Uncovering war crimes – key rules for investigative journalists

Russia’s war against Ukraine is among the most documented wars in the world’s history, and journalists have shed light on the many war crimes likely conducted by Russian troops. 

But to prove a war crime and eventually get its perpetrator convicted is a difficult task that requires a painstaking verification process. And it’s important for journalists covering war crimes, whether in Ukraine or any other conflict zone, to follow journalistic ethics and make sure they don’t harm the victims.

The Fix summarised key points from two relevant sessions presented at the International Journalism Festival 2023 in Perugia – “Investigating the crimes of war” and “Documenting and memorializing war crimes in real-time”

How to identify a war crime and make evidence valid in court

Ida Sawyer, the director of Human Rights Watch’s Crisis and Conflict Division, presented key questions for journalists to ask themselves while defining whether the case is a war crime or not:

• Was there a military presence at or around the hit area?
• Was a civilian object targeted or was it in dual use (i.e. also used for military purposes)?
• What weapon was used?
• What was the impact on civilians?

These questions are important to classify the case right to make testimonies legally admissible, Sawyer noted in her presentation.

For this reason, it’s a must for investigators and journalists working on this topic to know the basics of international humanitarian law, the laws of war, the difference between a crime of war and a crime against humanity, and other formal aspects while working with evidence of war conflicts.

The war correspondent and journalist Janine di Giovanni in cooperation with British expert on Russian disinformation Peter Pomerantsev and Ukrainian journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk started The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies. The aim of the project is to conduct journalistic investigations and collect testimonies so they can reveal war crimes both in the international law arena and as journalistic work, “combin[ing] the power of story-telling and legal accountability”.

Thirty Ukrainian journalists were trained to understand the principles of international humanitarian law and the methodology of working with war crimes. The Reckoning Project’s team collects testimonies of all types of crimes listed under the Geneva Convention, including deportation, torture in the occupied territories, attacks on civilian infrastructure like hospitals using civilians as a human shield etc. They verify evidence using open-source intelligence (OSINT) and then work with Ukrainian national courts and prosecutors.

As a result of their work, during the hearing on Russian war crimes held by the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, a parliamentary committee whose remit includes monitoring and protecting global human rights issues, they introduced a video that represented the evidence their team had collected to the public and the court. 

The way journalists work during armed conflicts and genocides has changed over the past few decades. Indira Lakshmanan, the global enterprise editor of the Associated Press, was covering crimes against civilians in Bosnia in the 1990s. “Back then, we were with notebooks, writing things down, taking pictures with cameras, and documenting everything from the voices of people”, Lakshmanan said at the International Journalism Festival. Nowadays, civilians document war crimes by themselves on their phones in real-time and post them on social media. Reporters get and verify information using OSINT.

OSINT is one of the main tools for verifying information now

It’s highly important to double-check and verify evidence and compare testimonies with other sources of information that are not dependent on people’s words, such as satellite pictures, videos from outside cameras etc. In this case, OSINT plays a key role.

Sam Dubberley, the managing director of the Digital Investigations Lab at Human Rights Watch, highlighted the main features of using OSINT in the field of working with crimes of war. Their team uses OSINT to:

• Get access to spaces investigators can’t reach physically;
• Cover a wide range of stories, which is highly important due to the amount of data, especially from Ukraine;
• Verify “what, where, when” happened.
• Verify what kind of military activity do they see in the area;
• Check what possible legitimate targets were there;
• Examine civilians’ activity in the area the days before the incident, which helps understand how the targeting decision was made; 
• Check the images of the location at the prior state before and after the attack.

“OSINT is a gateway into answering an initial question of should the incident we’re looking at be investigated further as a potential violation of international humanitarian law”, Dubberly said in his presentation.

Journalistic ethics and communication with locals during investigations

An important part of investigating war crimes is working with witnesses and victims. Investigators and journalists communicate with local journalists and citizens in-person, via messengers and social media to gain evidence and additional information and then verify it using OSINT. 

Working with people is especially helpful while covering war crimes that took place in difficult and dangerous zones, without the possibility to use satellite images or other open source material. Sarah El Deeb from the Associated Press was working in Syria as an investigative journalist on potential war crimes. She pointed out that in a country with a war that runs for over 10 years “access was a major hurdle” and many journalists were harmed or kidnapped. To get information, they needed to rely on communication with locals via WhatsApp and Facebook, and it was a long process to reach someone. They relied on locals’ and citizen journalists’ videos and photos posted online.

While cooperating with people during investigating war crimes might be useful, it is mandatory to follow rules for communicating with those who had suffered from violence or were injured during shelling. Janine di Giovanni emphasised that the rule “do no harm” is paramount for media outlets covering crimes during the war. This rule’s key points are:

• Do not interview traumatised people;
• Make sure that victims are not in danger during interviewing;
• Do not ask leading questions (i.e. questions that push the respondent to respond in a certain way);
• Verify the information (otherwise, the material could be misleading and harmful for victims’ mental state, as well as the potential court process).

The most important principle is to follow basic ethics and not to re-traumatise victims for the sake of sensation.

Source of the cover photo: The Presidential Office of Ukraine / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0, 2b6568a1d8dc0a4650fd072d2c7a9ffc_1680523496_wysiwyg.jpeg (800×534) (president.gov.ua)

---