This part of the resource material introduces methods to advance archival, documentation, and memorialization work.  These forms of documenting the past are key memory work strategies used by a variety of formal and informal organizations.

Archives and archival strategies are used by various organizations to: a) collect, preserve, and make available printed, visual, or audio documentation regarding mass violations of human rights or mass violence, b) create new sources to document histories of resistance, oral histories, or silenced events and, c) facilitate ample and democratic access to information and knowledge about the truth of what happened in particular periods or events.

Documentation is a key component and function of memory work.  The forms of memory work and practices of remembering described in the previous sections provide important documentation for a variety of uses: historical clarification, reconstruction of critical events, dignifying victims, making visible victims’ responses and resistance, finding evidence, and creating databases or archives.

Commemorative practices in which a person, group, or event(s) are remembered are another expressive means of memory work by survivors, victim’s organizations, transitional justice interventions, and State led interventions. During commemorations, participants join in the work of memory through ceremony or rituals, performative speeches or texts, and embodied presence.

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