On Monday November 13, employees from Archives and Research Collections (ARC) at Carleton University’s MacOdrum Library visited Dr. John Foster’s home to collect the material he was donating to the ARC. The total amount of material equaled seventeen boxes and two bags worth of documents and ephemera.
When does the humanitarian impulse to provide aid and relief contribute to activism to promote human rights? When does it prompt avoidance of activism in favour of quietly enduring access to places and people in need?
This is one of the questions I am trying to answer in current research on relations between Canada and East Timor. Under Indonesian military occupation from 1975 to 1999, Canadian aid agencies tended to shy away from criticizing Indonesian actions in order to make sure they could deliver aid supplies. Humanitarian impulses dictated a quiet stance on human rights from a range of Canadian NGOs. But there was an early exception, in the work of Oxfam Canada.
The second phase of the 4.5 year ‘Making the Oxfam archive accessible’ project that started in January 2013 has now been completed. A fifth catalogue, describing records of Oxfam’s appeals and fundraising activities, is now available on the Bodleian Library’s website. In addition, a second, expanded edition of the programme policy and management catalogue has been published. The second edition of the catalogue of files relating to grants made by Oxfam (‘project files’) will appear soon.
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