National Archives... Fragments of History...

At first glance at the national archives, we would complain about a legal vacuum. Contrary to what is common, the first legal texts that regulate the archives date back to 1913, but implementation has not always followed. This is a brief chronology of the actions taken in the field.

In 1913, the first draft Dahir (royal decree) creating the archives of the French protectorate was enacted. However, the archives of Morocco were created until 1926, by virtue of a Dahir entrusting the general library of the protectorate with managing communications as regards administrative archives. Article 10 of this Dahir stipulates that documents of general archives dating back to 10 years ago are to be placed in the library of the protectorate, with exceptions allowed by the Resident Commissioner-General.

Another decision issued by the Resident Commissioner-General in December 1958 made the organization of the archives and their transmission to the General Library and Archives (BGA) obligatory.

Until 1958, the BGA had received many archives of the protectorate administration, which have constituted up to now important archival materials, consisting mainly of technical archives of directorates. Apart from the so-called archives of sovereignty, General Secretariat and Defense, which were recovered by the French before their departure, the
archival materials would be, according to Mr M'Barek Bidan, head of archives in the National Library, 2200 linear meters. Also, regarding the archives in the protectorate period, another archive directorate exists in Tetouan since 1943, which unlike the case of France, brings together all the archives of the Spanish administration; they are classified and organized, according to the same source.

In 1968, given the financial problems faced by the BGA, a decision by the Prime Minister was issued to transfer the archives to other institutions, namely the Ministry of Communication or the Secretariat General of Government. This decision will dilute the responsibilities and make the monitoring of the archives a difficult task. A few years later, another note by the Prime Minister would entrust each administration with managing its own archives, which somehow froze all previous laws.

Apart from managing the archives of courts, which was subject of the decree 2/80/104 of April 18, 1980 on the conservation of records of courts of the Kingdom, and some leading experiences in managing the administrative archives (Justice, Finance) ... the management of public archives is a national project that engages all departments at all levels.

Mr Driss Khrouz, Director of the National Library, said that thanks to the Equity and Reconciliation Commission, a real debate on the archives took place. Several meetings with officials were held, bills have been proposed and finally a new law was enacted. The new Archives Act No. 69.99, published in the Official Gazette No. 5586, provides for new and accurate provisions. This is a brief reading through the new law.

Public archives

Article 1 of the Law defines archives as all documents, regardless of their date or form, produced and delivered by a person or entity and any department or public body while exercising their activities.

Public archives are then all documents produced while exercising activities by:

- State, communes and national institutions;
- Private institutions in charge of managing a public sector, produced when managing this sector.

Public archives include original ones and indices produced by notaries, registers of civil booklets and those of the registration service.

Furthermore, the new Law highlights three stages of the life cycles of archives: common, intermediate and final, including for the first time recognition of the electronic document as an archive.

A collective responsibility

The new Law considers as responsible any official or employee attached to the above-mentioned persons or entities for the archives he produced or received while exercising their functions.

Implementation of the Law

Regarding the implementation of the law, implementing decrees have not entered into force to date. The new text stipulates in Article 5 that the above-mentioned persons and institutions consult with 'Archives of Morocco' to develop all programs for managing their respective archives and identify the structures, capabilities and management procedures since the creation of the archive until their transfer to the “Archives of Morocco”.

Archives of Morocco

Like the French experience: 'Archives of France', Archives of Morocco is the new institution to replace the National Library in managing the archives. It is entrusted with:

- promoting management programs of archives held by persons or entities;

- protecting and promoting the heritage of national archives;

- Putting in place necessary technical measures to retrieve, manage and preserve the archives;

- promoting the issue of archives through scientific research, vocational training and international cooperation.

Ten months after the adoption of the Act, many questions remain unanswered: would the “archives of Morocco” be an institution under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, the Office of the Prime Minister or the Ministry of Justice as in Great Britain? Does Morocco have the human resources necessary for the program of gathering the archives outlined by the new Act? Does it have the infrastructure for training the executives to manage all these archives? What about other archives to recover: private and audio-visual archives, and archives of the protectorate period? And finally, what about the issue of personal data which is not very clear in the new Law?

The archives, instruments of thought and connector between the time lived and universal time, are only the means of opening the possibilities of writing or narration (s), which is the lofty objective of any policy on memory. Access to these archives should be the priority of future actions.
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Problems of training

The School of Information Sciences (ESI) is the only school in Morocco which trains archivists, research assistants and librarians. Founded in 1974, the ESI is part of the High Planning Commission and provides two training courses for information scientist (high school diploma + 4) and specialized information scientist (high school diploma + 6). The school has suffered, since the adoption of the early retirement program by the government two years ago, from a lack of academic staff who can train research specialists. In addition to the problem of resources, the job of research assistant or archivist remains unknown and underestimated. The diploma holders are versatile and quick to find jobs, but they often lead different careers.
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Audiovisual archives

The problem of audio-visual archives is much more difficult than that of paper archives at several levels: in terms of defining a legal and institutional framework to manage the national audiovisual heritage at the level of centralization and restoration of existing archives and at the level of financial and human resources. The problem that poses audiovisual archives in Morocco nowadays is that stocks, mostly analog, are threatened by the dangers of physical and chemical degradation which may lead to its total disappearance. In addition, archives whose mediums are currently in good conditions may not be used in the future because of the advent of new recording and reading technologies, which will inevitably lead to the loss of invaluable parts of our memory. Therefore, it would be an emergency to save them and put them at the disposal of all interested persons according to specific rules governing the right of access to and handling of audiovisual archives. But the current legal framework does not utter a word about audiovisual archives, which entails taking measures to consider these particularities in terms of financial, technical and professional requirements, and implications in terms of legal deposit, rights of commercial exploitation, documentary archive... Also, the development and implementation of a policy on the preservation of audiovisual memory, as a fundamental right of the public to have access to information, would require the establishment of a specialized institution who would opt for a policy of proactive management, and would be placed under a form of trusteeship able to make it an economic viable stakeholder and to guarantee to it independence and financial sustainability, according to a source from the High Authority for Audiovisual Communication (HACA).

There are two national institutions who hold a part of the audiovisual memory: the Moroccan Cinema Center (CCM) and the SNRT, a national corporation for broadcasting. The first one holds the archives of Moroccan cinema as well as those collected before the creation of the Ministry of Communication. The second one has all memory of Moroccan television and radio since their inception.

Translated by Khalid Ramli from a French article by Ms Fadoua Maroub, Head of the CCDH Communication Department