This book discusses how fact-finding mechanisms for alleged violations of international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law can be improved. There has been a significant increase in the use of international, internationalised and domestic fact-finding mechanisms since 1992, including by the United Nations human rights system, international commissions of inquiry, truth and reconciliation commissions, and NGOs. They are analysed and assessed in detail by 19 authors under the common theme 'Quality Control in Fact-Finding'. The authors include Richard J. Goldstone, Martin Scheinin, LIU Daqun, Charles Garraway, David Re, Simon De Smet, FAN Yuwen, Isabelle Lassée, WU Xiaodan, Dan Saxon, Chris Mahony, Dov Jacobs, Catherine Harwood, Lyal S. Sunga, Wolfgang Kaleck, Carolijn Terwindt, Ilia Utmelidze and Marina Aksenova. Serge Brammertz has written the Preface, and LING Yan a Foreword. The book emphasises quality awareness and improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work. This quality control approach recognises, inter alia, the importance of leadership in fact-finding mechanisms, the responsibility of individual fact-finders to continuously professionalise, and the need for fact-finders to be mandate-centred. It is an approach that invites the consideration of how the quality of every functional aspect of fact-finding can be improved, including work processes to identify, locate, obtain, verify, analyse, corroborate, summarise, synthesise, structure, organise, present, and disseminate facts. The book also considers regulatory approaches to enhance quality and professionalisation.

Fact-finding is at the heart of human rights advocacy, and is often at the center of international controversies about alleged government abuses. In recent years, human rights fact-finding has greatly proliferated and become more sophisticated and complex, while also being subjected to stronger scrutiny from governments. Nevertheless, despite the prominence of fact-finding, it remains strikingly under-studied and under-theorized. Too little has been done to bring forth the assumptions, methodologies, and techniques of this rapidly developing field, or to open human rights fact-finding to critical and constructive scrutiny. The Transformation of Human Rights Fact-Finding offers a multidisciplinary approach to the study of fact-finding with rigorous and critical analysis of the field of practice, while providing a range of accounts of what actually happens. It deepens the study and practice of human rights investigations, and fosters fact-finding as a discretely studied topic, while mapping crucial transformations in the field. The contributions to this book are the result of a major international conference organized by New York University Law School's Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Engaging the expertise and experience of the editors and contributing authors, it offers a broad approach encompassing contemporary issues and analysis across the human rights spectrum in law, international relations, and critical theory. This book addresses the major areas of human rights fact-finding such as victim and witness issues; fact-finding for advocacy, enforcement, and litigation; the role of interdisciplinary expertise and methodologies; crowd sourcing, social media, and big data; and international guidelines for fact-finding.

A comprehensive study of the topical issue of fact-finding which makes realistic proposals to address the ICJ's problematic practice in this area.

This book considers the liberal conception of peace within Western philosophy and the principle of 'peaceful coexistence' supported in the East. It investigates there is a 'right to peace' by tracing the evolution of the international law of peace through its historical and philosophical origins.

In The Roles and Functions of Atrocity-Related United Nations Commissions of Inquiry in the International Legal Order, Catherine Harwood explores how United Nations inquiries navigate considerations of principle and pragmatism to discern their identity in the international legal order.

Technological advances have meant that civilians are now enabled to play a greater role than ever before in monitoring and documenting violations during armed conflict or in other insecure environments. As UN rapporteurs and other official international monitors are effectively denied access to a wide range of insecure territories around the world, civilian monitors have become a complementary, and in some cases the principal, source of information on what is happening on the ground to civilian populations. Civilian-led monitoring has developed on the back of: • The huge expansion in popular access to mobile telephony and digital communications; • The development of crowd-sourcing, digital mapping and crowd verification techniques, including through the use of open-source programmes; • Increased public awareness of human rights standards and IHL standards; • Advances in data-mining and news curation using increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence; • New opportunities for civil society organisation and activism created through social media; • Growing receptiveness of UN, inter-governmental and governmental bodies to information produced by civil society. The increase in both the quantity and quality of data from civilian sources is also a response to the demand for real-time information and for in-situ monitoring. Traditional human rights and IHL monitoring mechanisms, including investigative rapporteurs and fact-finding missions, remain important but are subject to long time delays, frequent controversy over mandates, and concerns over selective reporting. Drawing on the experience of a major pilot of civilian-led monitoring in Iraq, this report discusses significant challenges for civilian-led monitoring, including quality control, verification, security of activists and victims, and ethical questions raised by interviewing and documentation undertaken by unqualified activists. The challenges of verifying and authenticating information posted online are exacerbated during armed conflict where the deliberate spread of misinformation has a long history. This report discusses different approaches and techniques to verifying civilian-led monitoring information, including building on the experience developed by large media organizations for assessing user-generated content. To support the effective deployment and expansion of civilian-led monitoring, this report recommends: - Appropriate training and capacity-building for civil-society organizations and activists on the ground in conflict-affected environments, including training on monitoring and documentation techniques, IHL and human rights standards, and cyber security; - Development of standardised reporting formats and related technical support in partnership with local civil society or civilian populations, to reflect the linguistic, technological and security situation on the ground; - Strengthened protection mechanisms for civilian monitors and other human rights defenders, including improved cyber security infrastructure; - Ensuring civilian rights to participate fully in civilian protection, peace-building and transitional justice processes.

This timely and pertinent collection looks at the variety of questions involved in the operation of Commissions of Inquiry (CoIs). Traditionally existing as pure fact-finding bodies, in recent times the function of CoIs has arguably shifted and broadened so as to provide a form of legal adjudication. This shift in their application merits scrutiny and this edited collection of essays addresses institutional and procedural aspects of CoIs, as well as issues in regards to the application and interpretation of the substantative law applied to them. Essay topics include the relationship of CoIs with, and impact upon, traditional forms of adjudication, the influences of international law upon the work of CoIs, through to issues of procedural fairness. Drawing upon the expertise of scholars working within in the field, it offers an insightful and critical analysis of CoIs.