Manuals

Berkeley Protocol for Open Source Investigations (OSINT):

 A Practical Guide on the Effective Use of Digital Open Source Information in Investigating Violations of International Criminal, Human Rights and Humanitarian Law.

ICC Prosecutor and Eurojust’s practical guidelines for documenting and preserving information on international crimes

Eurojust and the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) have published practical guidelines for civil society organisations on documenting core international crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity. The aim is to empower as well as support civil society organisations that seek to collect and preserve information to contribute to investigations and prosecutions at the national level or before the ICC. The guidelines aim to assist in fighting impunity and have been drawn up building on the expertise of the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC, Eurojust, the Genocide Network, civil society organisations, national prosecutors and international partners.

International Protocol on the Documentation and Investigation of Sexual Violence in Conflict

Best Practice on the Documentation of Sexual Violence as a Crime or Violation of International Law (Second Edition).

Bournemouth Protocol on Mass Graves

The project developed a Protocol to improve practice in relation to safeguarding and investigating mass graves.

PILPG Handbooks and Toolkits

Public International Law and Policy Group (PILPG) holds an excellent array of handbooks and toolkits in the fields of peace negotiations, post-conflict constitution drafting, and war crimes prosecution/transitional justice.

Nuremberg Guidelines for Non-Public Investigative Bodies in the Field of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law

International Nuremberg Principles Academy teamed up with the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) to write the ‘Nuremberg Guidelines for Non-Public Investigative Bodies in the Field of International Criminal and Humanitarian Law’. Due to the importance of such activities for the establishment of accountability, the guideline will provide normative instructions for the practitioners who gather information that may serve future prosecutions at the international, regional and domestic level.

International Criminal Court (ICC): Legal Tools Database

The ICC’s Legal Tools Data base is a complete virtual library on international criminal law and justice. The Tools comprise the largest online collection of relevant documents and legal digests available through the Case Matrix application.

Asia Justice Coalition

The Toolkit provides a look at available avenues for Civil Society Organisations (CSO) actors and how they might engage within the international legal sphere. It includes easy-to-read overviews of United Nations Fact-Finding Missions (FFMs) and International Investigative Mechanisms, the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and the use of Universal Jurisdiction (UJ).

TRIAL International

TRIAL International has produced a series of tools, reports and briefing papers on universal jurisdiction cases since 2014. The resource tools are aimed at a broad audience, including NGOs, human rights and legal practitioners, media, and foreign affairs departments around the world.

Istanbul Protocol: Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCHR, 2022 edition)

This revised edition strengthens the widely recognized and highly valued Istanbul Protocol on the effective investigation into and documentation of torture and ill-treatment. The Istanbul Protocol should appeal to a wide variety of stakeholders, including States, civil society, doctors, psychologists, social workers, lawyers, forensic specialists, asylum officers, human rights officers and many others.

CILRAP Lexsitus 2.0 Toolkit

From the Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP), this digital solution includes a 2,300-page commentary relating to the International Criminal Court (ICC) Statute and rules of procedure and evidence (RPE), which is available in English, Arabic and French. It also includes 234 lectures, with subtitles translated to Arabic, French and Persian. The digest on elements of crime is in English, Arabic, French and Spanish. It's a digital solution designed to make ICL accessible to a broader community.

Courses

Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI)

The Institute for Inter­national Criminal Investi­gations (IICI) is an independent, not-for-profit, non-governmental organisation providing criminal justice and human rights professionals with the training and knowledge necessary to investigate war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and the most serious human rights violations.

Justice Rapid Response

The International Justice Programme partners with members of the international community contributing to international justice processes to bridge a gap in specialized expertise. They work to anticipate and address specialized investigation needs.

Nuremberg Principles Academy

The Nuremberg Principles Academy conducts courses on capacity building, (e.g. Summer Academy for Young Professionals), Moot Court, and national training sessions.

Partners/Capacity Builders

Synergy for Justice

An NGO dedicated to building up the capacity of domestic actors to provide survivor-centered justice and accountability.

Case Matrix Network

The Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP) seeks to contribute to academic activities in international law and to practitioners and policy makers in international law. It is a knowledge platform that includes and tries to bridge scholarship, publication, training and other forms of knowledge-transfer, and the development of knowledge tools.

Partners/Non-state actors with expertise in International Criminal justice

Commission for Justice and Accountability (CIJA)

The Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) is a non-profit, non-governmental organisation dedicated to furthering criminal justice efforts through investigations, in order to prevent the loss and destruction of vital evidence for the purpose of supporting prosecutorial efforts to end impunity, whether at the domestic or international level.

European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)

ECCHR is an independent, non-profit legal and educational organization dedicated to enforcing civil and human rights worldwide.

The Center for Justice and Accountability

The Center for Justice and Accountability identifies and prosecutes the world’s worst human rights criminals. CJA partners with victims and survivors in pursuit of truth, justice, and redress. Based in San Francisco, it was founded in 1998.

Civitas Maxima

Civitas Maxima facilitates the documentation of international crimes, and pursues the redress of such crimes on behalf of victims who do not have access to justice.

Global Rights Compliance

Global Rights Compliance (GRC) have been engaged on the issue of mass starvation in conflicts since 2017 in conjunction with The Netherlands’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland, and a range of civil society organisations, experts in governmental institutions and official organisations, as well as mechanisms with a mandate in food insecurity.

In partnership with The World Peace Foundation (WPF), GRC have been working to identify how international law may be used to advance the prevention, prohibition and accountability for starvation.

Guernica Group

The Guernica Group is an international initiative that brings together experienced litigators, investigators and other professionals who work to bring perpetrators of international crimes and grave human rights violations to justice; seize their ill-gotten assets for the benefit of their victims; and strengthen systems of accountability, truth-telling, reparation, and non-recurrence. Working in country and in partnership with affected communities, we offer a range of highly specialized skills to achieve accountability.

Berkeley Human Rights Investigations Lab

In Fall 2016, UC Berkeley’s Human Rights Center launched the first university-based open source investigations lab to discover and verify human rights violations and potential war crimes. They work with partners to investigate potential crimes, abuses, and misinformation around the globe—including here in the United States.

Other resources

Collecting linkage evidence in Ukraine

This article, titled ‘Building a War Crimes Case Against Putin Is Harder Than You Think’, provides practical steps to collecting material in Ukraine that could inform evidence that links those most responsible for atrocity crimes to the underlying crimes.

Syria’s Disappeared

This documentary tells the hidden story of tens of thousands of men, women and children disappeared by the regime of President Bashar al Assad into a network of clandestine detention centres. The film weaves together the powerful personal stories of three Syrians with evidence gathered from regime documentation smuggled out of Syria. It also explores the role of the Commission of International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), which investigate crimes against humanity in Syria.

El Clarin

A resource site for many of the legal documents relating to the prosecution of Augusto Pinochet, former President of Chile, in the Madrid Courts.

Souleymane Guengueng Foundation

Souleymane Guengueng Foundation was lunched by Souleymane Guengueng, a witness and victim of core crimes under the Hissène Habré government in Chad. Souleymane Guengueng was a key actor, with many other victims, pursuing criminal accountability against Habre. Their efforts led to the establishment of the Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal. He shares the experiences of the Habré case with others across Africa.