A/HRC/17/21 I. Introduction 1. On 24 to 25 February 2011, a seminar on experiences of archives as a means to guarantee the right to the truth was held pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 12/12 on the right to the truth, in which the Council invited the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to “convene… a seminar, taking into account different experiences on the importance of the creation, organization and management of public systems of archives as a means to guarantee the right to the truth, with a view to study the need for guidelines on this issue” and to “report on the outcome of the consultation” to the Council at its seventeenth session. 2. The seminar brought together national experts from relevant fields and from various countries, including human rights experts and professional archivists with expertise in the management of archives of former repressive regimes (see the annex to the present document for the list of experts and practitioners participating in the seminar). 3. The objective of the seminar was to map and assess national experiences with regard to the creation, organization and management of archives as a means to guarantee the right to the truth. In line with the Updated Set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity (Updated principles), the debate and exchange of views among the experts and practitioners was framed around four themes: the preservation of archives and the right to the truth, the use of archives in criminal accountability processes, the use of archives in non-judicial truth-seeking mechanisms, and the placement and management of archives of repressive regimes. II. General considerations on archives and the right to the truth 4. Historically, the right to the truth was linked to cases of missing and disappeared persons. This right has been steadily evolving and has extended to other gross violations of human rights such as extrajudicial executions and torture. Several international treaties and instruments and national laws, as well as national, regional and international jurisprudence and numerous resolutions of intergovernmental bodies at the universal and regional levels, recognize the right to the truth about gross violations of human rights and serious violations of international humanitarian law. 5. States use a variety of approaches to address past large-scale violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law. These include prosecutions of perpetrators, institutional reforms to reduce the possibility that repression will recur, truth-seeking activities such as truth commissions and exhumation projects, and reparations initiatives. Every one of these mechanisms relies on archives. Archives are crucial to the exercise of individual rights such as the rehabilitation of people convicted on political grounds, the right of families to know where their missing relatives are, and the right of political prisoners to amnesty. 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. 6. There is increasing recognition of the central role played by archives in combating impunity for past violations and in guaranteeing the right to the truth. The Updated principles underline that archives are an important guarantee of the right to know and require States to “ensure the preservation of, and access to, archives concerning violations of human rights and humanitarian law” (principle 5). The seminar provided a forum in which selected national experiences could be assessed with regard to the importance of the 3