You're listening to a stage talk titled covering
gender -based violence. This week we spoke to
Dr. Alexa Koenig from UC Berkeley. Alexa has
spent much of her recent career looking into
how digital investigations could aid accountability
for war crimes and gender -based violence. Within
this discussion, we focused on her work covering
gender -based violence and what lessons she's
learned from the various groups she's spoken
to and worked with, from legal professionals
to survivor groups. This talk was hosted by me,
Shaila Ma, on Thursday the 20th of February 2025
in the Bellingcat Discord server. Greetings all,
and welcome back. We're here with another Sage
Talk. I know, so quick after last week. I wanted
to bring you a series of talks on the topic of
covering traumatic events. Many of you in this
server have reported on or witnessed traumatic
events in the past year. It's important that
when we're in that research mode that we remember
those that feature in the images or videos you
might be focusing on are real human beings with
thoughts and lives. But how do we continue to
do our jobs and remain respectful and true to
those featured in these atrocities? Well, Dr.
Aleksa Konig next to me is co -faculty director
of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center and a research
professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. She co
-founded the Human Rights Center Investigations
Lab and is a director of the investigations program.
She's also an author, including of such titles,
Graphic Trauma and Meaning in Our Online Lives,
Hiding in Plain Sight and Digital Witness. She
is a very busy lady. She's covered extensively
how to report on potential war crimes and gender
-based violence with open sources and today we're
going to dive into her research on gender -based
violence. Please note today's discussion will
potentially reference abuse towards men, women
and children. If you'd like to ask a question
please do so in the chat as I mentioned it's
in the top right hand side of your screen as
we talk. Please note in your question, if you
don't want me to mention your name, because this
is being audio recorded. And please remember
that there may be people within this space who
have lived experience of what we're discussing.
So please remain respectful. That all being said,
Alexa, I'll pass on to you. Please introduce
your work within this topic. And thank you again
for joining us. Thank you, Charlie, for having
me and thank you to all of Bellingcat and to
everyone for being here today to talk about this
issue that has become incredibly near and dear
to my heart. As Charlie mentioned, our background
at the Human Rights Center has really focused
a lot on digital open source investigations.
I started at the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley
back in 2007 when I was a graduate student and
kind of stuck on in 2012 becoming the executive
director and now co -faculty director. During
the time that I was there, starting around 2010,
one of the things that we noticed in war crimes
investigations more generally was the deep need
for better understanding how sexual violence
happens in conflict. And we launched a sexual
violence and conflict program that my colleague
in Selinger, who's most recently been with the
International Criminal Court, ended up directing.
We also had begun working very closely with the
International Criminal Court and other justice
and accountability actors to think about the
ways that new and emerging technologies were
helping to establish evidence of potential crimes,
particularly international crimes, that needed
some sort of reconciliation. Back in 2010, 2011,
2012, the International Criminal Court was coming
up on its 10 -year anniversary. And unfortunately,
the Office of the Prosecutor was losing a lot
of its cases. One of the things that a research
team from our center determined was that the
main complaint of the judges was that the prosecution
was not bringing in corroborating information
that would help support what survivors were saying
they were experiencing in their communities.
And so that really began this parallel quest
for the last decade and a half of thinking about
how things like information posted to social
media sites, information captured on smartphones
and disseminated might be useful as evidence
in courts of law. Those two trajectories, though,
on sexual violence and conflict and technology
and war really did not converge until fairly
recently. And I'd say in the broader field of
war crimes investigations more generally, they
still have not converged. When I did training
in war crimes investigations with the Institute
for International Criminal Investigations, we
certainly had a unit on sexual and gender -based
violence. But those specialized topics are kept
very separate from digital open source And it's
only been recently that we've begun to see a
real hunger to try to begin to bring those worlds
together because of the incredible utility of
digital open source methods for helping us make
sense of what's happened in the world. We now
have a professional training program where we
do try to train people on the careful use of
these methodologies. There are really two, I
think, big challenges in the space that today
open source investigators are really trying to
grapple with to figure out how we make this work
as ethical, as efficient, and as effective as
possible. One is the gross under prosecution
and accountability for sexual and gender based
crimes. We know that historically those crimes
have been deeply under prosecuted. And even most
recently at the International Criminal Court
where there was a successful conviction of a
gentleman by the name of Al Hassan who was accused
of egregious international crimes in Timbuktu
and Mali. He ended up being convicted of almost
all of the charges brought against him with the
exception of sexual and gender -based violence.
This is despite abundant evidence. This is despite
a lot of the incidents overlapping for other
kinds of crimes like religious persecution. So
there really, I think there is a recognition
that we really do need to think through the evidentiary
foundations of such cases and begin to identify
the gaps that are allowing these kinds of crimes
to go under addressed. At the same time, I think
there's a real skepticism and in some cases a
real concern. with bringing digital methodologies
into these investigations and these prosecutions.
So I work very closely with a few colleagues
from around the world, Juan Ulick Egan. He and
I've done a number of different studies of what
is, how do we begin to fill that gap between
the hunger to get more justice and accountability,
the deep knowledge of methods that have been
pioneered by groups like Belincat. to think about
the use of these digital methods and actually
getting some form of success. And so we've talked
with three different sets of individuals. One
group have been people who are trained in investigating
sexual and gender -based violence through very
traditional methodologies like face -to -face
interviewing or collecting physical evidence,
getting medical records, et cetera. Second have
been digital open source investigators. What
are the challenges that they've seen and that
they're experiencing? And then the third are
gender experts who really have kind of a broad
sense of the ways that different gendered crimes
can play out. What we have consistently found
is that on the side of digital open source investigators,
there's been sort of a response of I don't mean
that in a negative sense. I just mean lack of
awareness of some of the specialized ways that
different kinds of terminology, different kinds
of communication patterns happen, specifically
with these deeply stigmatized crimes that may
be different than other things that we're detecting
through open methods, like attacks on hospitals
or the bombing of buildings. On the side of the
sexual and gender -based violence investigators,
I'd say that their experience or their response
has ranged from skeptical to even hostile to
having digital investigators get involved. And
they have some really good reasons for that.
One of the things that we've seen in the sexual
and gender -based violence community is that
over the last 20 to 30 years, I pioneered a lot
of new resources and tools for investigating
these crimes. Those have all been, and I think
rightfully so, putting the survivor at the center
of those methodologies and trying to think about
how to do no more harm with the investigative
process. They've also really been trying to bolster
the response of judges to the evidence that comes
into courts. So getting the judges to not have
a quote unquote he said she said type of situation
where they basically are saying we need additional
evidence to break that tie, but to believe survivors
and to have that testimony have sufficient weight.
So I think that one of the fears that we have
heard repeatedly from those traditional investigators
is If it begins to be that these cases bring
in more video and photographic evidence or other
stuff that may be pulled from social media, eventually
the judges may demand that kind of evidence and
actually have it weaken or in some ways undercut
the oral testimony that these survivors may give
in court. I do think that based on the research
that I've been doing with my colleagues, one
of the things that we're trying to basically
communicate across these areas of practice is
actually Even if that is the concern, there are
still so many ways that digital open source information
can be helpful. For example, digital open source
information can help prove the crime base that
sexual and gender based violence has taken place.
And whether you're looking for that affirmatively
or you stumble across it in the course of your
investigative work, it is really important evidence
that could potentially be helpful if it's handled.
to forensic and ethical standards. The second
is it can provide really valuable indirect evidence
that sexual and gender -based violence has occurred
and who may have perpetrated it. So everything
from identifying the units who may have swept
through a town where we believe these things
have happened. to identify what are called proxy
indicators of sexual and gender -based violence,
I think can be really helpful. So by proxy indicators,
if any of you aren't familiar with that term,
I know there's a great piece that was written
by Hannah Bagdazar, who used to be with Bellingcat
on this. But war crimes investigators have identified
a number of different phenomena that you might
see in a conflict context that indicate that
sexual and gender -based violence has taken place,
even if you don't have the direct evidence itself.
So some examples of that would be things like
the separation of women and girls from men and
boys, things like the burning of villages. I
do think there's tremendous possibilities there,
particularly with the advent of artificial intelligence
-based technologies and machine learning, to
begin to find the signal in the noise in ways
that humans may not pick up on, particularly
if you have a number of these proxy indicators
that have all converged at a particular time
and a particular place. The third category where
I think digital open source information can be
deeply helpful is on providing the context or
the contextual evidence around a particular incident.
This is especially relevant for when you're trying
to establish it in an international crime like
genocide or crimes against humanity or war crimes
have taken place. In that case, you're not just
trying to prove that a rape or other forms of
sexual violence have occurred, but you need to
establish that there's a nexus to war if you're
establishing war crimes. You need to prove that
this kind of pattern of behavior was systematic
or widespread. If you're going to establish this
as an international crime against humanity, and
if you want to establish this as a piece of genocide,
to establish that the intent behind the perpetrators
was to destroy in whole or in part a particular
group on the basis of their ethnicity and nationality,
religion, et cetera. So I think overcoming that
and making sure that more traditional investigators
have a broad understanding of the full range
of utility of these methods is deeply important.
At the same time, I think there's some real opportunities
for training among this community of practice
to understand the fears and the concerns of both
survivors and traditional investigators and to
think through kind of the complementary function
that this sort of information can share. The
other thing that I might say is that We've heard
from a lot of traditional investigators who are
also just deeply concerned about anyone investigating
these issues without specialized training. In
part, it's because of the social stigmas and
harms that can come from the revelation that
someone has experienced sexual and gender -based
violence. This obviously can have very differential
harms depending on the community or culture from
which the survivor's been impacted. So everything
from honor killings, if it turns out that someone
has been raped, to other forms of stigmatization
and ostracization are really important to think
through. I've certainly heard stories of open
source investigators either trying to crowdsource
who the perpetrators were for a particular rape
and having that really create a negative backlash
for them and for the survivor. I've also heard
of information getting posted online or amplified
online by members of the digital open source
investigations community where survivors who
were going to be testifying in court recanted
their testimony when it came out more publicly
that they had experienced sexual and gender -based
violence. because in their communities and their
cultures, the backlash would be so great that
they may be expelled from their families or their
communities, and they were not understandably
willing to take that risk. So I think there's
a few tools that are beginning to emerge that
I would also just want to make this community
aware of if you're not already. As part of this
phenomenon of trying to make investigations and
investigators really sensitive to the phenomena
that are unique to this area of practice, There
are a number of tools that have been created
for more traditional investigations. One of those
is an international protocol on investigating
sexual and gender -based violence. I believe
that came out initially around 2014. I do think
even for the digital investigations community,
it's good to review that set of guidelines, even
though there's very little mention of digital
methodologies, because a lot of the fundamental
concepts of how to be sensitive in your investigations
hold true. The second is something called the
Maraud code. It is named after Nadia Murad, who
won the Nobel Peace Prize for her activism around
the treatment of sexual and gender -based violence
survivors. She is herself a Yazidi activist who
unfortunately suffered under the genocide perpetrated
against the Yazidi community. And I think one
of the things she became very overwhelmed with
as this genocide was being investigated was how
often journalists or war crimes investigators
or trying to get information from her and really
overwhelming individuals like herself and others
who've experienced these kinds of crimes. And
she really wanted to give back to the broader
investigations community about how to and how
not to handle these kinds of things, both confidentially
and when putting information out publicly. So
the Maraud Code was a partnership that was informed
by a global consultative process. was coordinated
by the Institute for International Criminal Investigations
and can be accessed for free in a number of languages
on their website. It was also in partnership
with Nadia Murad's organization, and it was informed
by the input of a number of survivors. The challenge
with the Maraud code, however, is that while
it does in a few places mention digital open
source investigations, the primary focus really
does assume that you are face to face with the
survivor and that most of the evidence that you're
collecting is testimonial evidence. So a number
of us from a number of different open source
investigative organizations have kind of worked
together to begin to translate the Maraud code
for digital open source investigative practice.
This is a document. It's basically been called
the Open Source Researcher's Guide to Systematic
and Conflict -Related Sexual Violence. It will
go up publicly in about two weeks, we're estimating.
And the idea is that we'll have it open and available
for people to use for approximately a six -month
period and to give input. So we'll have an input
form where, as you're using it, one thing we'd
greatly appreciate is feedback on what works
for you and what doesn't. It is probably the
hardest project I have ever contributed to, to
draft, even though it is again informed by global
consultation of different units around the world
and different individual investigators. in part
because we're trying to bring those sexual and
gender -based violence to very experienced investigators
together with digital open source investigators.
And I think from an ethics perspective, we've
really needed both a push and a pull. So a push
to encourage people to think about the ways this
information can be useful as evidence and to
not overlook it or undervalue it in the bigger
arc of an international criminal investigation,
but to also pull back a little bit and to think
about sort of the how to keep the survivor centered,
how to keep them in the driver's seat. I think
one of the biggest challenges we've had is, you
know, if rape is a crime that is characterized
by a lack of consent of the survivor to what
is done to them. The last thing we want is a
lack of their own consent for how the information
about their own experience is being utilized
for investigation or court processes. So how
we keep them in the driver's seat and don't gamify
some of these investigations, but make it a true
partnership where it's appropriate to do so.
So that will be coming up. I think the last couple
of things that I'd want to mention is I did write
with two colleagues, Anthony Galli and Simone
Levine, a piece that was again informed by a
number of different people. input on the role
of consent in digital open source investigations
of sexual and gender -based violence. That came
from a bunch of work that had been done by incredible
researchers and investigators who would write
about this topic and say, of course, we always
need consent to use this material. I think one
of the questions that I had as a practitioner
on the side of we also run investigations in
addition to doing kind of more the academic research
was whose consent are we even talking about when
we're in the digital context? Is it the person
who captured the information on their smartphone?
Is it the person who posted it? Is it the bystanders
who may be in the background? Is it just the
victim? Is the victim alive or dead or can they
even be located? What is the best way to reach
out to them when All we may have is a handle
or a digital profile, and we may not know who
was behind that or managing that profile. All
of these, I think, were things that we didn't
mean to make more complicated on purpose, but
I think were very real questions that we were
having as we were working on these things. And
so I think one of the things that we ended up
putting together was a typology of asking, as
the open source investigator, what is the intended
use of this information? So for example, the
consent we may need if we want to use this as
crime -based evidence, meaning evidence that
this kind of crime has taken place, may be very
different than just getting leads to who may
have been present at the time or who may have
taken additional video or may be able to testify.
Whose consent are we really talking about? Are
we trying to use this almost more for intellectual
property reasons to illustrate something that
we're putting out as an article? Or is this something
that would actually come into a court of law
to try to establish a fact at issue in a trial?
And then, of course, the nature of the content.
Is this direct evidence, indirect evidence, contextual
evidence, et cetera? I've probably been talking
for way too long, so maybe the last thing I'll
mention that will be coming out that I hope is
helpful is my colleague, Lulik, and I are working
on a book right now that will hopefully be out
next year from University of California Press
that is specifically on all the ways that digital
open source information. can hopefully help to
strengthen these investigations and prosecutions
of some of these deeply underappreciated or sometimes
under -investigated crimes. Lynn, maybe I'll
turn it back to you. Amazing. Thank you so much
for running us through basically your entire
career in 15 minutes. I really appreciate it.
There's been a lot of people really liking some
of the references that you've made. The Murad
Code is actually pinned in our gender -based
violence channel as well. So if you are interested
in this topic and you want to dig deeper within
the server, we actually have a space for that.
It's called hashtag gender -based violence misogyny,
and it's linked in the chat. We've also got a
few people very excited about your two -week
publication and your book, which is great. I
can see that people are typing questions as we
speak. Please make sure that you're asking your
questions in the chat. But first, I wanted to
ask, Alexa, and this is a little bit more personal
before we delve into the gender -based part.
What really made you start looking into this
particular topic? Was it the gaps as you spoke
about? Is that why you felt that this particular
topic needed more research on it? I think part
of it's a little, what is it? I think I enjoy
the tricky gray zones where there doesn't seem
to be much light being shown. And I do think
it was sort of the unique confluence of working
at the Human Rights Center. I was a graduate
student researcher on the sexual and gender -based
violence, sexual and conflict, sexual violence
and conflict program when it was started in 2010.
And so I had had the incredible experience of
getting to... Kim and her work in that area and
going places like Kenya and hearing from lawyers,
from judges, from survivors. Particularly one
of the things that we first started looking at
was the 2007 -2008 elections in Kenya where there
was unfortunately a tremendous amount of conflict
that broke out and it was characterized by rampant
sexual and gender -based violence. So hearing
how that was playing out in various communities.
and just the strength of survivors in demanding
better accountability for what they had experienced
and identifying the gaps in the law where the
law was not well situated to actually address
those challenges with illuminating. So one of
the examples was that Kenya had a very progressive
new set of laws to combat sexual and gender -based
violence, but one provision at the time said
that any woman, and they assumed that the survivor
was a woman, not a man or a child, but any woman
who reports or basically accuses a man of perpetrating
sexual and gender -based violence. If she loses
her case, she will be subject to the same punishment
as the man would have been had he been convicted.
Well, given the fact that it is so difficult
to win sexual and gender -based violence cases,
the standards of proof are very high, the available
evidence is often very thin, particularly if
people didn't go right away to a medical facility
or that information wasn't collected in a forensic
manner, that is a huge bar to ask any survivor
to go through. And so it was little things like
really seeing the leadership from these Kenyan
survivor communities to push back against the
way these laws have been formed. in ways that
really didn't take into consideration their lived
experience. So I became deeply dedicated to really
thinking through some of these issues and what,
as someone based in Berkeley, California, what
we could be doing to survive these ground -up
movements to make things better and to shine
a light on these underlooked crimes. The second
was... I was put almost like back in 2010, 2011
on the International Criminal Court related work
and that I became obsessed. We hosted a first
workshop at the International Criminal Court
in 2012 where we brought together people who
were pioneering new uses of satellite imagery,
people who were really thinking about the spread
of the smartphone globally and how information
could be captured. how information you capture
on your smartphone, what tweaks needed to be
made to make this have maximum weight in courtrooms.
So things like capturing the 360 -degree pan
so it was easier to geolocate this information
or chronolocate this data. It was little tips
and tricks that we began to work with a number
of different NGOs to try to disseminate out to
activist communities and conflict areas. That
became my whole bread and butter was the new
technologies piece, looking at drones, looking
at big data sets and data analytics, the rise
of machine learning processes and how we could
harness this in more sensitive ways. Kim was
running one program and I was running the other
and they were very different cultures and communities.
So her community of practice was almost all women
led. The communities that I was part of, I was
often the only woman in the room. I remember
going to a meeting of legal investigators at
one point, and there were probably 45, 40 to
50 people in the room. They were seated in an
O with kind of the investigative team at the
front. And there was one woman, and I forget
which country in Africa she was from, and there
was me, and they put us at the top end of each
U, and then the rest were all men around this
giant circle. And I remember feeling like I was
there to represent all kind of Western Northern
women, and she was there to represent all women
from the global South. And it was very, it was
just a very different culture and climate. And
then you take war and conflict investigations,
and you add on top of that the tech layer. And
it just was a different way of thinking. And
I think very much we were leaning into war, conflict,
more visible aspects of that, particularly because
social media and smartphones had really helped
to begin to build this open source investigative
space. So it was very visually oriented. And
we're talking about sexual and gender -based
violence. Well, I had done a dissertation on
the experiences of men in Guantanamo, many of
whom unfortunately experienced sexual and gender
-based violence themselves. But the thing that
I remember from my interviews with them is that
when issues of SGBV would come up, it would be
very much looking down. It was much more subtle
ways of communicating that this had happened.
And it may be phrases like, I was tortured like
all the rest. Oftentimes when we talk about men,
The terminology that's used is very different
than it is for women. It's almost always identified
as torture and not a sexual and gender -based
violence, which is why the end of prosecution
and investigation for them is even greater than
for women oftentimes. And just, it's often little
physical things that you may not notice. There
is a longtime war crimes investigator named Romeo
Delaire, and he spent decades boots on the ground
in places like the former Yugoslavia, I believe
Rwanda, etc. He's written in his autobiography
that it took him years to begin to even just
recognize the subtle visual cues that come up
when SGDB has happened. So noticing the ways
that someone's legs may be apart, and I'm sorry
if that gets too graphic, or there may be broken
off, you know, shotguns or broom handles nearby.
He would see that someone had been killed, but
he wouldn't pick up these kind of more subtle
visual indicators that this may also be a bigger
set of crimes. So I became obsessed with how
do we begin to bring those two worlds together
in a way that can have greater impact understanding
the gross under -prosecution of SGDV and knowing
the deep dedication of this open source investigative
community to bring the best that everyone can
to these efforts to pursue justice. That is super
interesting. Maybe towards the end of the talk,
if you could just write Romeo's full name, because
I had a little Google, but can't find him. And
I think that research is incredible. And I think
that book would be something that a lot of people
would like to read in the server. It's interesting
you mentioned judiciary, and it's really interesting
that globally, there's this problem of convicting
gender -based violence crimes globally. It's
not just one country problem, it's everywhere.
Malarika asked, is there a similar project underway
to help establish guidelines for judges in analyzing
different forms of evidence? You mentioned not
wanting to devalue testimonial evidence by using
too much digital OSINT evidence, but where else
is this dialogue happening and is it codified
anywhere? How does that work? Oh, it's such a
great question. I think about eight or nine other
NGOs got together a couple summers ago, and we
have now just launched a judge's guide to digital
open source investigations. And the idea is that
it would be kind of a way to help explain some
of the basics of open source investigative methodologies
like geolocation and chronolocation, ways this
information can come in as crime -based evidence
or as lead or linkage information. So that is
available. It's now available in a number of
different languages, I think like seven or eight
languages. If anyone wants a copy, please feel
free to reach out. We can get that to you. It's
all free. But it's not specific to this particular
set of crimes. And I do think there's an extraordinary
amount of work that still needs to go into strengthening
every link in the chain of accountability. So
what I deeply appreciate about the Bellingcat
community and others like it, and kind of the
broader ecosystem that we're all a part of, is
that we put so much work into pioneering methodologies
and thinking through how we can maximize the
evidentiary value from the information that's
put up in public spaces online. But then how
do we think about the ways that trial attorneys
are going to use it in court? Oftentimes, if
they don't have a facility with how to explain
these methodologies, then they're likely to either
scrap them or not be able to defend them well.
I think defense attorneys really need a lot of
support and even knowing what the weaknesses
are of this. My career has all been about pushing
out these methods and trying to get them more
mainstreamed, particularly in legal process.
But it was probably about five or six years ago,
triggered in part by the really phenomenal response
to the Albert Folley explainer that was put out
by Bellingcat. It's still one that I use in every
class that I teach because it's such a good overview
of how satellite imagery can be triangulated
with video, with other bits of information to
try to help establish the who, what, when, where,
why, and how. What something in me was just the
broad -based, oh my gosh, Bellingcat has proven
it. it's so clear now legally what's happened.
And that made me nervous as an attorney because
as a lawyer, some of you have probably seen this
piece, but there's one still from a video where
there's a number of dark spots on the soil. Like
as an attorney, just saying that these dark spots
in the soil are likely blood or whatever is not
going to be sufficient for actually establishing
that this is in fact what you claim it to be.
Like you would want soil samples, you would want
testimonies. And so really helping Defense, understand
what questions to even ask. If our goal is to
get to the truth and full transparency, we really
need robust teams on either side to help bring
that to the surface. And this is kind of betraying
my Western lawyer tendencies to even say that
in the first place. So I do think there's a powerful
role of storytelling and journalism in this entire
ecosystem to drive up attention to things that
need to be paid attention to and to motivate
lawyers to even pick up these cases in the first
place because people care. But then there's the
legal evidentiary side where the standards are
much higher and you're not necessarily telling.
just one story, but you're having to really interrogate
that story to hopefully make sure the right person
goes behind bars and that this is in fact something
where, you know, sometimes I think there's a
lot of great research out there that says, as
human beings, we over rely on what we can see
with our eyes. And we tend to fill in a lot of
gaps in our understanding with assumptions that
we're not even aware we're making. And there
is a lot of research that suggests that there's
not a one -to -one correlation between confidence
and accuracy in analyzing visual material. And
as open source investigators, I think it's really
important that we understand those weaknesses
and potential fallacies, that we can do what
we can to potentially offset them if what we
really want is the truth. And I think I've drifted
way too off stream. So that's a big piece. I
do think one thing we would love is, as we're
putting out this open source investigators guide
to investigating sexual and gender -based violence,
in addition to really hoping to crowdsource feedback
about what works, what doesn't, where there's
gaps that you wish could be filled for the final
version. Any citations to great resources that
you think should have more attention from this
broader community of practice, we would love
to make sure that we're integrating that, understanding
that I think even among kind of the global consultation
that we've been doing, that's obviously going
to be a biased perspective and there may be some
great resources that we've overlooked. Somebody
in the chat has already found Romeo Delaire for
me, so thank you so much. They've already put
the links in there. Speaking of kind of recognizing
science, Sarah, one of our lovely mods, has written,
Hi Alexa, recently there have been articles about
sexual violence occurring in the women's area
of Muzanzi prison in Goma during the seizure
of the city by the M23 rebels. There are a lot
of open source videos of the interior of the
prison. The articles which document this incident
just use the traditional, there are reports,
versus an examination of the scene. Based on
Hannah's articles, which by the way I've linked
in the chat, I can identify some indicators.
Burning the scene down, burned bodies, some bottles.
I feel like there's enough to talk about in an
article, but frankly I don't feel good about
writing it. I feel I'm... not educated enough
to say, yes, this is a good example. Do you know
of any further resources or subject matter experts
I could talk to to help me evaluate what I've
seen? Thanks. Such a good question also. Absolutely.
I do think that one thing I really appreciate,
Charlie, about your work and what you've all
been leading on in Bellingcat is putting together
a subgroup of people who are really interested
in these particular issues that hopefully can
be peer reviewers and resources for each other.
Certainly, I think that if you wanted to reach
out to us or to the Institute for International
Criminal Investigations, we can always give insight
and input. One of my extraordinary colleagues,
Andrea Richardson, she worked as a war crimes
investigator for a long time and her specialized
area was open source investigation. She had graduated
from our program alongside Hia and really kind
of deployed those digital open source skills
to work with this international investigative
body looking at sexual and gender based violence
crimes. But I think she's one of the best people
that I can think of that really has a deep dedication
to this intersection and can think that through.
So yeah, I really, we then, and this is something
I'd also love to bring back to the Institute
for International Criminal Investigations. So
they are working with us on developing these
guides, but they also work and lead classes and
trainings on sexual and gender -based violence.
And they have an extraordinary roster. of experts
in that space. What I'd love to see is more coming
together of digital open source investigators
with those traditional investigators, with the
gendered crime experts, to be able to even see
if we could create kind of a sub like group of
all of us to help each other grow and learn about
how to make these investigations as robust as
possible. There's someone I had interviewed for
Elix in my book who said, You know, one of the
big challenges in the space, for example, is
that when you learn a foreign language, you learn
how to ask how to order food in a restaurant
or where the bathroom is or how to find a particular
location. But you're not taught the words for
sex, certainly not the slang terms for sex. You
might pick that up kind of colloquially. You're
also just not taught the terms for parts of the
body. And so there's a lot of kind of a lack
of that understanding of language and how it
plays out. I'm hopeful that machine learning
processes can help us identify these proxy indicators
that you're talking about in ways that we may
not have a tremendous degree of confidence, but
maybe this is a great way for machines to sort
of complement humans in helping us make sense
of what actually we may have and fully mining
that and helping us understand the reliability
and trustworthiness. I also think machine learning
processes could help us begin to identify terminology,
the way it's being used, the ways that subtle
visual cues may be popping up that correlate
with sexual and gender -based violence so that
we just have an easier time as investigators
not overlooking this. Definitely not alone in
feeling like there's not enough to publish on
this. I have talked with major media publications
who've been very nervous about even saying, For
example, in a very famous conflict that SGVB
has happened, they're very confident in saying
hospitals have been attacked or schools have
been attacked. Not that, because the indicators
are often so subtle. So I do think getting a
couple of these experts to say, yeah, these things
are subtle, but this makes so much sense and
it's so common. And what we've seen repeatedly
is that particularly in detention facilities,
this is rampant. And here's what we know. I think
that could be brought together. Yeah, the reason
we wanted this talk and what we've been talking
about quite a lot in the gender -based violence
channel is the need for training, more training
on this and reporting in general. And hopefully
this discussion is very nice base layer for something
that we can potentially pursue going forward.
Just linked to that slightly. Alpha says, so
it's kind of touched on culture as a significant
issue in pursuing justice in many SGBV cases.
What are additional precautions we can take to
bypass cultural clashes and the issues they can
create so the evidence is compelling whoever
sees it? I think that with this topic and the
subject area more than any others that I've personally
investigated, it's It kind of calls on the best
part of open source investigations, which is
the collaborative component of it and the multidisciplinary
component of it. I do think ideally that each
of us, if we are working on these issues, kind
of begins to build a roster for ourselves and
for our teams if we're working as part of a team
of like who's a gender expert that we can talk
to who if we're not from that community or that
culture is someone that has knowledge of sexual
and gender -based violence in that community
and culture who can help us understand the risks
of what we may be thinking of putting out that
also help us pick up the signals and the noise
that we may not ourselves be detecting. I think
having that one, you know, we're doing a lot
right now in gender persecution in Iran. And
one of the things that's been so invaluable is
just having a couple of Iranian researchers on
the team who had to leave the country, who deeply,
I mean, And some of them just pick up things
that would take me, like they can geolocate something
in a matter of seconds because they're like,
oh yeah, I used to walk on that street. I mean,
I think we've all had that experience when we're
from outside a community, how long it may take
versus someone who's familiar with that community.
I think particularly with sexual and gender -based
violence and the ways that gets wrapped into
cultures and relationships. It's important. So
ideally, I think you'd have a digital open source
investigative expert. You'd have someone who
deeply understands the culture and context and
someone who understands sexual and gender based
violence and how it plays out. And ideally, that
becomes your team or your circle of advisors
as you're pulling this together. This community
is so generous to each other that I do think
that particularly being there for each other
as we recognize that this area needs to be built
out and built out very carefully and thoughtfully.
I think is kind of an exciting opportunity, but
I do realize it's a lot of extra work to begin
to build those networks. As the internet grows
and we're seeing new forms of media from the
arrival of short form videos, for example, the
control of your image as a general person has
become a lot harder. Even now, we seek credit
approval to show people's images and videos and
things like that. But we don't necessarily do
the same thing for people who have been videoed,
as you mentioned, in these circumstances. You
mentioned that you've done a lot of a bit of
research on consent and the possibility of seeking
consent. What has that research told you? And
is there a future in any sense where we might
be kind of contacting or reaching out to the
survivor in question and asking them for consent
to use a video that we possibly have analyzed.
Yeah, that's again a great question. You know,
I think when we were doing the research for the
consent piece, which honestly took four years
because there was such little guidance on this
topic, who you are and what you're doing this
for I think really does matter as to whether
and if so how you should reach out. So one of
the places where I think we ultimately landed
is that If you're doing this for legal accountability,
are you the right person to be reaching out?
Or if you maybe think that you need consent from
a survivor or someone who posted the video who
may have been a victim in other ways themselves
or in the same ways themselves. Should you reach
out to someone in your network who is an expert
in trauma -informed communication, who understands
how survivors work in that community or have
deep networks of NGOs? I think NGOs are often
an overlooked resource, ones that help survivors,
to basically even just call or contact one of
those NGOs and say, Here's the situation. I've
got this video. I'd like to write on it. I'd
like to get consent. What would be the appropriate
way for me to reach out? Or can I reach out through
you, depending on what your internal code of
ethics for your organization or that you have
developed for yourself may be? And really think
about if you're the right person and have the
right training. I think that's one thing that
we do discourage and the guide is reaching out
directly without having someone, maybe you have
trauma -informed training and maybe you're an
expert in SGBV, in which case I think it's a
different scenario. But if your predominant training
and expertise is in digital open source investigations,
who can I work with who may be the right person
to do this in an informed way? The other thing
is I think, you know, being really aware that
digital modes of communication can be deeply
dangerous. So for example, on Twitter, it used
to be back in 2016, 2017, you'd tweet at someone
and say, hey, can I use your video? And then
I think the norm began to shift. OK, do this
in a private space. Send them a DM instead. And
then it began to be growing awareness, particularly
when we're dealing with issues like this, since
we don't really know who's behind an account.
Even if it's a survivor saying that this is their
account, it could be their husband or their partner
or someone else who has control over them or
their trafficker who actually has control, or
maybe it is them, but someone else has access
to it as well. And we could be raising risks
just by reaching out that we're not aware of.
So then I think it became about encrypted modes
of communication, but that of course takes, that
can be difficult to ascertain how and when. So
again, I think this is where I think digital
investigations planning is also really, really
important. When we were building the Berkeley
Protocol on digital open source investigations,
I think the most valuable things in that, because
they're just basically foundational principles.
Everyone needs to develop their standard operating
practices on top of it. They help the International
Criminal Court do it, but we realize each team
does that, has to do that for themselves, know
what technologies and tools and processes they're
using. But I think the most valuable things are
the four annexes in the back. And one thing I've
really become a huge proponent of is at the outset
of any investigation, whether it's because you
stumbled on something you think is important
to write about or because you're deliberately
investigating something, is building out that
digital investigations plan and really kind of
thinking about who that network of supporters
that you want to have around you will be in advance
and letting them know, hey, I'm up to reach out
if you have a little bit of time. Invaluable
advice. Yeah, I used to cover trafficking for
BBC television and getting in touch with a trafficking
charity who was very used to speaking to women
who had experienced the sort of thing they were
speaking to the women about prior to filming
and prior to those interviews was incredibly
important and really shaped the way that we approached
that. conversation and led to much better testimony
as well. So I really do encourage you to reach
out to NGOs. I think they're fantastic at being
able to guide journalists in that space. And
yeah, I wanted to ask this question by Inez because
it was asked a while ago. Do you have any experience
with covering a violence directed towards trans
people and gay people, especially those in countries
where their sole existence is illegal. Do you
see any differences to this when it comes to
covering gender -based violence? One of the things
that we recommend when we do trainings on doing
digital open source investigations of sexual
and gender -based violence is mapping out the
legal situation in whatever country or context
you're investigating. So, you know, even if you're
from the country, sometimes some of the laws
just are unclear or they're rapidly shifting.
So understanding what's illegal in that country,
whether it's homosexual behavior has been criminalized,
if there's a death penalty attached to it, if
trans people are particularly under attack, legally
and socially, I think Mapping that out so you're
aware of the risks of the scope of your reporting,
I think that can help you to design an investigation
and reporting plan that's sensitive to these
issues. We are, in fact, doing work right now
on looking at attacks on trans populations. I'd
say the way that we have pivoted is to really
try to be careful about whose story we feature.
So we may, for example, have evidence of 30 different
attacks. We will, of course, prioritize if we're
going to do anything public facing. using materials
from people who have said, I want my name attached
to this. I want to be public. But we won't also,
of course, just take that at face value. We'll
assess, are they out of the country? Are they
in a country now that is much friendlier to the
kinds of issues and challenges that they're facing
and much more supportive? Do they have a support
circle around them? How can we even know that?
I do think there's a heightened care. And a lot
of times it comes down to the level of abstraction
by which we'll report about these things. So
will we represent 30 different people with a
flower icon as opposed to their face? We'll really
try and do that threat modeling and that risk
modeling. Of course, if we have direct communication
with that person, we'll also have a conversation
with them. We just put out a report. It was co
-authored by a colleague at the Atlantic Council
and Andrea Richardson from our team on gender
persecution in Iran. And we did a really careful
assessment of all of the case studies that we
feature. We, of course, had digital open source
information relevant to a vastly greater number
of incidents. featured the ones that were already
very publicly known, where the risks to people's
families were less because the families have
left the country. There was one incident where
we had identified a number of attacks on women
who were accused of wearing improper hijab. And
we blurred their faces, of course, and we didn't
use their names in those instances. Their videos
had gone viral, but they were not people who
had come out publicly and said, we want greater
amplification of our story. We did make the assessment
that we could keep it enough obscured that we
would not be doing additional harm. But we also
went to a number of journalists who we knew had
reported extensively on these issues on the ground
in Iran and asked them, do you know where these
survivors are that you reported on that we pulled
information about? Now, do you feel that they're
at risk? And so we did a number of checks of
this with people that we knew were from frontline
communities towards the people that we work with.
So I do think it just takes a heightened level
of care, heightened level of planning. I would
get peer review on any threat modeling before
you put anything out to just see if there's anything
that you may be missing. And of course, if you're
in contact with the survivors and they can review
what you're going to put out before you do, I
think this is one of those instances where I
would really want their understanding. There's
one time where I did an interview of someone
and I have it recorded and on the record what
this individual said they'd experienced. And
when I put it in the book, I was so great in
my book graphic. I was so grateful that I had
run the quotes by every person that I quoted,
because when I sent her those quotes, she was
like, I never would have said that. There's just
no way. It's there recorded. I have the transcripts.
But from an ethical perspective, I scrapped that
from the book because I realized what was probably
happening was she realized that what she had
shared, well, from the journalistic perspective,
was something you want to put in the book because
it just grabs attention that she had realized
the risks were too great to have that piece of
her story known. So yeah, I got scrapped. Yeah,
I can't count on my hand how many times that's
happened to me where I've interviewed someone
And then after, when going back with their comments,
they've been a bit shocked by what they'd said
to me. And that informed consent is then taken
away. And it's really important that you respect
that decision. Talking about hostile environments,
Sarah actually has to follow up question from
her other one earlier and says, any tips for
dealing with an audience who is actively hostile
to the concept of sexual violence occurring,
namely the side of the perpetrator? Often I hear
things like, burn bodies are the result of munitions,
for example. There are bottles all over and don't
mean anything. Clothes come off when you drag
a body, for example. Sexual violence will always
have subtle indications and how do you push back?
Yeah. That is calm. It's fascinating in this
area of practice to see the deep psychological
resistance to acknowledging sexual and gender
-based violence, even when it may be right in
front of you. I do think as an investigator,
it's important to know what those pushbacks are,
like those really powerful illustrations you
just gave of like, you drag a body and the clothes
come off, or the bodies are burned, you know,
through ammunition, as opposed to deliberately
set on fire, et cetera. I think this is where
I see such tremendous potential and power in
bringing some of the sexual and gender -based
violence experts together with this community
of practice, because I think they have the years
of experience, the decades of experience and
evidence that burning of these bodies after sexual
and gender -based violence is common, that rape
in prisons is almost always happening in these
detention facilities and kind of overcoming some
of the stereotypes and assumptions. And I think
that's where we get in trouble as humans is we
do have psychological resistance. At the same
time, you are going to have to be able to defend
your analysis. And sometimes it may be even getting
ahead of those critiques and saying, here's what
some people say, you know, here's what the pushback
may be that bodies are dragged and clothes come
off. However, I spoke with these experts and
what they have communicated to me is and being
really and I think this is the power of transparency,
which I knew this community in particular has
really promulgated is being fully transparent
about the potential critiques, the potential
limitations, the potential. flaws in analysis
that could exist, but why you remain confident
and really being for, and I think this is the
lawyer training again of being able to counter
those and almost counter them before they're
even made. I used to train first year law students.
And it was, you need to be able to make the other
side's argument even better than they can if
you really want your arguments to hold up in
a court of law. Because you need to have thought
through what is the response to each of those.
And sadly, I think this is one area where we
really do need to be ahead of that curve and
be anticipating all the pushback and continuing
to push back. And I think this is where it takes
a spine. And I know everyone here has one. I
have never received more pushback than on this
topic, whether it's from the SGBV investigators,
the traditional investigators themselves, who
basically stay out at times. If you don't have
specialized training, you shouldn't be touching
this with a 10 -foot pole. to others who have
seen so much of this and it's so underreported
and undervalued that they're like we need to
be doing everything we can to help people understand
the full scope and scale and impact of this work.
This is where peer groups become I do think invaluable
in encountering and sharing resources. One more
thing on assumptions. One of the first projects
I ever worked on we had just founded the investigations
lab at Berkeley in 2016. And we were working
with a team of lawyers and there were pieces
including potential SGVV that they had been investigating
in a detention complex in a particular country
that I have to keep meaningless because the case
is still ongoing. But there was someone who'd
smuggled a bunch of footage out of those detention
facilities and fled to a third country and now
had a hit man after him because the government
was very unhappy with what this person smuggled
out. So I flew to that third country. I brought
the hard drive home. Our task at that time was,
could we verify the videos that had been collected?
And so we did that. And at the end of this, we
asked the partner organization, do you want us
to see what else might be out there in digital
open sources? And they said, you can try, but
you're not going to find anything. Like, this
person had to smuggle this footage out of the
country. Like, there's just no way. We found
so much evidence on YouTube of similar patterns
of sexual and gender -based violence and torture
and other crimes that when we handed over all
the digital open source information, what we
were told was, oh my goodness, this may actually
now no longer be a domestic -level crime, but
an international crime against humanity because
it's so widespread and systematic, or appears
to be. And I think that's something that we've
just seen is so hard to know what we don't know
as investigators. But I think the SGBV investigators,
traditional investigators, often don't understand
the full depth and breadth of potentially invaluable
information that may be now posted to online
spaces where people are communicating. And I
think the online investigators may not understand
the full range of subtle ways that you can detect
that this is happening so that you can pick it
up as an investigator. I think we need these
merged kind of research teams and find the right
people who really have a passion for this to
help grow this area of practice because I do
think there is so much potential. Absolutely.
I just wanted to highlight someone in the chat
said thank you so much for this discussion. Just
a reminder that this is being recorded so you
can listen back as well. We've mentioned a lot
of amazing resources so please do take the time
to listen back and investigate those said resources.
Talking about resources, just to end off, and
we always ask this question when we're talking
about particularly traumatic events and covering
traumatic events. What practices can organizations
or newsrooms put in place to protect their employees
or to protect researchers from vicarious trauma
and other harms? And what do you do personally
when it gets too much? That was, again, some
of my favorite questions. I think one of the
most basic, and I'm guessing most of the people
in this room do this already, is that when you're
compiling information across large data sets,
whether it's on a spreadsheet or on some other
kind of particular platform, having a mechanism
for flagging. For us, on every spreadsheet we
do, it flags, yes, graphic, if it's graphic material,
and it makes that whole line red. so that you
know that this is going to be stuff you don't
want to be doing late at night when you're by
yourself alone in your bedroom, but it's stuff
that you may prioritize for early in the morning
or may have someone else work on. The other thing
that I really like to do is have a column next
to it that just without graphic detail says what
kind of graphic violence it is. So if it's sexual
and gender -based violence or it's decapitation
or it's murder of children, the things that we
know are big triggers for people. I like working
as part of a team or even sometimes what we've
done is created partnerships among people within
teams. So there's two people who are always kind
of watching for each other and can be saying,
hey, you're suddenly not seeming like yourself.
Are you doing okay? Or I've noticed you've missed
a lot of our meetings, or maybe even flagging
for me or some other person who's a manager or
supervisor to say, hey, I'm worried about so
-and -so. They're just not doing their normal
stuff. So that we can keep an eye out for each
other. But for example, I have a colleague who
used to be really affected by violence against
children. And for me, it has always been gunshots.
And I was in what was a mass shooting. And there's
this moment where you realize that this is guns
and not backfiring of a car. That gets me every
single time. So little things like I could take
the children pieces. And she may take the active
gunfire pieces. And we figure out how, as a partnership,
we kind of protect each other, minimize the risks
and maximize the value of what we can do. I also
realize I may not have the greatest objectivity,
ones where I'm already being triggered from whatever
traumatic experiences I've gone through in my
lifetime. So thinking constructively about where
your lived experience is an asset because you
understand the culture or context or language
or whatever, and where it may be a liability
because it's too close and it is something that
you may have a difficult time with the objectivity
of. I think there's three things that Andrea
and I tried to point out in graphic that are
become my touchstones. One is that awareness
for myself and for others of what may be triggering
and figuring out ways if there are ways to kind
of mitigate some of those harms. Here's the tips
and tricks. So things like, I never watch a video
with the sound on the first time if I know something
awful happens in that video. Or actually, any
time I'm watching a video and I don't know what's
coming, I'll keep it really low or I'll keep
it off, just because I know the auditory content
is what gets to people most of the time. You
know, in the gray scale, sometimes speeding it
up or slowing it down. I've personally found
all those tactics really helpful. And then the
third bucket is that community piece. I do think,
you know, when working on really upsetting content,
having a small community around you or doing
it with someone else who understands what you've
just looked at can debrief with you, or you don't
talk about it all, but you know someone else
has shared that experience. There is a camaraderie
and power in that. I remember doing investigations
and research in northern Uganda where the Lord's
Resistance Army had unfortunately taken a number
of people and used particularly women and young
girls as in slavery contexts. And we had curfews
every night at 6 p .m. and we would basically
give money to the driver and say, could you buy
us like, you know, some beers? And we would sit
and we went over a drink, but once we were locked
into our building at 6 p .m., we would kind of
debrief what we'd seen and we'd have a beer or
two and kind of talk through that. There's something
about that boots on the ground camaraderie that
we know protects military units, et cetera. We
need to replicate that, I think, in this community.
And that's, of course, an area on which Bill
and Kat has truly led. Gosh, I could talk about
this forever. And thank you so much for taking
the time out to unpack all of this. I'm sure
we'll ask you back in a couple of months once
we've had a few other speakers on this topic.
But thank you again for taking the time and for
answering all these really important questions.
You know, thank you for having me and thank you
to this whole space for your passion for this
topic or your interest in this topic. We need
more people who are deeply skilled. Really thinking
through these issues and carve you a future space.
Amazing. All right, remember there is the hashtag
gender based violence channel if you want to
take this discussion further. But anyway, thank
you everybody. I'm going to stop the recording
now. Thank you for listening to the stage talk.
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