives (CITRA) passed a resolution on archives and human rights violations in which, taking into account the fundamental importance of archives in all States as “evidence supporting victims’ rights for reparation; as an essential element of collective memory; as a means of determining responsibilities for rights violations; and as a basis for reconciliation and universal justice”,5 it recommended that government authorities and international organizations should facilitate the effective exercise of the right to know, by taking steps to ensure the preservation and conservation of archives of all kinds which document these crimes, make the existence of these archival fonds known and facilitate access to them by adapting or creating adequate legal frameworks for their accessibility, and ensuring that these arrangements respect both privacy and the need to make the truth known. 64. Some States have indicated that they have taken steps to conserve and provide access to archives on human rights violations. 4 Le Monde, 23 June 2004, “Les archives contre l’oubli”. 5 http://old.ica.org/new/citra.php?ptextid=resolutions&ptextannee=2003&plangue=eng.