This tool aims to provide guidance to United Nations field missions, transitional administrations and civil society on the management, reform, use and preservation of archives to help guarantee and enforce human rights, particularly the right to the truth. The tool focuses on the means to strengthen archives through the identification of good practice for the management of different types of records and archives, highlighting considerations and issues for reform, and setting out steps and strategies. It also addresses which records are the most pertinent to various transitional justice processes and identify key issues for the preservation of the records they produce.