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Petitions Inscribed on International Memory of the World Registers

An International Symposium on Petition Movements in the Nineteenth Century was held on 13 September 2018 at the Advanced Center for Korean Studies in Andong, Republic of Korea.

There are two inscriptions on petition movements on international registers. The New Zealand Women’s Suffrage Petition was inscribed on the Memory of the World International Register in 1998. The Maninso: Ten Thousand People’s Petitions was inscribed on the MOWCAP register in 2018.

The Women’s Suffrage Petition requested the New Zealand Parliament to extend the franchise to women aged 21 years and over. It consists of 546 sheets of paper, glued together to form one continuous roll, 274 metres long. It was presented to the New Zealand Parliament with great drama. John Hall, a Member of Parliament and suffrage supporter, brought it into the House and unrolled it down the central aisle of the debating chamber until it hit the end wall with a thud. The number of women who signed was close to one quarter of the female adult population.

On 19 September 1893, 125 years ago,  New Zealand was the first country in the world to pass legislation to give women the same voting rights as men.  The Women’s Suffrage petition made a major contribution to this achievement.

The Maninso: Ten Thousand People’s Petitions consist of two massive paper scrolls, each measuring some 100 metres in length. The petition for the Posthumous Enthronement of Crown Price Sado, dated 1855, was signed by 10,094 like-minded individuals and presented to the King. The Ten Thousand People’s Petitions against dress reform, dated 1884, was signed by 8,849 people and was not presented to the King. The petitions represent collective actions taken to influence reforms in important state affairs to achieve the ethical politics prescribed by Confucian ideology.

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International Conference on Safeguarding and Increasing Access to the Documentary Heritage of the Silk Routes

The International Conference on Safeguarding and Increasing Access to the Documentary Heritage of the Silk Routes has been held in Fuzhou, China, from the 6-8 November 2018. The meeting was organised by the National Archives of China, in cooperation with the East Asian Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives (EASTICA), and hosted by the Fujian Provincial Archives.

The meeting brought together delegates from China, SAR Hong Kong, SAR Macau, Japan, Korea and Mongolia to share information the different documentary heritage relating to the Silk Road and Spice Routes held in their collections, and then discussing cooperation strategies for safeguarding and increasing access to them.

A number of MOWCAP Bureau members and Special Advisors were invited to participate and speak at the seminar, including: Misako Ito, who gave an overview of UNESCO’s Silk Road initiatives; Ray Edmondson, who shared an update on the current state of the MoW program; and Andrew Henderson, who outlined how MOWCAP acts to support regional cooperation for documentary heritage preservation/access.

An exhibition on Documentary Heritage Along the Silk Road was also held in conjunction with the seminar at the Fujian Provincial Archives. The exhibition featured documents from the National Archives of Chine, some of which had never been exhibited before.

The program from the seminar can be found here.

Meeting on the UNESCO Category 2 International Centre

Second Expert Consultation Meeting on the UNESCO Category 2 International Centre for Documentary Heritage, Cheongju, Republic of Korea, 28-30 September 2018

A new UNESCO Category 2 Centre for Documentary Heritage was approved by General Conference in 2017, to be established in the city of Cheongju, Republic of Korea, as the International Centre for Documentary Heritage (ICDH).

As part of the development of the ICDH, a number of MoW experts participated in a consultation meeting in Paris in April 2018, followed in late September by a second meeting in Cheongju that coincided with the award of the Jikji Prize.

The expert group – Dr Ray Edmondson, Mr Jan Bos, Ms Joie Springer, Professor Kyung-ho Suh, Mr Papa Momar Diop, Dr Ramesh Gaur, and Dr Roslyn Russell ‒ provided feedback on the ICDH planning process before the workshop. This was discussed further in Cheongju at meetings that also included representatives of the National Archives of Korea and the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, and Dr Fackson Banda, Programme Specialist for the MoW Programme. The group also visited the World Heritage-listed Beopjusa Temple, and crafted lotus-shaped lanterns.

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Asia-Pacific Workshop Held in Seoul July 2018

Dr Roslyn Russell provided this report on the nomination workshop held in Seoul in July 2018

Delegates from Afghanistan, the Cook Islands, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Samoa, Singapore, Tajikistan, and Tuvalu gathered in Seoul, Republic of Korea, in July this year for the biannual workshop to improve nominations to the Memory of the World registers. The workshop was organised by the Korean National Commission for UNESCO and the Cultural Heritage Administration of the Republic of Korea.

The participating delegates worked on improving draft nominations. Presentations on the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme and the nomination process were given by a group of MoW experts that included MOWCAP members Dr Ray Edmondson, Dr Helen Jarvis, Professor Kyung-ho Suh and Dr Roslyn Russell; and Mr Jan Bos, Chair of the Register Sub-Committee for the International Register, and Ms Joie Springer, former Chief of Secretariat of Memory of the World in UNESCO Paris.

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Pacific Action Plan on Implementation of UNESCO Recommendation

The Pacific Action Plan was initially developed at a workshop held on Wednesday 6 September 2017 in Suva, Fiji.  The workshop was held in conjunction with the PARBICA (Pacific Regional Branch of the International  Council of Archives) biennial meeting and was made possible through the support of PARBICA and funding from the Asia Culture Centre.

Delegates who attended all or part of the workshop were from Australia, Federated States of Micronesia (including YAP, Ponhnpei ), Fiji, Kiribati,  New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu.

Following the workshop there was consultation with other Pacific documentary heritage experts.

Information on all the action plans can be viewed here

 

Myanmar News

UNESCO has been working with stakeholders in Myanmar to support the identification, preservation and access to the country’s documentary heritage within the framework of the Malaysia-UNESCO Cooperation Programme. In cooperation with the Myanmar National Commission for UNESCO and the Myanmar Book Aid and Preservation.

Read more about this important initiative including the workshop that took place in Yangon on 20, 21 February 2018.

 

 

International Symposium on the Preservation of Woodblocks in Asia held in Vietnam

An International Symposium entitled “Preservation of woodblocks in Asia : Sharing experiences” was held by the State Records and Archives Department – Vietnam, Ministry of Home Affairs on November 11 – 12, 2017 in Da Lat City, Lam Dong Province, Vietnam.

Woodblocks are special type of record found in a number of countries in East Asia, including Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam, and reflect the historical and cultural identity of each country.  The wooden collections are particularly susceptible to climate and require active preservation and management strategies. In this regard, the objective of the Symposium was to promote exchange of knowledge cooperation amongst countries with woodblock collections.

The Symposium brought together experts from Vietnam, South Korea, China and Japan and a number of papers were presented on preservation techniques, practical solution for storage and management issues and sharing information about different collections in the region. 

MOWCAP Vice-Chair, Dr. Minh Huong VU THI and Dr. KIM Kwibea were the speakers at the Symposium. 

Within framework of the Symposium, the International Woodblock Printing Association conducted its General Meeting in the National Archives Centre.

Vietnam,  three collections of woodblock records have been inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Registers, the most recent of which was the “Woodblocks of Phuc Giang School” in custodian of Nguyen Huy Family in Ha Tinh Privince (inscribed in Asia-Pacific Register in 2016).

Printing woodblocks of the Tripitaka Koreana and miscellaneous Buddhist scriptures (Republic of Korea, 2007) and the Tibetan Dictionary of Definitions and Terms entitled as The Space for Attaining Wisdom (Mongolia, 2016) are other examples of wood blocks inscribed from the region.

Preserving the documentary heritage of Macau, Goa, Timor-Leste and Malacca

The Macau Knowledge Centre, City University of Macau, Macau Documentation and Information Society, with the generous support of the Macau Foundation, have organised a seminar focused on increasing cooperation for the preservation of, and access to, the documentary heritage of Macau, Goa, Timor-Leste and Malacca.

The seminar took place on the 22 of November 2017 at the City University of Macau, and brought together archivists, academics, students, and Memory of the World (MoW) experts to share information and to discuss ways to develop cooperation. Approximately 50 people attended the seminar.

Macau, Goa, Malacca, Timor-Leste have been linked for over 500 years through trade, colonial governments, and religious institutions. Extensive records were created from these exchanges, covering a range of topics from population data, legal matters, to culture and more. However, currently many of these collections are difficult to access and strong links between the archives are yet to be developed.

In his remarks during the seminar, Mr. Horacio Marques, Director General of the National Archives of Timor-Leste, outlined the importance of addressing this issue, sharing that many collections that testify to the history of Timor-Leste only exist in Goa, Macau and other archives overseas. Gaining access to this material is vital for the county’s national identity, education, and research purposes.

In the key note address, Dr Roslyn Russell, MoW expert, shared the process of developing MoW nominations, and gave examples of multi-national nominations from the region. While Mr. Andrew Henderson, Secretary General of the Memory of the World Committee for Asia and the Pacific (MOWCAP), shared an overview of MOWCAP’s work to promote regional cooperation through the programme.

In her closing remarks, Dr Helen Iong, Director of the Macau Documentation and Information Society, spoke about the importance of working together to promote understanding and research opportunities across borders. Dr. Iong shared that she hoped the initial seminar could develop in to a wider cooperation between the different archives.

An exhibition was held in conjunction with the seminar at the Knowledge Centre, City University of Macau. The exhibition featured material contributed from each of the participating archives and highlighted the connections between the places through correspondence files, plans and photographs, postcards, and more.

Korean National Commission Supports Documentary Heritage in Africa Region

A  UNESCO Memory of the World Training Workshop for the Africa Region was held in Windhoek, Namibia from 16-18 October. The workshop was organized by the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea, and the Namibia National Commission for UNESCO.

The objective of the workshop was to increase awareness of the significance of documentary heritage in the Africa region and to assist countries to prepare their applications for nomination to UNESCO registers.

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Archives and Human Rights Seminar

An International Seminar on Human Rights Archives: Agents of Accountability and Justice was held in Gwangju City, Republic of Korea,  in September 2017.  The international seminar was jointly organised by Gwangju City, the Asia Culture Center, and the Korean National Commission for UNESCO, in cooperation with MOWCAP and the Asia Culture Institute.

The purpose of the seminar was to acknowledge human rights archives as powerful agents for achieving justice, by supporting reconciliation and recovery in societies. The seminar was also an opportunity to enhance cooperation and networking among human rights archivists, associations, and human rights defenders in participating countries.

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