Reconciling the Inalienability Doctrine with the Conventions of War

Abstract

Abstract The archival principle of the inalienability of public documents arose in the 1970s in response to the retreat of colonial powers after World War II. An international jurist initially advanced the concept as an argument to reclaim the archival patrimony of former countries that had been despoiled of their public records during colonial rule. Public records, he argued, are the inseparable and indivisible heritage of the country of origin, which has a perpetual right of return. In 1995, the International Council of Archives (ICA) defined the “inalienability principle” further by claiming that public records without exception can only be divested through a legislative act of the state that created them. This concept was again expanded in 2008 when the Society of American Archivists and the Association of Canadian Archivists cited the principle in jointly calling for the immediate restitution of captured Saddam-era records that had been removed from Iraq in the two Gulf Wars and the upheavals in Iraq...