THE HAGUE – An independent commission of archival experts will assess whether colonial-era records held in the Netherlands should be returned to their countries of origin under a new Dutch restitution policy that could lead to the return of historical documents to Curaçao.
The commission is expected to be established before the end of this year and will first develop criteria for determining when colonial archives qualify for restitution.
It will subsequently examine individual requests, including the application Curaçao submitted in 2024 for historical archives concerning Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba.
Among the issues to be examined are the legal ownership of the documents, their provenance and the circumstances under which they were transferred to the Netherlands.
The central principle of the new policy is that archives removed from their country of origin without consent or under coercion should be returned.
However, the Dutch government recognizes that not every case will be straightforward. Colonial archives can relate to several countries and communities, meaning that a broader assessment of competing interests may be necessary in some cases.
Minister Expected to Follow Recommendations
If the independent commission determines that particular documents are being wrongfully held in the Netherlands, the Minister of Education, Culture and Science will, in principle, decide to return them.
The commission’s recommendations will be made public, adding a transparency mechanism to the restitution process.
The policy could have significant implications for Curaçao because important parts of the island’s historical record are currently preserved at the National Archives in the Netherlands.
The documents covered by Curaçao’s request include the Old Archives of Curaçao, Bonaire and Aruba up to 1828 and records relating to the three islands from subsequent years.
The new approach does not focus exclusively on physically returning documents. The Netherlands also plans to increase digitization and improve access to colonial collections, potentially making historical records more widely available to researchers and communities connected to them.
The government has set aside €200,000 for implementation this year, increasing to a structural annual budget of €500,000 beginning in 2027.
The funding will cover research into the origins of colonial archives, the processing of restitution requests and the work of the independent commission.