Global Investigative Journalism Network (https://gijn.org/tag/war-crimes/)
The subject of sexual violence remains a sensitive if not taboo subject in much of the world and often goes unreported. Watchdog journalism has started digging deeper into sexual violence, but these investigations are still few relative to the estimated number of cases worldwide. GIJN has now updated its reporting guide for this hard-to-cover subject.
In the 12 months since Russia invaded Ukraine, investigative journalists have navigated enormous information challenges and personal risks to expose everything from war crimes and sanctions busting to hidden oligarch loot and Russian “filtration” camps.
Open source tools like the Yemeni Archive have allowed investigative journalists to track the impact of Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in the Yemen civil war as well as identify Western allies’ role in possible war crimes or abuses.
Syrian journalists have gained extensive experience documenting possible human rights violations and war crimes by the Russian military. GIJN spoke with several of these reporters to understand the lessons they learned, and how investigative journalists can cover the Ukraine invasion more effectively.
GIJN has assembled a kind of starter-toolkit to help journalists track Russian money, political interference, and disinformation in their own countries. From oligarch planes to sanctions trackers, you’ll find over 30 useful sites here.
Christo Grozev, the executive director of Bellingcat, gives his insights for covering the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He talks about how the role of reporters has changed in modern day conflict, and reveals how his team is gathering and verifying data while focusing on investigating potential war crimes.
Reporting violations in an active conflict, previously a daunting and life threatening task, has now become easier thanks to open-source reporting techniques, which provide investigative journalists much greater ability to investigate war crimes as they happen.
Editor’s Note: The tipsheet was updated in 2023 by GIJN’s Leonardo Peralta and edited by Nikolia Apostolou. The subject of sexual violence remains a sensitive if not taboo subject in much of the world and often goes unreported.
The completely sold out Uncovering Asia 2018, the third Asian investigative journalism conference, was a four-day blitz of intense exchange of knowledge, networking and building new investigative partnerships. A total of 440 journalists from 48 countries convened in Seoul, Korea from October 4-7 for the largest ever gathering of investigative journalists in the region.