Lawpod

The 3-part series “Can the record be trusted?” explores the prospects and challenges of human rights documentation and archives in the digital age, with speakers from an international expert workshop that took place at Queen's University Belfast in November 2024. In this episode, Dagmar Hovestädt speaks with Dr. Trudy Huskamp Peterson, international consultant on archives and human rights. With decades of experience—from the U.S. National Archives to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees—Trudy has worked with archives of truth commissions, international tribunals, and other conflict archives worldwide, including in Guatemala, South Africa, Honduras, Rwanda, Cambodia and Sierra Leone. The conversation revolves around Trudy’s groundbreaking work on preserving truth commission records and explores the unresolved challenge of international tribunal archives. With multiple tribunals closing, questions about who will make access decisions and ensure long-term preservation remain desperately unresolved. From her per