While this work is not new — two of the three laureates have been engaged in documenting abuses since the 1990s — the international community has begun to use this approach to call for accountability of perpetrators of human rights abuses, giving documenters an international platform.

As the international community celebrates the well-deserved recognition of this year’s Nobel laureates, it must also reflect on the significant challenges faced by documenters globally and recommit to supporting their efforts. Documentation is grueling work, requiring the ability to operate in conflict-affected areas, to build trust with victims and witnesses, to securely maintain collected information, and to appropriately transmit it to judicial bodies. As documenters have gained traction, so too have the attempts to stop them, through legal restrictions intended to deny documenters’ legal status to operate, limiting access to victim populations, and their physical and digital security. International partnerships, therefore, are not only necessary for amplifying documenters’ messages, but also for maintaining their operations.

Documenters Fill Accountability Gaps

The Peace Prize underscores the importance of documentation to government accountability, regardless of whether there is a history of conflict, and is helping to push the international community to do more to support conflict-affected populations. Ales Bialiatski, the Belarusian laureate and founder of the rights group Viasna 96, has documented abuses of Belarusian pro-democracy actors since brutal crackdowns on protests in 1996. The Russian laureate, Memorial, has documented Soviet and Russian human rights abuses since the Soviet period, including on the ground in Grozny in 1994 when the city was under Moscow’s bombardment. The Ukrainian laureate, the Center for Civil Liberties, is a government watchdog that has worked to hold the Ukrainian government responsible for respecting the rights of the Ukrainian people and has pivoted toward documenting crimes committed against civilians following the 2022 Russian invasion.

While the impact of the laureates in holding perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for their crimes has yet to materialize, documenters in other settings have effectively supported accountability efforts. Documentation efforts have filled critical information gaps, facilitated the establishment of international evidentiary mechanisms, and supported the international community in making decisions on how best to respond to ongoing violence.

In China, documenters painstakingly pieced together publicly available evidence and victim testimonials to establish a pattern of large-scale, systematic violence against the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This evidence, the bulk of which was collected outside of Chinese territory, contributed to findings made by a number of states, including the United States, that Beijing’s conduct toward the Uyghurs amounts to genocide and crimes against humanity.

In Burma, human rights documenters have captured not only the ongoing violence against the Rohingya but also the violence against civilians in the wake of the 2021 coup. The evidence collected helped form the basis for the establishment of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, supported state-led atrocities determinations in the United States and in other like-minded states, and was cited in proceedings filed at the International Court of Justice examining whether the pre-coup government of Burma failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Information collected by documenters supported the creation of a U.N.-backed investigative mechanism for Syria, as well as partnerships between the mechanism, documenter organizations and prosecutors in Europe to hold former Syrian regime members accountable through universal jurisdiction prosecutions. These documentation efforts have established a path forward for holding perpetrators accountable in the absence of state political will to do so, and have laid a critical foundation for the work of the current Nobel laureates to support accountability efforts for Russian crimes in Ukraine.

The Risk to Documenters is Rising

The work of civil society documenters carries with it a considerable amount of risk, particularly given that perpetrators try to shield themselves from liability. Documenters move around fragile, conflict-affected areas, taking statements from victims and witnesses who have seen or been subjected to horrific levels of violence. Compounding these challenges, as civil society documenters have gained ground in pursuing accountability for human rights abuses, they have come under additional scrutiny from state actors seeking to curtail their activities, from legal and physical access restrictions up to and including physical intimidation and threats.

State actors frequently manipulate their domestic legal frameworks to disrupt the work of documentation organizations. Bialiatski is serving his second sentence for tax evasion, charges which Amnesty International has recognized as “trumped up.” Similarly, Russian authorities used a law governing “foreign agents” operating on Russian territory to shutter Memorial. Some of Memorial’s leadership, including activist Natalia Estemirova, have been murdered for their work documenting crime committed against Chechen civilians.

This phenomenon, unfortunately, is also global. Documenters are frequently targeted for their work, disrupted in carrying it out, and/or physically threatened. Documenters of abuses against the Uyghur community are regularly subjected to threats to their personal safety as well as the safety of their families who have remained in Xinjiang. In Ethiopia, legal restrictions on civil society organizations have limited access to information on ongoing abuses in the Tigray region, including funding restrictions, laws restricting freedom of assembly and internet shutdowns. The result is that civil society organizations are largely inaccessible and frequently hesitate to share information collected out of concern over retribution. These actions indicate perpetrator awareness of a direct link between documenters’ work and increased accountability.

Protecting Documenters Decreases Impunity

To protect the gains secured by documenters, including the Nobel laureates, the international community must strengthen its support for their work. Such steps could include:

• Amplifying the messages of documenter organizations by citing their findings in public statements and debates in international fora like the U.N. Human Rights Council;
• Funding their work, including training; ensuring secure storage for the information they collect; and providing them with necessary psychosocial support to conduct their important work;
• Improving documenters’ access to communities of practice from other conflict contexts to allow them to share challenges, best practices and strategies for remaining resilient;
• Supporting human rights defender programs to provide them physical protection and relocation assistance as circumstances require; and
• Working to improve their ability to connect with international accountability mechanisms.

In providing this critical support, the international community must work to ensure that documenters in conflicts that have not gotten as much attention as Russia’s war on Ukraine — Ethiopia, Burma and Afghanistan, among an unfortunately high number of others — are able to access these critical resources to support their mission and to ensure that victims of human rights abuses and atrocity crimes can access justice.