A report by the DCAF - Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance, titled “Institutional memory of Palestinian Public Institutions under the war: Post-October 2023,” highlights a catastrophic collapse of institutional memory. The assessment reveals that over 80% of government buildings were destroyed in the Gaza Strip, including critical physical archives and digital servers.
“Institutional memory,” defined as documented knowledge and public records, is deemed essential for upholding the rule of law, continuity, and accountability in governance. The destruction of essential records—such as civil registry data, land authority files, and court documents—raises serious concerns over the erasure of proof required for access to justice and the protection of individual rights. The report underscores that the fragmentation of record-keeping (due to past political splits) combined with physical devastation makes urgent action necessary to support documentation recovery and strengthen institutional resilience against shocks.
This case study is critically relevant to India’s National Disaster Management and Digital India strategies, highlighting the extreme vulnerability of governance capacity when resilient, geographically distributed digital archiving is not mandated for all critical state and judicial records (e.g., land records, civil status).
What is Institutional Memory? In a public governance context, it refers to the archived records and documented knowledge of institutions, underpinning transparency, continuity, and accountability. Losing it can lead to the collapse of the rule of law by erasing legal proof of rights, ownership, and civil status for large populations.
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