Tribunal archives

The public archives include annual reports and studies, successive versions of the Rules and their annexes (with concordance tables), press releases, the president's speeches, brochures and practical guides, recordings of conferences and seminars.

Each document is described by metadata: title, date, author, language, theme. A search engine allows filtering by year, theme or type of document.

Case files are confidential and kept by the Registry for thirty years. They are then destroyed or, with the parties' agreement, transferred to OIMAP's historical archives in anonymised form. The parties may request copies of their own documents.

Researchers may request a waiver to access old anonymised files, provided they undertake to preserve confidentiality. Requests are examined by an ethics committee.

Digital archives are kept on secure servers, with backup in two countries. Paper documents are stored in suitable conditions. A digitisation programme, 85% complete, aims at all public documents by 2026.

Open formats (PDF/A, CSV, XML) guarantee durability. Each document carries a digital fingerprint allowing its integrity to be checked.

The archives tell the history of the TAO: the first meetings in 2011, the debates on the creation of mediation, the adoption of the expedited procedure, the first remote hearing, the first bilateral restitution agreement. An oral-history collection gathers the testimony of arbitrators, registrars and parties.

A virtual exhibition, in preparation for the tribunal's fifteenth anniversary, will present these key moments. Former members are invited to contribute their recollections.