In association with the International Commission of Jurists

digital evidence Tag

16 Dec

[Sabrina Rewald is a lawyer and independent legal consultant specialising in criminal justice, human rights, and technology, and a co-founder of Fénix Foundation. Basile Simon is the director of the law program at the Starling Lab for Data Integrity, and a fellow at Stanford University. Emma Irving is an independent legal consultant specialising in standards for digital evidence, and a co-founder of...

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12 Dec

[Madeeha Majid is a legal consultant with OpenNyAI – Agami and an international lawyer based in Srinagar, Kashmir] On 19 July 2024, Judge Dire Tladi, in his powerful declaration to the Advisory Opinion on Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, emphasized that Israel’s policies and practices reveal ‘a clear intent to dominate the Palestinian...

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11 Dec

[Julia Emtseva is assistant professor of law at HEC Paris] I had never considered myself a law and technology person. Likewise, I never imagined that open-source investigations (OSINT) would touch me directly, beyond distant and abstract conflicts where technology was used to trace evidence of international crimes. That changed in September 2022, when my country, Kyrgyzstan, stood on the brink of full-scale armed conflict with its...

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11 Dec

[Pedro R. Borges de Carvalho is a PhD candidate at KU Leuven, Institute for International Law and a research fellow at ATHENE – German National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity] Mass atrocities often leave scars on the Earth’s surface that forensic methodologies can decrypt given the right technological capabilities. High-resolution satellite imagery analysis is one such method, and it is fundamental for both forensics...

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10 Dec

[Christine Carpenter is an international lawyer, and a Gates Cambridge Scholar and PhD Candidate in international relations and politics at the University of Cambridge] To live in a crisis zone today is to be watched, recorded, and broadcasted—often without one’s knowledge or consent. Digital evidence plays a central role in investigating international crimes and human rights abuses—as has been demonstrated vis-à-vis Israel’s atrocities...

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10 Dec

[Christiane Wilke is a Professor in the Department of Law and Legal Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa and collaborates with Airwars on a project examining legal and factual claims in US military civilian casualty assessments] How do we look at genocide, and how does the vantage point shape what we see? Armed conflicts and genocides are frequently represented using the aerial perspective: satellite images, drone video footage,...

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09 Dec

[Dr. Giuliana Rotola is a space law and policy specialist whose work spans sustainability, governance, Indigenous methodologies, and post-colonial approaches to space norms. She is fellowship coordinator at the Palestine Space Institute.] Earth Observation as Witness to Systematic Destruction International law defines genocide as acts committed with the intent to destroy a protected group. Amnesty International's December 2024 report argues that Israel’s offensive on Gaza includes such prohibited...

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09 Dec

[Laliv Melamed is a professor of digital film cultures at Goethe University, Frankfurt] On the evening of 27 October 2023, the IDF spokesperson released a CGI (computer-generated imaging) model of Al Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex. The model draws on what is by now a familiar arsenal of digital forensics. It is based on data collected from aerial imagery, maps, and...

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13 Aug

[Isabelle Bienfait is a programme co-ordinator at eyeWitness to Atrocities] Two recent convictions of Syrian nationals for crimes committed during the civil war merit attention. On 16 June 2025, Syrian-born Alaa M. was convicted by a Frankfurt court for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed at several medical and military facilities. A few weeks earlier, on 28 May 2025, a...

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08 Aug

[Alexander Heinze is an Acting Professor at the University of Bremen and lecturer at the University of Göttingen] Part 1 of this post examined the Trial Chamber V’s remarkably efficient case management approach in Yekatom and Ngaïssona, highlighting how flexibility became the key to handling an exceptionally complex trial with nearly 20,000 exhibits and 174 witnesses. I explored the Chamber’s innovative...

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08 Aug

[Dr. Emma Irving, M.A., LL.M. and Sabrina Rewald, J.D., LL.M. are co-founders of the Fénix Foundation, a non-profit leveraging technology to advance peace, justice, and accountability, and consultants in international criminal law, human rights and technology] The authors led the research and development of the Leiden Guidelines and the Hala Protocol. On 24 July 2025, ICC Trial Chamber V found Alfred Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona guilty of a...

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25 Feb

[Benjamin Thorne is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Criminal Law at the University of Reading] Almost 3 weeks into Donald Trump’s second term as US President and one could have been forgiven for becoming somewhat numb to the seemingly never ending conveyor belt of Executive Orders (EO) being announced. However, one particular EO jolted many from their numbness, not because it...

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