Managing the Records of Restricted Organizations

Paper presented at the XV Biennial Conference of the East and Southern African Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (ESARBICA), in Zanzibar, Tanzania, 28-30 July 1999, under the theme, ‘Archives and the Protection of People’s Rights’. Despite a wealth of archival legislation in all ICA countries specifying otherwise, the records of the military, the police and correctional services still fall outside the ambit and jurisdictions of most archival repositories. Security organizations argue that this state of affairs is desirable because their organizations cannot operate under an environment of unlimited access of information. This paper explores the doctrine of secrecy as employed in the management of records of restricted organizations and argues that the current management of security records is adverse to archival theory. A conference on the protection of human rights makes imperative a discussion of the concept of accountability as it applies to security organizations and the obligations these organizations owe to the citizens under democratically elected regimes.