How To Fight War Crimes With Your Smartphone

One of the biggest challenges of bringing war criminals to justice can be solved with a smartphone. International criminal courts can take decades to bring perpetrators of atrocities to account, often because of challenges in gathering evidence after a conflict has ended. Yet evidence already exists that Russian invaders of Ukraine may be guilty of war crimes. Russian forces have hit civilians and residential buildings, whether out of malice or incompetence. For the world to know if Russia has committed war crimes, Ukrainians must document these atrocities now. Documenting atrocity crimes is critical to seeking justice and also to healing the wounds of war.  As Russia continues to besiege Ukraine, documentation will also be critical for Ukraine to win the information war.  

Civilians have played a tremendous role in documenting atrocity crimes and spurring international bodies and courts to bring perpetrators to justice. Unfortunately, justice is often delayed because these efforts happen after the fact. For example, in the absence of official efforts to preserve evidence of Khmer Rouge atrocities, civil society organizations, like the Documentation Center of Cambodia, worked with survivors to collect and store evidence, hoping for eventual justice.  The international community requires extensive evidence to create or send cases to international courts and before expending resources to bring expensive and laborious prosecutions. A UN Group of Experts drew on this documentation when deciding to create the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, which, in turn, relied on the documentation to declare that Pol Pot and his senior leaders committed genocide. However, in part due to the difficulty of documenting the Khmer Rouge’s crimes long after the fact, and the stringent evidentiary standards of international courts, almost 40 years elapsed between when the Khmer Rouge leaders committed genocide between 1975 and 1979 and when they were sentenced in 2014. Evidence can be destroyed in war, or by nation-building efforts in societies that understandably, wish to put the horrors of war behind them.

           Proper documentation of atrocity crimes is vital to national efforts to achieve justice after conflict. The process of bringing perpetrators to justice helps establish an accurate historical record, promotes victim catharsis, and deters future war criminals worldwide. For Ukraine, pursuing accountability during conflict can also serve as a deterrent to Russia. Ukraine can use documentation gathered during the war as part of its lawfare strategy. Since the 2014 invasion of Crimea, Ukraine has developed a sophisticated lawfare strategy designed to bring Russia to account in international courts. When it comes to war crimes, the law is squarely on Ukraine’s side: all of the states in the world have agreed to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the core instrument of the law of war. By asking its citizens to document war crimes, Ukraine can unite its citizens, publicize the atrocities it documents, rally the international community around its cause, discredit Putin and Russian military actions, and undermine the Russian will to fight and prolong the war. 

 Fortunately, technology, education, and a strong civil society can speed justice for Ukraine. Resources are available to train civilians to safely and effectively gather, store, and share evidence of atrocity crimes and international legal violations. Mobile platforms and apps exist that can help individual citizens and civil society groups document atrocities according to the high-caliber evidentiary and presentation standards of international courts. By sharing this information with those in Ukraine, and helping to publicize the atrocities that they document, defenders of international human rights worldwide can help fight war crimes with their smartphones. A collective effort to assert accountability will exert pressure on Putin. It can also deter future war criminals by reminding them that their crimes will never go unseen.