RightsCon Toronto 2018

Over recent years, investigators and prosecutors have been utilizing emerging technologies for investigating violations of international criminal and humanitarian law on behalf of government or international bodies. However, such investigations are often preceded by the work of NGOs and civil society groups representing victims of such crimes in both legal and advocacy efforts. Legal NGOs are increasingly filing and litigating cases directly on behalf victim communities, using laws designed to protect victims of serious crimes domestically or extraterritorially through universal jurisdiction. Such NGOs, which are often under resourced and understaffed, have the most to gain from emerging technologies aimed at documenting and preserving evidence of serious crimes, but a technology gap still persists.

This panel aims to highlight two partnerships between NGOs developing and litigating cases on behalf of victims of serious crimes (TRIAL and CJA), and organizations developing technologies to enhance their efforts (eyeWitness and U.C. Berkeley’s Open Source Investigation Lab). It also aims to engage with the audience on ways in which emerging technologies can be better communicated to legal NGOs developing cases directly on behalf of victims of serious crimes and mass atrocities.

We will bring together teams of human rights investigators and organizations developing human rights fact finding technologies to discuss how they have implemented new tools in the field, and how these tools have enhanced their work in building evidence on behalf of victims of serious crimes.

The panel will unpack the challenges and opportunities faced in implementing these tools in practice, the legal viability in proceedings before domestic courts, and the continued investigation needs of human rights investigators that are developing evidence for litigation. By the end of the discussion, the teams hope to highlight continued investigations needs from NGOs and discuss ideas for a tech advisory committee to NGOs litigating directly on behalf of victims.