Digital documentation of possible human rights violations and war crimes in Ukraine

Vortrag
Sitzungstermin
Freitag (22. September 2023), 09:00–10:30
Sitzungsraum
SH 1.104
Autor*innen
Kurz­be­schreib­ung
Ukrainian Archive as a sustainable hub for gathering, preserving, processing, verifying, and investigating human rights violations and international crimes to support accountability, justice, and advocacy. Ukrainian Archive host an immense amount of data pertaining to the documentation of international humanitarian law and human rights violations. Relying on either manual tags or automatically collected metadata, research teams have the ability to conduct data analysis, potentially uncovering larger trends and patterns in the collected information. The speaker will discuss the main pillars of the Ukrainian Archive work and explore with the audience how open-source content can serve as digital evidence in case-building.

Abstract

Digital Documentation of possible Human Rights Violations & War Crimes in Ukraine

Presenter: Roksolana Burianenko, Program Manager – Ukrainian Archive, Mnemonic

roksolana@ukrainianarchive.org

The presentation will take participants to the digital world of documentation of the possible war crimes committed in the armed conflict in Ukraine. The speaker will discuss methodologies used in open-source investigations and how open-source content can serve as digital evidence.

The speaker will discuss the Ukrainian Archive’s work and will explain why the Ukrainian Archive should be viewed as a sustainable hub for gathering, preserving, processing, verifying, and investigating human rights violations and international crimes to support accountability, justice, and advocacy.

The Ukrainian Archive program has been designed and established under the auspices of Mnemonic archives as a response to the armed conflict in Ukraine following the full-scale invasion launched by the Russian Federation. Ukrainian Archive methodologies have been built in accordance with the Berkeley Protocol as well as the adopted international good practices on Documentation of International Crimes and Human Rights Violations for accountability purposes in the context of tragic developments on Ukrainian soil.

Ukrainian Archive is focusing on two main workstreams: fact-finding and strategic litigation.

The support of national and international accountability mechanisms stands as one of the core objectives of the Ukrainian Archive.

The presentation will conclude with a discussion on monitoring and documentation of human rights violations, following lessons learned in other conflicts and the Syrian conflict in particular. The discussion will explore the advances and raise of new technologies, as well as methodological challenges & opportunities whilst looking into legal and ethical dimensions of data availability.

Keywords: open-source content, war crimes, digital archive