The University Organizes a Lecture Entitled "Archiving Between International Concept and Palestinian Concept"

During the lecture, two experts from the Swiss Center for Peace and from the Government Archives, as well as the researcher Rola Shahwan a specialist in the Palestinian Visual Archive and Director of the Center gave a presentation on the theoretical concept of archiving, its importance and its role through various stages of Palestinian history, and building the Palestinian national narrative and the collective memory for the benefit of the future and the generations. They also mentioned the destructive operations on the Palestinian archive whether by the Israeli occupation or through lack of awareness and misconduct by individuals and institutions responsible of archiving.

Mr. Fawaz Salama, the General Director of the Palestinian Government Archive presented a presentation about the role played by this institution in an attempt to approve the laws and regulations for archiving and the problems facing the issuance of these resolutions. He assured the necessity of approving the Palestinian National Archives Law, also assuring that there is agreed intentions between civil society institutions and specialists to complete the system of filling and the availability of archival information.

The experts Ms. Orsina Bentel and Mr. Kursin Plumen from the Swiss Center for Peace clarified the concept of archiving from an international perspective. They presented a conceptual framework for dealing with the past and presented their experience in building the archive and benefiting from it in connecting and transforming the conflict and its methods by dealing with the past, understanding and developing strategies based on archival documentation to transform conflicts into peaceful form and to recover from the effects of war and conflict through the use of these documents in the Courts of Justice (Court of Justice Truth and Commission).

At the end of the lecture, Dr. Rose Othman, thanked the experts from Swiss Center for Peace, and a discussion was raised for further questions among the students and participants.