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GIJN Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes
Key Guidance

Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN) (2023)

"GIJN’s comprehensive, 16-chapter Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes includes expert advice from more than two dozen specialists and journalists, covering everything from the legal aspects of war, attacks on civilians, conflict-related sexual violence, environmental crimes, banned weap ... more

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Forensic Conflict Studies: Making Sense of War in the Social Media Age

Jakob Hauter

Media, War & Conflict, volume 16, issue 2 (2023), pp. 153-172

"Online media is a blessing and a curse for academic research on war. On the one hand, the internet provides unprecedented access to information from conflict zones. On the other hand, the prevalence of disinformation can make it difficult to use this information in a transparent way. This article p ... more

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Manual for Journalists on Collecting and Preserving Information About International Crimes

Raphael Vagliano

Halifax: Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) (2023), 38 pp.

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Guidelines for Documenting & Confronting Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists

Karachi: Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) (2022), 26 pp.

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Guide for Journalists on How to Document International Crimes

Centre for Law and Democracy (CLD) (2022), 16 pp.

"[…] Journalists covering conflict zones in some cases become first-hand witnesses to crimes, including international crimes such as systematic killing of civilians, serious acts of torture and mass sexual violence. This guide aims to provide simple, accessible advice to journalists (and editors) ... more

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The First Draft of History. Journalists: Witnesses Before the Hague Tribunal

Boro Kontic, Nedim Sejdinovic, Elvira Jukic Mujkic, Anida Sokol, Selma Zulic Šiljak, Dragan Golubovic

Sarajevo: Mediacentar (2022), 97 pp.

"The book was born out of the need to understand and convey the experience of journalists who testified before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Aiming to shed light on the insufficiently researched role of journalists and newspaper material before the ICTY, Media ... more

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Documenta: Guía para registrar violaciones a los derechos humanos en contextos restrictivos

Caracas: Espacio Público (2021), 32 pp.

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Screen Shots: State Violence on Camera in Israel and Palestine

Rebecca L. Stein

Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press (2021), ix, 234 pp.

"In the last two decades, amid the global spread of smartphones, state killings of civilians have increasingly been captured on the cameras of both bystanders and police. Screen Shots studies this phenomenon from the vantage point of Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Here, cameras have ... more

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Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation
Key Guidance

Ernesto Mora Forero, Rosario Arias Callejas

Global Initiative for Justice Truth & Reconciliation (GIJTR) (2021), 151 pp.

"This document was developed as an instrument to support civil society organizations (CSOs) in Colombia in the development of oral archives and in the organization of their archival collections. It draws from the experience of GIJTR partners International Coalition of Sites of Conscience (ICSC) and ... more

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Archives and Human Rights

Jens Boel, Perrine Canavaggio, Antonio González Quintana (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2021), xxi, 330 pp.

"Why and how can records serve as evidence of human rights violations, in particular crimes against humanity, and help the fight against impunity? Archives and Human Rights shows the close relationship between archives and human rights and discusses the emergence, at the international level, of the ... more

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On the Death of Jews: Photographs and History

Nadine Fresco

New York; Oxford: Berghahn; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2021), 104 pp.

"Straddling the boundary between historical inquiry and personal reflection, this extraordinary text unfolds as a series of encounters with eponymic Holocaust photographs. Although only a small number of photographs are reproduced here, Fresco provides evocative descriptions of many well-known image ... more

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"Video Unavailable": Social Media Platforms Remove Evidence of War Crimes

New York: Human Rights Watch (2020), 94 pp.

"Social media platforms are taking down “terrorist and violent extremist content” more and more quickly, often in response to the demands of governments, but in a way that prevents the content from being used to support investigations into serious crimes, including war crimes. “Video Unavailab ... more

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WorldCat (13)

Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrechens: Ein Album aus Auschwitz

Tal Bruttmann, Stefan Hördler, Christoph Kreutzmüller

Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (bpb), Sonderausg. (2020), 303 pp.

"1944 entstanden im Vernichtungslager Auschwitz-Birkenau eine Vielzahl von Fotografien, die zumeist den SS-Fotografen Bernhard Walter und Ernst Hoffmann zuzuordnen sind. Erhalten blieben die Bilder in Form eines Albums im Besitz der Holocaust-Überlebenden Lili Jacob, die es auf Vermittlung Serge Kl ... more

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Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability
Key Guidance

Sam Dubberley, Alexa Koenig, Daragh Murray (eds.)

Oxford: Oxford University Press (2020), xvi, 360 pp.

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Cross-Platform Disinformation Campaigns: Lessons Learned and Next Steps

Tom Wilson, Kate Starbird

Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, volume 1, issue 1 (2020), 11 pp.

"This paper examines online discourse about the White Helmets, a volunteer rescue group that operates in rebel (anti-regime) areas of Syria. The White Helmet’s humanitarian activities, their efforts to document the targeting of civilians through video evidence, and their non-sectarian nature (that ... more

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How to Communicate and Document Human Rights Violations During an Internet Shutdown

Likhita Banerji

Amnesty International (2020), 5 pp.

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WorldCat (13)

Documenting Syria: Film-Making, Video Activism and Revolution

Josepha Ivanka Wessels

London et al.: Tauris (2019), xiv, 321 pp.

"Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first YouTubed revolutions in history. This book is the ... more

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WorldCat (14)

Advanced Digital Technology and Genocide and Mass Atrocities Prevention

Steven Livingston, Alice Musabende

In: Media and Mass Atrocity: The Rwanda Genocide and Beyond

Allan Thompson (ed.)

Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation (2019), pp. 557-577

"There is no doubt that technology has improved the ability to document war crimes and human rights abuses, even in otherwise inaccessible locations. The world now sees, often in close to real-time, atrocities that would have been lost to the world only a handful of years ago. But does knowing neces ... more

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Google Scholar (16)

WorldCat (12)

Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice

Sandra Ristovska, Monroe Price (eds.)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan (2018), xvii, 320 pp.

"Visual Imagery and Human Rights Practice examines the interplay between images and human rights, addressing how, when, and to what ends visuals are becoming a more central means through which human rights claims receive recognition and restitution. The collection argues that accounting for how imag ... more

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YouTube and Evidencing Warcrimes: The Role of Digital Video for Transitional Justice in Syria

Josepha Wessels

Tidskriftet POLITIK, volume 19, issue 4 (2016), pp. 30-52

"The enormous collection of user-generated content (UGC) in the form of YouTube videos from the Syrian war provides an unprecedented and diverse collection of shared digital memories of conflict and violence. The central question of this article asks what the value is of UGC on YouTube for legal evi ... dence of war crimes and future Transitional Justice. It is beyond doubt that the surge of uploaded videos from the Syrian uprisings revolutionized the way in which contemporary wars are observed and documented. The sheer amount of user-generated content online has given rise to manifold ways of interpreting what is happening on the ground, inspired creative resistance, led to a surge of professional and independent Syrian documentary films and increased the connectivity between those who undergo the war inside the conflict zone and those who are observing the situation from a safe distance. Many YouTube clips from Syria are likely to be rejected as stand-alone legal evidence though, as it often lacks sourced information about meta-data, date, time, geographical coordinates, identity of the participants, the identity of the perpetrator, and other contextual information crucial to establishing judicial facts for war crimes prosecution. The everexpanding body of videos from Syria will give rise to a wide and varied landscape of interactive media that has surpassed the old approach of political mainstream media to inform and possibly manipulate their audiences for their own agendas, whatever those may be. As a platform of digital memory and space to express moral outrage, YouTube served a crucial and important role in the Syrian crisis and the UGC is of immense value for digital memorialisation and historicization of the Syrian crisis. The vast amount of UGC on YouTube was categorized in 8 different types of footage and we can conclude that only small number of videoclips on YouTube can in fact function as crime-based evidence for war crimes. This does not mean that the UGC on YouTube has no value, however as a legal evidence it can be problematic to use YouTube videos if not corroborated and verified properly. The main issue is the lack of meta-data in many of the UGC on YouTube. The YouTube video revolution in Syria did bring to the surface many brave video activists who are now professionally involved in producing high quality footage for international news broadcasters, the most recent example of that is the important work of Waad al Kataeb inside eastern Aleppo with the British Broadcaster Channel Four News (Channel 4 2016). Through a series of edited 5-6 minute mini stories from the ground, Al Kataeb’s work provides a credible and important source of evidence." (Conclusion, page 22-23) more

GIJN Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes Key Guidance

Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation Key Guidance

Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability Key Guidance

GIJN Reporter’s Guide to Investigating War Crimes
Key Guidance

Living Archives: An Introductory Toolkit for Civil Society Organizations in the Creation of Human Rights Oral Archives and Organizing Their Documentation
Key Guidance

Digital Witness: Using Open Source Information for Human Rights Investigation, Documentation, and Accountability
Key Guidance