Identity Statement

Reference Code

HU OSA 318-0-5

Title

Country Files

Date(s)

1968 - 2008

Description Level

Series

Extent and medium (processed)

180 Archival boxes, 22.5 linear meters

Content and Structure

Scope and Content (Abstract)

The series contains press releases and clippings, media monitoring materials, memos (fax and e-mail), correspondence, human rights listserv materials, and reports and publications from other human rights organizations.

The Country Files series consists of a vast array of documents from a variety of sources on the political, economic and social background of virtually all 47 members of the Council of Europe, as well as Belarus and the Central Asian countries, but also individual territories whose legal status is contested or not widely recognized, such as Kosovo or Chechnya. Some countries or geographic regions, including the USSR/Russia, Central Asia, Turkey, the Caucasus, or Bosnia and Herzegovina, which were more visible on the IHF’s monitoring radar at certain points in time, are better represented in the files.

Beyond the general portray of a particular country in a given period of time, specific issues are also revealed in the documents: from freedom of religion in France through torture and prison conditions in Turkey to hate speech and war crimes in South Eastern Europe.

Obviously, the focus is mainly directed on human rights violations of various degrees, such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and persecution of national minorities, destruction of cultural property, inhuman prison conditions, censorship and breaches of freedom of religion and free expression. A significant quantity of the documents deal with the persecution of human rights activists and the indictment and censure of other human rights advocates, including journalists, writers and scientists.

The collection is especially valuable for researchers interested in grave human rights abuses such as censorship, detention, torture, or forced medical treatment in Communist dictatorships; in the collapse of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia, and the emergence of transitional democracies in their places; and also for those concerned with the mushrooming of alarming tendencies along with them: internal displacement and forced migration, ethnic conflicts, xenophobia and election violence.

Containing materials from many different Western and regional sources, the voluminous Kosovo files give a full insight into the humanitarian catastrophe in the Albanian enclave of the former Yugoslavia, from random clashes and violence through the exodus of Kosovar Albanians to the air raids by NATO forces.

Accruals

Not Expected

Conditions of Access and Use

Conditions governing access

Unknown

Description Control

Archivist's note

Processed by Branislav Kovacevic, Oana Girlescu, Ephrem Birhanu, Andrei Voinea, Craita Curteanu and Csaba Szilagyi, 2002-2003 and 2012-2013; revised by Csaba Szilágyi, February, 2013.