CNDH hands archives of Independent Arbitration Commission over to national archives institution
The National Human Rights Council (CNDH) and the Archives of Morocco will organize on July 24, 2017, starting at 4 p.m., at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Rabat, a ceremony to hand the archives of the Independent Arbitration Commission for the Compensation for Victims of Enforced Disappearance and Arbitrary Detention (1999-2003) over to the national archives institution.
The Independent Arbitration Commission was set up after His Majesty the King approved an opinion by the Advisory Council on Human Rights. With nine eminent jurists and personalities on board, the Commission started on 16 August 1999 its mandate to compensate victims of enforced disappearance and arbitrary detention. It submitted its final report on November 30, 2003, after handling 5,127 applications and receiving 6,500 out-of-delay applications. Its action was a major step in the process of transitional justice in Morocco, pursued in 2004 by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission.
The ceremony will also witness the signature of a cooperation agreement between the CNDH and Archives of Morocco and a roundtable discussion, with the former members of the commission, on the outcome of the Independent Arbitration Commission.
This initiative aims at both contributing to the preservation of the national collective memory and laying foundations for the scientific writing of the history of Morocco. The archives will be handed-over to the national archives institution, in compliance with the provisions of Law 69-99 on archives, promulgated on 30 November 2007. The law itself was promulgated in implementation of a recommendation by the Equity and Reconciliation Commission. It defines archives and provides for how they should be organized, for public archives communication, and for the organization of Archives of Morocco.
In February 2017, the CNDH started a project to reorganize the transitional justice archives, to hand them over to Archives of Morocco, in two phases. The first phase concerns the archives of the Independent Arbitration Commission and the second concerns the Equality and Reconciliation Commission.
In the first phase, 5400 files of the Independent Arbitration Commission were handled and re-organized, put into 241 special archival and storage boxes, ready to be handed over to Archives of Morocco.
The archives of the Equality and Reconciliation Commission will be handed over to the national archives institution later this year.