Annual report 2021

A core task of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee is to promote accountability and to preserve a factual record of historical events.

One of the tools of the documentation section in this regard is the Investigation Documentation System (I-DOC), a software program developed by Case Matrix Network (a department of our partner CILRAP), drawing on experience from the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

It can be said to mimic the mind of a prosecutor and is particularly useful in handling large and complex situations. I-DOC is a tool for work on facts relevant to serious violations of international human rights and criminal law, including analysis, investigation and case preparation. I-DOC databases can be used to analyze evidence, criminal incidents and contextual facts, suspects and institutions involved, victims and witnesses, as well as protected property and objects.

“Our experience with applying technology to concrete situations of mass abuse in a challenging security environment, is unique and has made NHC an important interlocutor in the region,” comments Aage Borchgrevink, Head of NHC’s Center for International Justice.

NHC’s Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center is the world’s largest archive of human rights violations and international crimes committed in Russia’s North Caucasus-region. It uses an I-DOC database. In 2021 the Center produced a series of articles that were shared widely and attracted visitors to its website. The Center was also used by researchers working with accountability mechanisms.

We have also assisted our partner Truth Hounds in Ukraine in setting up an I-DOCS database for crimes committed in the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. Similarly, the Documentation Section has advised the Ukrainian government regarding a database for the gathering of evidence on crimes.

An important milestone was reached on Wednesday 13 October 2021, when Iryna Venediktova, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, announced that one of its key offices will use I-DOC. The presentation of the project was held in Kyiv with the participation of US Charge d’Affaires, the Ambassador of Norway to Ukraine, Erik Svedahl, Secretary General of the NHC Geir Hønneland (online from Oslo) and the Head of the Prosecutor’s Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Igor Ponochovny.

Throughout 2021 our partner Truth Hounds registered 1346 individual materials in its I-DOCs database for Eastern Ukraine (for comparison, 973 individual materials were activated in 2020). Based on analysis of this evidence, Truth Hounds registered 369 incidents amounting to war crimes or crimes against humanity. These incidents involve 958 victims of violations, 800 witnesses and 417 suspects.

In Belarus NHC have advised our local partner The Belarusian Documentation Center about how to document crimes and human rights abuse, interview techniques and other investigative tools. Crimes and violations continue in Belarus, after the violent government response to demonstrations against the rigging of the August 2020 presidential elections. A breakthrough took place in 2021 when the Center decided to establish a database based on the I-DOC solution, in order to systematize and analyze collected material. The work is dependent on having available resources, i.e., experts and money, and will be implemented as soon as there is capacity.

In Central Asia, CIJ provided online consultations to a partner organization in Tajikistan regarding compiling cases on crimes against humanity. We assisted a partner organization in Kyrgyzstan in sourcing satellite images to document Kyrgyz-Tajik conflict. In addition, CIJ held number of capacity-building trainings for civil society actors from Kazakhstan and Afghanistan.

In addition, throughout the year NHC also consulted with the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and other actors on the use of IT documentation technologies. NHC also engaged in international debates on how to strengthen the integrity and efficiency of the International Criminal Court (ICC) and on how to strengthen co-operation and coordination among states that apply human rights sanctions (‘Magnitsky sanctions’). Norway adopted a new sanction law, which provides the government with the possibility to adopt targeted sanctions against human rights violators, partly as a result of NHC campaigning.