Hello and welcome to Data For What, building shared understanding between civil society documenters and investigators. So we're based in Seoul right now, and I'm going to say a little bit about our project before we start. So we're the transitional justice working group. We started in Seoul about seven years now, and as we've been learning how to document abuses in North Korea, we realized that along the way we got a lot of great feedback and learned a lot from other experts and then other civil society NGOs as well. So while our flagship project is our North Korean human rights documentation work, we have a sub project here called access accountability, and our mission is to share resources and facilitate peer-to-peer learning among NGOs, especially those who are collecting documentation to support transitional justice mechanisms. So I'll start off by introducing myself. My name's Scott Stevens. I'm a co-founder of the transitional justice working group and the project manager for access accountability. Our project coordinator, Yuri Imchoi, is also here with us today, and she's managing the technical issues and helping us keep connected after the session as well. So a little bit of history about the conversation for today. We had this idea for about a year now. It came out of a rights con panel in 2020 when one of our speakers, Sun Kim, suggested that actually, you know, we need to have some kind of conversation about what is work for lawyers and what is work for civil society. So from that conversation, we started to think more and develop this idea. And eventually it evolved into the lineup for today, featuring documenters and investigators working in Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and beyond. But the real goal here is to help both investigators and civil society documenters to understand how their data can be used effectively, and on the one side, collected well, and on the other side, utilized well. So our speakers for today will be Aeuis Alvedouche, Claude Elise Santos, Dr. Cathy Roberts, Dr. Mary Menten, and Sun Kim. We're also hoping that today's conversation isn't just a one-off event, but that instead it leads to future discussion and opportunities for follow-up collaborations and knowledge sharing after the session. Whether that be further online conversations like this one, training, or peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, we're not sure yet, but let's make sure to keep in touch. So if there are any questions at any point, feel free to put them in the chat and we can address them during the Q&A. If you look at the top right-hand corner of your screen, there's a triangle, a circle, and a square. If you click on that icon and then click on the Q&A, that will keep a clear record of the questions. But if you also post them in the chat, that's fine too, we'll see them there as well. And then also after the session as well, if you have any questions that you didn't get to ask or want to connect with one of the speakers, you can send an email to info at accessaccountability.org and we'll connect you to the right people from there. I'd also like to just give a quick heads up and a reminder that the conversation is being recorded and then we're going to post it on YouTube later so that people who couldn't join the live session today can catch up later on. But if you would like your identity to be removed or a question to be removed, while we're editing the video, we can make sure to cover names, change voices, or just simply delete sections. So please let us know in the chat or by email afterwards and we'll make sure to do that. So without further delay, I'll introduce our first speakers. To start off, we wanted to frame the conversation starting from the grassroots perspective. So our first section will actually be a pre-recorded description. But to frame the pre-recorded description, I'll pass things over to Dr. Mary Menten. This is a really great opportunity for us as a project. So we'll talk a little bit about what we're doing and the context. I am both a research fellow at the University of Sussex, but I also work with Not One More, which is a non-profit that works with frontline environmental defenders, both doing active support to those at risk, but also trying to understand the root causes of violence against them and the threats against them. So we have been working in several different countries, but particularly today, speaking from a Latin American perspective in Brazil. And the video will be from Clara Lisa Santos, who is a grassroots social movement organizer, human rights defender, but also a law student. And we work together with also lawyers from the Pastoral Land Commission or CPT, if you're familiar with their work in Brazil, on documenting violence against, again, land defenders, environmental defenders, and others. So we come very much a little bit down the middle, in a sense, because we are both academics, but also grassroots organizers, but also lawyers. But one of the main goals of the project that we're working on is to train the frontline activists who are receiving the threats or experiencing the violence to be able to document what's going on and to do it safely. So we have started working together with Horizontal, who are the developers of an app called Tele, which I'm not sure if people are familiar with it, but if you look in the app store, that's what it looks like in terms of the logo, if you want to download it and have a look about how it works. But one of the things we've been working with Tele to do is to adapt it to the reality of Brazil on the ground, in terms of making it very easy and plug and play and sort of minimizing the tech knowledge that people need in order to actually use the app. And one of those things is so fundamental that it be usable offline, that it be hidden, that it be secure. You know, all of these things are very much important. And so that that's what we're at sort of the test running stage now after having received feedback from grassroots organizers and threatened defenders on the ground about what they need to be able to document things more clearly. And really what we're trying to do is make sure, I think there's two things, right? There's the benefit of collecting the data so that we document what's going on, and we can really understand the patterns and who's being threatened and who needs support. And that's kind of at the minimum, that's what we will definitely achieve. But I think we're at a point where we would also very much like for this data to be usable as evidence. And so that's why this invitation to come today is coming at a really good point for us because we're about to start a really more intensive data collection and training. And so it's really important for us to understand what do you, as investigators, as lawyers, need from us? Because right now as it stands, people are taking pictures on their mobile phones and sending them to CPT, but they don't have any metadata, they don't have any of that sort of the detail, the nitty gritty, to make them much more usable, potentially in court. And so that's sort of the context of where we're coming at. And so Claude Elise will talk a little bit more about what's going on. She mentions Tela, so I think it was important that I speak a little bit before just to explain that that's what she's talking about. And yeah, we see in Brazil that people have certain freedoms, but there's been a regression in terms of crackdowns on civil society, criminalization of environmental activists, human rights defenders. And so they're at a very much at a point where we need to be very careful about how we collect the data, making sure that the people in the field are safe as they do so, but also gathering evidence to be able to hopefully bring about some positive change. So I'll stop there and leave time for Claude Elise's.  Primeiro, eu disse que é uma honra estar participando desse evento e que também é de extrema importância para nós, sobretudo nos últimos anos, onde vem se recrudecendo a violência contra ativista dos direitos humanos e do meio ambiente. O tela para nós nesse momento está sendo uma oportunidade, uma esperança, mas também uma oportunidade de avançarmos nas questões principalmente de provas, de elaborarmos, de conseguirmos provas que nos coloquem em outro patamar de justiça. Porque o que vem acontecendo até agora com os processos judiciais é que muitos deles não avançam, logicamente, porque é de coisas, mas uma delas é essa questão das provas. A maior parte delas são testemunhais, não são provas como que eu posso dizer mais materialmente, falando de foto, vídeo, áudio, são testemunhais. E a maioria dessas pessoas que testemunham sobre violação de direitos humanos, elas são desconsideradas, desclassificadas, desmoralizadas, inclusive em júri. Então, o tela vem para nós também como essa oportunidade de irmos para outro patamar na questão das provas jurídicas. As nossas metas, principalmente com o tela, é fazer com que esse aplicativo chegue ao máximo possível a defensores de linha de frente. Aí temos algumas barreiras que estamos através do projeto que estamos executando juntos, tentando ultrapassar essas barreiras da melhor forma possível. A maioria dos defensores, por exemplo, eles não falam língua estrangeira, outro idioma. Então, isso já é uma barreira. Esse aplicativo tem que ser acessível com relação ao idioma. Segundo a coisa, ele precisa ser de fácil acessibilidade na questão do manuseio. A maioria dos defensores de linha de frente tem celulares simples e tem pouco conhecimento como essas questões mais da tecnologia digital. Então, esse aplicativo, ele precisa ser de fácil acessibilidade manuseio. É isso que está sendo trabalhado. Para a gente, está sendo uma oportunidade muito grande de acessarmos a um aplicativo, especificamente para isso, e que vai ajudar nós em nossas lutas. Principalmente na produção desse tipo de prova para alguns tipos de violências específicas, como, por exemplo, uma comunidade que é invadida por fazendeiros ou por garimperos. Acessar esses aplicativos mesmo em modo offline para criar essas provas é um desafio muito grande, porque você está no momento de tensão, você está no momento de terror e você precisa acessar rapidamente e, facilmente, um aplicativo que grave áudios, que grave filme ou que tire fotos. Essas são as principais provas que nós precisamos nos casos jurídicos e que nós entendemos que existe uma dificuldade muito grande, principalmente dos defensores de linha de frente, de comunidades isoladas ou mil de zé. Acessar esses aplicativos offline, conseguir fazer isso de modo seguro. O que é que acontece? Não adianta a gente filmar na câmera normal de um celular, por exemplo, que quem estiver fazendo a violência vai tomar esse celular, vai quebrar, vai acabar com a memória e acabou. O importante é que esses dados sejam coletados de forma segura para o defensor que estiver fazendo, para a pessoa que estiver fazendo. Então, o tela para a gente tem essa oportunidade de ver a esperança na produção desse tipo de prova para os processos. Porque o que mais nós temos dificuldade é em termos provas, criarmos provas, conseguir provas materialmente falando, áudio, foto, vídeo, das violações. E, em alguns casos, até consegue, mas não com qualidade boa ou com poucos elementos que fortalecem a tese da violação. E, no caso das testemunhas, são desclassificadas, desconsideradas. Então, para fortalecer tanta essa construção de provas, como também o manuseio disso, é preciso um trabalho em conjunto. E exatamente isso que a gente está fazendo agora entre os programadores do tela, entre os criadores do tela. E nós, das comunidades de base, os defensores que estão ali em de frente para conseguir chegar a um modo ideal de aplicativo, de instrumento, que nos traga essa segurança para criar provas para possíveis processos, tanto aqui quanto fora. Muito obrigada. I think Gladysse might have joined, even if it's just for her to say hello. Clown, was it that? She's saying hello to everyone and she is here. Yeah, I mean, I think that together what we've just said, hopefully, is pretty clear. And I think one of the things that, again, going back to the information that's already out there in Brazil, we do know that from the most recent CPT report on violence in the field that while the number of murders may have decreased in the last couple of years, the number of land invasions, the number of threatened people is increasing. And so it becomes really important when we think about the communities, as Clown was saying, they're in remote areas, they don't have access to good phones. It really is about spreading our network as far as we can to make sure the biggest number of people are able to collect information because they're the ones that are seeing it firsthand. And I think that's kind of what we're trying to do is increase that network and make sure as many people as possible have access to both the app and the understanding of what they should be collecting and what information is most useful. And it becomes increasingly urgent as the violence is increasing. Yeah, I think, I mean, we could talk longer, but I think that's enough for now. Great, okay, well, thank you so much to both of you. There are a lot of topics in there about collecting evidence, but in a kind of dispersed way and the security of the people collecting the evidence, but then again, the utility of the evidence is being collected. And by dispersing the research like that, it's, I think, most of us are used to kind of the pen and paper method, but it's an interesting idea to disperse it this way. And I'd be curious to see what the implications are for the investigators on the other side using that data. So thank you. We'll next turn over to Ayoes Alvedouche, the legal and human rights advisor at the Syria Justice and Accountability Center. He's a human rights lawyer with the experience as an attorney practicing at levels in Syrian courts and a variety of different civil and criminal matters, but he also has experience with NGOs and specifically his work with the, with ESJAC, the Syria Justice and Accountability Center. They have their own unique data collection methods and we'll be hearing a little bit about how they use that for their advocacy as well. Thanks so much, Scott. Hello, everyone. My name is Ayoes Alvedouche. Actually, I'm happy to be here and thanks for inviting me for sharing our ESJAC experience in Syria and actually to learn from the others. I will give you like a first day an overview on ESJAC and on our works and how we like collecting data and then how we like posting these data and writing these data. Actually, ESJAC is working on three areas. ESJAC is a non-profit organization. It's like working for human rights in Syria based on Washington, DC. It's established in 2012. Actually, we are working on, we're focusing on three areas. The first area is the documentation. Actually, we're collecting the documentation or documenting all human rights abuses and international crimes in Syria without this affiliation against all the parties in Syria on the ground. We collect this information or this data, actually, from our coordinators. We have our field coordinators on the ground and also we have like some networks and some partners or we call data source on the ground. Then actually after like this process, we have like the next step which is called like data analysis after we receive this data from the ground, actually. We move it forward to our data analysis team. We have like our own database. I will present later our database which is called the ANOT. Actually, data analysis team, they are working on processing and analyzing these data and catalogs, these data in different areas. So I also will present our database later. This data analysis actually process, it takes a lot of time for processing and analyzing and extracting the metadata from the videos, for example. As you see here, actually, we start, for example, like mapping the violation in Syria and cities in the town and also the old potential elite perpetrators, ISIS, Cassian government and others. And also we try to categorize all victims, whatever, armed or minors or civil or main female or male. This is like a screenshot from our database and how we try to processing our data. Actually, we categorize in three categories. The first one, which we call like the bulletin, it's called any evidences, any piece of data, picture, video, sleep or sleep here. Actors, it refers for perpetrators, sometimes it refers for witnesses, for victims, actually we call actors. Then we have an incident, everything is like going to the incidents. Finally, we establish the incident after we link between the actors and the pollutants and we have to like finally the incident which might be support any potential investigation in the future. Let me give you an example of how it works, actually. Here, we receive like a random documentation from the ground, for example, from different source. The first video that we receive, I just like take a screenshot from this video. The first video is here, actually, it's shot like as you see some soldiers, it's like the official or senior government soldiers, they are torturing a guy. This happens in 2013 that we receive like this video from one data source on the ground. They have been tortured like this guy. Actually, it was like just a video for torturing, we keep it in our database, we extract the metadata and analyze it this video. Later, actually, we receive other video after like few color bonds, which like this video showed the family of this guy after he has been died. It showed the torture on his body and they actually, they pronounce his name in the video, extract all the metadata and we collect, we link between those two videos, actually from different sources on the ground, we link to add a mention to the incident. So right now, we have like the video for torturing this guy and which showed like the faces, the rank, everything on the badges for the soldiers who have been tortured this guy and we have like the other video for his family once he is preparing for funeral. Later, actually, after that, after I think two years, we received a document which like a leak document from some security facilities, which showed like this is an order, an intelligence report which showed an order for killing this guy, this name or this guy. So which slide signed from any commands and one commander. So right now we have like a full incident which like the first video and the second video and also the document that showed what is happening and who is like issue this order for killing this guy. So that always like we advise for our coordinators or any like documenters or humanized defenders on the ground to collect any documentation, any information as much as possible and don't leave anything behind you. You don't know when and where you might use this data actually. So as I mentioned, like this is our main area, the third area is like on transitional justice. We try like to discover the best pathways for transitional justice for Syria. So for the documentation and the data, they mentioned which we always try to collect as much as possible information. We don't know when and where we might use it for example, we give you an example. Actually recently, as you know, there is some like available or live way for justice in the EU based on the universal jurisdiction. So there's some cases, some ongoing investigations around we start to like coordination with the pursuers and work transnet and international mechanisms around. After like we received some requests, I have like an own experience. Once I joined to SJAG in 2014, I conducted an interview with a one witness. He was like a survivor from one military security prison in Syria in 2012. Actually I conducted this interview in 2014. So I was like after turning to SJAG with three months. Actually I ever imagined that I might be used it at least in the upcoming 20, 30 years as you see like the hope for justice for Syria it's too far or no one actually when the comprehensive justice might be drawn. In 2020, I received a request from the French prosecutor. He asked me for a specific incident that happened in this like prison in Syria. And he is looking for some witnesses who have been there who have maybe experienced torture. He might be testified and accepted for that. Actually I stepped back to 2014, stepped back six or seven years behind me and I found like this interview is ready and find like this witness is ready and survivor is ready to testify. So any testimony, any evidence, it's really important to keep our eyes on it. So the other story also in Germany, also I received a request from the war crimes in Germany. They are searching or investigating in specific case also happened in one military base in Syria. So also actually I came back to our database and session in order to commutation we found like some open source videos and some open source like that. Also we found a relevant witness directly he witnessed the incident and he witnessed the ex-patriotic killing that had been there in this military base. So this data sometimes we don't know actually where we can find it in the future. Actually for that we thinking that is actually good all of our efforts and experience to support human rights defenders and documented on the ground in two areas. The first area is like we established a training platform to in phase or enhance the capacity of the human rights defenders on the ground and also for the quality of the data which should be like make the criteria or international standards to be acceptable in the future. Because actually after we experienced some cases based on universal restriction in the EU we found like some data has not been useless or not be accepted because the lack of the criteria the lack for example of chain of custody the lack of info consent and other criteria. So actually we developed like this training platform it's totally free I will present it right now. It's in Arabic actually we started for our own team basically also for Syrian human rights defenders and later we start sharing in the MENA with the Libyan and Yemeni and Iranian and Iraqi human rights defenders. And here it's like on our website it's free everyone can access for this status actually or training platform so you can find like three categories of our training. So you can access for example for documenting the evaluation you can find an actual video here and here difference type of violation or international crimes. For example this is for sexual violence you can access here and find a video which show like exeggling the situation and the best practices that skills documentation which is like the most important questions that you have to ask for the survivors for example. So it's really really practical training it's not theoretical training and not academic training we try like to put all of our experience on the ground and this training platform. Also there is a material it's like small material it's not too long material so they can access actually we have the materials both in English and in Arabic and we also like can share like the materials based on some requests. Finally we have like scenarios these here just for supporting the human rights defenders. So we have like around 17 training courses right now on our training platform and it's free and anyone can access directly to it. Actually it's in Arabic so it's opening for Arabic speakers and maybe we hope like to have like something in English but as I mentioned like we have the materials in English and we are happy to share. For the other area actually for the data analysis as I mentioned without like if you collect like a huge number of data and without processing and analyzing and extracting the metadata and cataloging everything you cannot share in the future and you will be swarmed on the huge numbers of data. For example as you see here before I presented my other database we collected millions of pieces of data or documentation from the ground. So without like half disorganized database and developed database you cannot like share or might not be useful in the future. Here is our bailout, our database. As I mentioned like our database have been developed for processing and analyzing our data and documentation. It's not complicated actually for you I will present the video right now for you but yeah it's also we can provide actually the software of data for any human rights groups for example based on some because it's also free anyone can access and I can for example install our software for the program of the data and they can use the same similar data as I will present it right now it's just a short three there's just three minutes from what we do just to give you the full pictures of what we are doing in your database. This is Bayonet, an open source data management solution for processing huge amounts of data relevant to human rights abuses and war crimes fully developed by Syrian talents at the Syria Justice and Accountability Center. Bayonet was created to enable human rights defenders, activists and organizations to easily collect, organize, catalog and analyze documentation of war crimes, crimes against humanity and human rights violations. The Syria Justice and Accountability Center developed this software internally based on open source platforms. The goal is for ESJAC to continue working on collecting and analyzing documentation of potential violations committed during the Syrian conflict by all sides. In addition to allowing other human rights activists and organizations working on documenting violations around the world to easily embed and use Bayonet for documentation and analysis purposes. In late 2020, ESJAC launched the newest and enhanced version of its data management software, Bayonet. ESJAC used its eight years of firsthand experience in collecting, preserving, analyzing and sharing documentation of human rights violations to build Bayonet. The main user interface has left ribbon for the navigation and the database. Log out and settings as well as switcher for the language of the user interface. The main portion of the page shows the items list. The user can customize the number of items that appear at one time and also navigate between the pages of the list. Clicking on an item in the list shows the item page on the right. This preview shows the fields that contain data in any item and the related items attached to it. At the bottom of the preview ribbon, the user can view the history of an item. The list shows every edit to an item and there is a detailed history button that shows exactly what changed in every update. On the top of the page, there is a search bar for text contained in the items. There's also an advanced search button that allows the user to search in every field in the database. The three main components in the database are actors, bulletins and incidents. Bulletins are pieces of evidence and materials such as videos, documents, images and audio files. Actors are profiles of persons or entities. For example, victim reports or profiles of armed groups or government agencies and other corporations. Incidents are like folders where the items in actors and bulletins can be organized and analyzed together in depth to investigate a larger incident. So this is like some experience from the Syrian conflict. It's really hard once you are working from outside Syria. You don't have like an access to the area which like the violations have been happening inside Syria. So thanks so much and I will stop here. So thank you for that. I would encourage everyone actually, if you are looking for a database solution, check out Bayanat. We can post links to actually all of the speakers' websites but it does really look like quite a powerful tool, especially what you're saying about the permissions and the record of who accessed, what piece of documentation for Chain of Custody later on I think is a really powerful aspect. And then also in the chat, Christine from HurryDocs has also mentioned that TELA is compatible with Uwazi. So one of our projects as well is Uwazi-powered. Again, a very powerful tool, very good for visualization and storing data in different places. So maybe in the Q&A, if there's questions from some of the documenters here, we could talk about how to decide what kind of tool to use depending on what kind of justice mechanism or investigation you're working with or expecting. All right, so thank you for that. Our next speaker is going to be Dr. Kathleen Roberts. She's represented victims and survivors of human rights violations and international atrocity crimes in court for over 15 years. So she has extensive trial experience. She's led and supervised investigation of grave crimes cases from 12 countries, spanning five continents. And her work, Representing Victims, has also been featured in global media outlets and even a Netflix special. Dr. Roberts is core faculty at the Institute for International Criminal Investigations and served for a number of years as an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. So her topic today will be quite a unique one. She's going to be talking about public and private sector collaboration on international crime investigations and prosecutions. Okay, thank you, Scott. And thanks to the Transitional Justice Working Group for convening this panel. I'm really honored to share a panel with these distinguished individuals, some of whom I know, some of whom I don't, but I'm very excited to be here. I do have a little bit of a presentation, so I'll go ahead and share that. And yeah, I took the topic a little bit literally and looking at facilitating collaboration between civil society and law enforcement in their approaches to documenting international crime. So that's, yeah, I think it speaks for itself. Let's see here. Why am I not clicking through? There we go. So a little bit about me. Well, I was going to introduce myself that Scott did a lovely job. I have been working for about 17 years on behalf of victims and survivors of human rights violations and grave international crimes. So I've done the investigation, I've done the litigation, I've done the advocacy, so I really have a good understanding of sort of the different roles that are involved, but we'll just scoot right along. Building on that experience for the last couple of years, a colleague of mine, Maxine Marcus, and I have been developing an approach to sort of taking our experience. I've worked as a victims representative as a human rights organization, civil society person. She's worked as a prosecutor, as an investigator for the tribunals. So we have developed this method over the last few years and just launched our nonprofit organization. Actually, we just launched it in March, Partners in Justice International. We've been doing this work together for about the last six years, where essentially we take that experience that we've had over the years and we bring it in service of local documenters and investigators, prosecutors, victim attorneys, really whoever is advancing accountability, advancing justice for victims in the countries that we're suffering from abuse. So that's the work that we're doing now. And one of the things that we've learned that's really key and which I think we knew but we've learned it in a deeper way is the importance of collaboration between civil society and law enforcement to even get these things moving, at least at the national level, it's crucial. So I have some key messages. These are not hidden, my agenda is quite clear. So first of all, civil society documenters and law enforcement or other, it's like government aligned investigators and what I'm really thinking of our sort of the UN commissions of inquiry or international tribunals or these kind of investigative mechanisms that have recently started moving forward. They're created by governments. I'm not quite sure what to call them. Sun will probably tell us. But between civil society and these kind of more government aligned investigations, there's often really good reasons not to collaborate. There's really good reasons not to trust each other. This is particularly true for national police and national documenters because they have that history, right? But at the same time, they often need each other in order to accomplish certain goals and in particular justice for victims of mass atrocity crimes. So I'm here to say one thing that I think is very possible is to overcome many of the barriers, maybe not all of them, but many of them can be overcome in a practical way, taking account of the realities and risks and benefits within each of their mandates. So I think it's worth pausing for a moment. And I think this came through in the prior presentations, but the context that we're talking about here is one where there's not going to be a whole lot of judicial accountability. So talking about judicial accountability happens in a context where most victims are not going to see justice, where you're not going to see an accountability process. And this image that I'm offering you right now is not representative. Most countries will not have, for example, the possibility of an ICC prosecution. Many will not have the possibility of local judicial accountability. And many will not have any kind of transitional justice mechanism like a truth commission or something else. But even when you have sort of the best case scenario, you don't have that much in the way of judicial accountability. So when you're documenting, when you're investigating, you may not know where your information is going to end up, where your evidence, what jurisdiction it's gonna end up in, whether it will get to a jurisdiction. It may be that your investigative interviews are the closest that certain victims and survivors will get to an actual forum. So that's just something to keep in mind. I know I don't need to tell this group that there are a million barriers to justice, but I felt it important just to note them. There's obviously quite a lot, quite a lot in the way, quite a lot that can prevent justice from happening. Even where you have a judicial system functioning, everybody's not gonna get prosecuted. It's not gonna be possible to build cases for every victim, even though those victims may be entitled to justice. So that's just more context, okay? But now, okay, so with that context, I think we can drill down a little bit on the judicial process. And in particular, the different roles that these different individuals or different organizations can play. In particular, you'll see that from this image, and this is, I've got a courtroom here that's obviously Nuremberg, not every system has a victim lawyer role. Every system has a prosecutor or defense counsel role. Government or government-aligned investigators, CSO documentors, they don't necessarily have access directly to the court. So there is a kind of relationship there, right? Civil society documentors are most often aligned with the victims in the need for justice. They often lack the training or license to start a case, and maybe a victim lawyer provides that, but they are not fully self-sufficient. Government investigators and prosecutors may share some of that alignment, but they also have to consider the evidence impartially. They have to respect not only the rights of the victims, but also of the defendants and of course, defense counsel, among other things, are gonna be charged with ensuring procedural fairness and ensuring they may have a few things to say about how the evidence was collected, and that's something that everybody in the courtroom has gotta take account of. So it's something that anybody doing documentation is gonna have to take account of. Now, I think that it is clear, and I think that I've heard it already in the first two speakers, that there are some concerns that can be raised about CSO documentation. These are most often, in my experience, coming from law enforcement, and people who have or prosecutors and investigators who have not worked with a lot of CSOs before, and sometimes those that have. There's concerns about integrity of the evidence. There's concerns about whether the evidence has been properly presented. Have leading questions been asked, or ideas planted? Has the statement been presented in a way that's kind of fixed, that maybe includes some personal biases and observations on behalf of the documenter? My strong suggestion is that any serious CSO who's documenting, particularly taking witness statements, which is usually what we have available in these kind of contexts, that they should get some training on how best to conduct that documentation, or even be speaking with, if they know the jurisdiction is gonna go, be sure the documentation is welcome, and they should be documenting their own methodology in the process. Now, one particular, well, actually let me stop there and give you an example. There was a trial in the United States.  But the defense raised all kinds of issues about the NGO that had facilitated some of the testimony. They argued that the NGO was interviewing witnesses, that the US government was using them to pre-interview witnesses, so there was missing evidence, or that they were putting their bias into the sort of agenda of the prosecution, that the prosecution was being used by this NGO. And I've heard this kind of thing really commonly, actually. It's a compelling defense, or it can be a compelling defense. It wasn't in this case. In this case, the prosecution went forward and there was a conviction, but it can be. And then finally, the third one I've mentioned here is evidence can be partially presented or withheld altogether. This is one that I have found, actually surprisingly common in a couple of places where there is a feeling on the part of our colleagues in law enforcement that certain NGOs are withholding their victims. They're not allowing the victims to talk to the police or the police are not being allowed access to their evidence. And I think this is actually usually a misunderstanding. And so if that was some bracing information for CSOs, then this is some bracing information for law enforcement. That is that every CSO, every NGO has its own mandate and mission, and none of them are going to be mandated or gonna have a primary mission of making law enforcement's job easier. That isn't the primary job of most of us who work in civil society, right? We have a particular mission. I'll take, for example, the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross. They have a lot of information about victims of human rights violations, right? A lot of information. They know where the people are, who's holding them, whether they've been abused, et cetera, et cetera. And they will never share that information with law enforcement because if it did, if they did, they would no longer get access to jails and prisons around the world and they would not be able to fulfill their own mission. So amnesty has a similar position. So knowing what the mandate is and understanding, so my strong advice to anyone in law enforcement who's trying to conduct this kind of investigation and sees an NGO as a barrier, it's really come to understand what that NGO's mandate is and whether there is some overlap that can be fruitful. But remember that just like it's not the victim's job to talk to you, it's not their job to hand over evidence that they've collected or hand over victims who may or may not actually want to talk to you. So those are sort of a couple of cautions, okay? Now, from a more positive perspective, a more practical perspective, there are certain advantages that public and private actors can play that they have, sorry, the roles that they can play that are a little bit different. For example, CSO documenters are often freer to travel. They're able to get access to evidence that's harder to reach. That may be because they don't have to work through an embassy and get permission or whatever, giant bureaucracies or it may be for other reasons. Much more often or very often, CSO documenters have the trust of a survivor population. They're well known with that survivor population, which means that they're more likely to talk to them about their experiences. By the same token, they often have an understanding of the security situation with greater clarity than those who are less involved with that population day to day. On the other hand, government and government-aligned investigators may have access to security information and victim and witness protection measures that CSOs can only dream about. They may be in a position to facilitate witness and victim travel to court. They may be able to take measures to prevent or mitigate threats. Like they can do different things. So it's really wonderful when you can find a way to work them all together. At the litigation stage, and I apologize for this slide, if I'd had more time, it would have been shorter. It's too much text on this slide, but essentially, I would like to suggest that you can see the public and private sort of roles also can play out in court in a way that's really productive and helpful. Obviously, you can't have a prosecution or an arrest without some involvement of government actors. At the same time, if the government doesn't want to move forward, perhaps investigators, prosecutors, judges have some issue. Maybe the CSOs are able to sort of push things along a little bit more. But what I think is actually maybe more common and really more interesting to me is that often in situations that are politically fraught, which is always in a situation that is post-dictatorship or post-conflict, certainly during them as well, that somebody who's working as a prosecutor or a government investigator may be subject to political pressures that make it impossible for them, for example, to lay a certain charge or to take a more emphatic position with respect to certain suspects. But perhaps the CSOs and the victim lawyers are less susceptible to that pressure because they don't work within that system, and they may be able to sort of counterbalance that position and allow things to move forward. I do think it is generally a best practice for government actors, prosecutors, investigators to consistently have in-depth meetings with particularly the victim lawyers, but CSOs and the absence of victim lawyers to be sure that they're not missing something crucial in their case. All right, so bringing it on home, I did want to hopefully inspire you that there have been a number of really successful collaborations. I'll bring a couple from my experience litigating cases in the US and a couple from my experience working with CSOs in this new capacity that partners the Justice International is taking forward. First, the HARA versus Barrientos case. You can see there we are waiting for the verdict. We did win. That was relating to the 1973 torture and summary execution of Victor Hara during Vic Finoshecu. We were contacted initially by the Human Rights Prosecution Unit in Chile who collaborated with them on building the civil case. If they hadn't reached out to the NGO where I was working, which is the Center for Justice and Accountability, there never would have been such a case. We then provided all of our evidence back to the Chileans, but also to the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security in support of the extradition request. Hopefully, the defendant in that case will be extradited. But if not, hopefully he'll be denaturalized and deported, if not extradited. So if that does happen, it'll be in part due to the work of this CSO. Another case in point, this is a case that I tried in 2019. It was my last trial. This was the Warfab Yali case. It was relating to crimes against humanity committed under the Bari regime in the late 1980s in Somalia. And I point this particular one out, not because the collaboration was particularly unique, but because it happened at a time during the Trump administration, during a time when the Department of Homeland Security was not necessarily operating in a political environment where it would be easy to support this kind of a case, but the US Department of Homeland Security did in fact have a case open against this individual. And while they couldn't just bring him in to support their case, they could provide us some behind the scenes advice on how to parole our client into the United States since under that administration, he could not get a visa as a Somali individual. So that's, don't get me started on all of that, but we're not for this parole. Farhan, our client would not have been allowed to attend his trial in person. And of course, again, we presented our evidence then back to the Department of Homeland Security and if this individual is ever deported, I think it is safe to say it wouldn't have happened without the CSOs behind the case, particularly because the US is not allowed to travel to Somalia. So there's an example of free movement. A different kind of case in Guatemala, this is the SEPRZARCO trial. It was the first ever sexual slavery case tried in a national court. And this case was investigated, I believe, for about 15 years before it was ever brought to trial by CSOs in Guatemala. It was an alliance of NGOs they investigated. They provided the victims with information, with support, with psychosocial support. They put together an inter-American court case and won. And they filed criminal complaints in the criminal, in the Guatemalan criminal justice system. Some of the people they were serving chose to do that. And the prosecutors and the victim lawyers, here they are all sitting together at trial, they work together in ways that reflected the needs of the victims in that case, right? So the victims didn't wanna testify in open court. They were concerned about it. So their testimony was taken by video. That was a request that was put in through the CSOs and that the prosecutors respected. They were allowed to go into court. As you can see, many of them are covering their faces. Over the course of the case, they covered their faces less and less. And by the time that they won their trial and secured a conviction, they are now attending trials as kind of the godmothers of these cases very proudly and very openly. But without the CSOs, there wouldn't have been a case. Without the prosecutors, there wouldn't have been a case. So the collaboration was essential. This is my last example now. I think I'm probably close on time. In Kosovo, there's so many examples we've been working there for a while. But one example I thought was worth highlighting is that the victims in Kosovo, one of the legal requirements is they have to make a petition in the police station, which is super problematic for lots of reasons that you might imagine. But one of the NGOs that's serving torture survivors and survivors of sexual violence, Kosovo Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims set up a protocol with law enforcement that would allow law enforcement and victims to interact outside of the station in a way that would protect their identities. And I will note that if it had not happened, well, when we started working there, there were zero cases of sexual violence, conflict-related sexual violence, working their way through the courts. There are at least 50 in process now. And I would submit that that would not have happened without the collaborations like this between CEOs and the police. And I will leave that. Yeah, there's a lot in that presentation that I think is gonna be really useful to tease out. Some of the questions that come to mind immediately just speaking from our North Korea work is, you know, is there ever a reason not to collect some data or another one might more specifically be like, how do we decide what kind of data to hand over and when? And I'm sure that a lot of the other documenters here will have similar questions we can talk about in the Q&A. So thank you for that. We'll switch now to our final presentation to Sun Kim, who is also really part of the genesis for this conversation today. She's a legal officer at the United Nations Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, the double I double M, which is mandated to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of serious crimes and other violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011. Before that, she's worked as a staff attorney at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She's also had experience in former Yugoslavia and Cambodia. And so she really has a broad base of experience to speak to from today. So with that in mind, I'll turn things over to you, Sun. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Scott. I'm glad that we've come this far from our first conversation at last year's Rights Con. So it's nice to see everybody here. And it was great to hear everyone else's presentations. I'm just gonna give a brief overview of the Myanmar mechanism and then some of the challenges that we face as an investigative mechanism. So as Scott said, the Human Rights Council established the Myanmar mechanism in September of 2018. And our mandate is to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyze evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law committed in Myanmar since 2011. So that's a bit of a mouthful, so I'll break that down. So basically what we are is an investigative mechanism, which means we're not a court, we're not a tribunal, we're not a prosecutor's office, but we are a UN entity and we're here to collect evidence. We also analyze it, we preserve it, and hopefully we will share it when we call onward sharing. So we will share it with national, regional or international courts or tribunals or other legal proceedings that may have jurisdiction over crimes within our mandate. So you've probably heard about the Myanmar mechanism in relation to the Rohingya situation, the clearance operation that started at the end of 2016 through the end of 2017, the UN fact-finding mission concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that serious international crimes had been committed in Myanmar. The two most highlighted, I guess the most well-known and most publicized instances of where the mechanism is cooperating and sharing information is first with the International Criminal Court, which opened a case, Bangladesh-Myanmar on deportation and persecution. And the second is the International Court of Justice, which is not a criminal proceeding per se because it's a state to state what we call a contestant proceeding. So the Gambia brought a case against Myanmar under the genocide convention at the International Court of Justice. We are hoping that, as I always pointed out, we're hoping that someday, we will also have French or German prosecutors or work crimes offices contacting us, asking us for information, or as Kathy pointed out, other national prosecutor's offices who want information because they either wanna cooperate with cases, it could be in the United States, it could be in their countries under universal jurisdiction. Perhaps there will be cases in Myanmar someday as well. But as you can imagine, we have a lot of challenges. The first one is no access to the country. And I think anyone working on Syria is well aware of that, same with everyone who's working on DPKR. It's quite hard to collect anything, evidence, things that will be used as evidence in the future when you don't have physical access to the ground, to the country, to the victims, to the witnesses directly. We have consistently requested that the government of Myanmar give us access to Myanmar and the government has denied the access. As you can imagine, the work at the mechanism has been quite busy since February of this year, since the military seizure of power in Myanmar and all of the current events that have been going on in Myanmar since then. I, this is my personal opinion, but I do believe that at this point, I think it's early June, there is reasonable grounds to believe that crimes against humanity of some sort have been taking place in Myanmar, in the military's reaction to the peaceful democratic protests there. I think one of the challenges that I'd like to highlight for the CSO community, and I'm glad that Kathy mentioned that we need to be cognizant of the mandate of different organizations. And they're not really there to do the collection work for us. Great examples with the ICRC, MSF, et cetera. But one of the challenges I think that a mechanism encounters is when we receive reports from CSOs that contain underlying witness information, we often need to find consent from those witnesses. So consent for the witnesses to share their statements with the mechanism, which is quite tricky because we were not around when there were CSOs documenting the Rohingya Clearance Operations in 2016 and 2017. But I think if there's one takeaway, I would advise that it would be great if people could think about maybe having consent as part of the witness interview or the witness statement taking. So it could be open-ended for some sort of future international investigative mechanism, such as the Myanmar mechanism, or for national, regional, or other international tribunals, courts, proceedings, what have you. And I think the tricky thing there is that of course we know that in criminal proceedings, your statements, witnesses' names, potentially identifying information needs to be shared with all parties to the proceeding. And that might concern witnesses, especially if it's going to be shared with the accused and his or her lawyers, the defense team, in the case of the International Court of Justice Proceedings, it needs to be shared with the government of Myanmar. So these are some of the issues. I don't have all of the solutions and I definitely don't have the answers, but these are things that it would be great for CSOs and the UN and legal people working in this field to just continue this conversation to see what are the challenges, what can we do to make it better? I also want to close on one thing, which is quite important to us, is that we really want to avoid retraumatization of witnesses. So there is a lot of documentation that happens on the ground by different organizations when there are mass atrocities committed. And what we want to prevent is victims, survivors, witnesses having to give their testimony, tell their story again and again to different organizations and different people and retraumatize them. And years later, we don't want to have to go back. You're going to have to actually in legal proceedings. So part of our goal in collecting underlying witness statements from people who have done the documenting is to do exactly that, is to find out what really happened and to prevent the retraumatization. So I'll just close with that. I'm open for questions. People feel free to contact me if they want about the mechanism or the work that we do. Thank you so much, Sun. I think there's a few really important things in there, like the importance of informed consent and avoiding retraumatization. And I think maybe this is a question that we have as documenters too, but it's kind of a core question is that I guess a mechanism like the double I double M also maps where the information is and maps which people have which kinds of stories of abuse or have experienced certain abuses. So yeah, be curious to see if other documenters have more questions along those lines. But so we've arrived at the Q and A. I think the easiest way to get started might be if anybody has any questions, feel free to hit that raise hand button or to type a question in the chat. I just wanna remind people again who might have joined a little bit later. We are recording, so if you do want your identity removed from this, while we're editing the video, we can block out your identity, your name, your voice or the video. Just let us know. So yeah, if there are any questions, please raise the hand. If not, Mary, I believe you had a couple of questions for the group. Yeah, I do just coming, actually there are questions from Clara Visee. She had to leave because she's in the midst of a memorial it's 10 years since her brother and sister-in-law were murdered and this week in Brazil is a week of remembering environmental activists who've been killed or land defenders who've been murdered. She apologizes for having to leave, but one of her questions that she put forth is, and I think has been answered to an extent, but what is the role of the state and what are the distinctions between doing this kind of work in a country where the state is supportive and in situations where the state is committing the atrocities. And then the other question that she put forward is the question of resistance to technology. So one thing that you said, Scott, was that it's often done in kind of a pen and paper documentation. And so, as we come in with things like tell-out, how is this received when it's not the kind of more traditional pen and paper documentation and what are the challenges and opportunities that something like an app that's collect, that the people who are suffering the atrocities are the ones documenting it or suffering the violations. And so, what are the barriers or resistance to that both in terms of the use of it, but I guess on both sides, both the civil societies using those sorts of documentation methods, but also in the legal process, will they be taken the same way as a traditional pen and paper documentation? I'm not sure if I phrase that very clearly because for us, you know, a lot of this for us is giving people the tools to document what's going on in their own communities. But how do you make sure that that is then taken seriously and usable in a legal process is the big question mark for us. I can speak a little bit to the second one. I think the role's question's a really hard one because it's very context-specific. And I think both Avis and Sen can speak better than I can to oppositional governments that you're investigating. It's obviously a different situation. But as far as the apps, and I'm more familiar with some different ones, but they're very useful for corroborating, authenticating testimony. But the key thing to remember about any kind of document or thing or item or whether it's virtual or physical is that you're almost never going to be able to introduce that into a process without a witness.  If you are unreachable, maybe somebody else who saw the same thing happen can create a kind of corroborating witness to introduce it. Maybe an expert can, but you're just not going to be able to create evidence that is self-sufficient because eyewitnesses are sort of the bedrock of the legal process. I can have something to, Kathy mentioned, it's really important as she mentioned, actually depends on my experience with the National Pursuiters in the EU. Once we shared like some piece of data or evidence, they only demanding or requesting their witnesses. They need to listen to the, even like sometimes I shared like some statements or whatever lie they need finally to speak to the original one. Where is that the message? I agree, like it's the most, most important one in all of the investigation that I engage in, whatever in Sweden, in Netherlands, in Germany and France, there is a lot around, the best one, it was like the witnesses, inside their witnesses, it's also really, really important as for engaging in. But actually there is some cases in the EU in regard to the, for example, to the former fighters in the EU that the judge actually depends only for the social media, sometimes the pictures for the social media. For example, in one case in Sweden, the judge like a sentence for some former fighters, just where he was like shot in some videos or pictures in the social media, the Facebook he was setting on some despotism, for example, or emanating the dignity. So some cases was like the social media or the open source data, it's really important. I totally agree, all of the requesting witnesses, so it's the most relevant witnesses for the, for the first two questions, it's the most difficult actually we face in Syria because we have, we don't have like an access to the area, to rely in, it's always suffering, to rely in Syria. And so I see a question of inquiry, always like suffering demand requesting for access to the area and the Syrian government because it's the majority of the part of that variation in Syria, it came from the Syrian government, so it's a part of the atrocity which is going to be. But no one know what might be like changing the future, maybe we got something changing in the underground, we don't know, but we have like to prepare ourselves while collecting data from around, it's really hard. And actually, as Sonia came like mentioned, there is something really, really interesting in all, like in Yemeni context in Syria and context in Libya and so on. So once I conduct some interview, some trainings for some human rights defenders or activists, are you see, especially like when questions, how like for the informed consent, especially, that the person sometimes like really hesitated for engaging and providing their informed consent or signing something for the statement. Sometimes they providing like very, very, just like, okay, I accepted for sharing what I am, which is you with any NGOs, but without like real statement or signing, I'm not sure how we can deal like with that in the future. Sometimes we can like, bath that if the witness is like it's here and we can connect directly to the pursuers for that. But it's still like there is a lot of challenges for working outside the country, which like it's still blocked for, and the real evidence honestly, it will be like discovered in the future after we can access security military branches, for example, some intelligence facilities or some former fighters. As you see for after ISIS is defeated in the Northeast of Syria in 2018, a huge and many more stuff like that and the hard jobs have been found after the ISIS has been defeated by international pollution. So there is like not a treasury of data, but before that once it was blocked, it was so hard for accessing and reach out for witnesses or, so it's so complicated. Maybe some can introduce like that. This question, which came like a lot from a lot of context, how we can like overcome some hesitation of the witnesses or survivors of this, whatever, for signing any statement, signing the infamous consent, providing them, okay, they are accepting, they have like we have consent, but it's not written. I mean, I do understand the safety and security concerns of witnesses, which we take very seriously and without access to the country, it's hard to do a security risk assessment of anybody inside the country. So, the communications with people inside the country are quite limited. And then just, as everyone knows with COVID, travel to the region has just been completely restricted this past year and a half. So hopefully the COVID situation will get better and staff from the mechanism can travel to the region. But I don't know, I mean, in my previous job, at least with the Yugoslavia Tribunal, it was clear that witnesses want accountability and that doesn't necessarily mean legal process, as Kathy pointed out, but they are wanting some sort of accountability. And so I do think on the whole, people find it very valuable that their stories are told, that they're told in court. But again, people situations can change over the course of years, but it's just hard to assess safety and security of witnesses. So actually, son, I had another question for you. And this is a little bit focused on Myanmar specifically, but I wonder if anybody else in the webinar has had a similar experience. What do you do or what can be done if a witness is not accessible? So on our North Korean documentation for our Disappearances Project, we recognize that a lot of the people who are the family members are actually aging, and so eventually are passing away. And so with them, we can preserve some of the documentation or their statements, but we don't necessarily have the living link to the person that was taken decades ago. And I'm also thinking about in the Myanmar context, the people in Cox Bazaar where restrictions have increased and decreased over time, but in Cox Bazaar where NGOs have gone in, taken statements, even done the extra steps of getting informed consent, but then maybe relocating that witness again later on could be really challenging. So if they're moved out of Cox Bazaar to another location, maybe they have the same cell phone number, but maybe the cell phone number gets changed and it's just easy to lose contact with those people. So is there any way to mitigate that? Is there any way to get around that problem? Yeah, I mean, I'm also open to hearing ideas from other people, especially people who work more in the field. I do think that all of these investigative mechanisms rely heavily on CSOs, NGOs, interlocutors, intermediaries, people who work in, let's say for example, Cox Bazaar, who are familiar with the camp, who are familiar with the communities who are members of the community. It's important to establish those relationships and make sure we do try to keep the contact information. And of course, in my experience, most refugees, all they want is to go home. So what if they do get to go home and then it's also then harder to get ahold of them if they do return home? So yeah, I'm open to any kind of ideas, suggestions, yeah, discussion on that issue too. I have a suggestion on that, but I think that there's a challenge that comes right back with it because of the issues of consent, but often the best way to keep track of someone is not to have their cell phone number, but well, maybe to have that, but to know who their best contact is to ask who is their best contact. Maybe it's a son or a daughter, maybe it's a religious leader, maybe it's a human rights activist, maybe it can be any number of people, but those contact people end up being the most useful for tracking people down when they're moving through different sort of unstable environments. At least in my experience, that's been the most useful, but that usually you need that person as well to consent, even to collect their information, right? So there's a double issue, but that is a, I found to be a pretty effective way to track people. Yeah, that leading to the actions of this maintenance of the contact, the living contact, and then the, in most cases, most Angios grassroots groups doesn't have the main powers or it's allocated for the regulatory, make a call, and then to make sure that when the contact is, it's constant. And so usually the interview we easily forget that who they met or who they provide this information or other testimonies. So the first question is that if anybody have been cornered that the any organizations in your network have the very constant procedures of that by how many years of that they set the regular, the phone call check or the email contact check. And then the other question is that the, because there's many limited situations that there's no organizations that we adopted very limited method of giving them the, our permanent number. So is it become important for us to maintain our obvious number, the components, not be stolen or it's not being taken by others and indicate and also detailing them to whenever you want to reject or just cancel your tax monies in the fear of being, their tax money being worked against them and then they can contact us. So detailing them to and ask them to keep in mind of that when the trial happens in the future and then we don't know that's how many decades it's necessary and then just keep it and then preserve it. And then when you see that trial is coming up and then place contact us too and then you, even like just asking them they're more proactive. Yeah, the leach to us because it might be really impossible for us to reach out and just control and just managing all the product with a hundred styles of context. So that is a very limited solutions we now apply. Thank you. So there's, I think we have time for one more question. There's a question actually from one of our researchers in the chat. I'll just read it out loud. It's a question for Sun. How is the work of the double I double M distinguished from that of the double I double F double M the independent international fact finding mission on Myanmar. And I think this is relevant to a lot of other contexts. What would it take to create an equivalent for the DPRK or for another country at the UN Human Rights Council or General Assembly? I think that's a great question and I'm so glad someone asked that because there's a lot of confusion about what was the FFM versus what is the double I double M. So the FFM was an international independent fact finding mission on Myanmar and it's over.  They report, they wrote all their reports which were really, really good. And because of that actually it was the report that came out of the fact finding mission that spurred the creation of the mechanism. And so the fact finding mission did a great job documenting Syria's human rights violations and focused on all of Myanmar, which was also very important. So our territorial scope consists of all of Myanmar even though maybe prior to February of this year the issue that got the most attention was the Rohingya situation. So what does it take? I believe, I wasn't there for it but I believe it takes a lot of advocacy from the CSO community to advocate at the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council to create a similar investigative mechanism. I do think that there is a little more political will these days to create investigative mechanisms that there used to be when the Security Council used to create ad hoc tribunals or states used to come together to create an international criminal court there seems to be political will at the Human Rights Council at the General Assembly to create these investigative mechanisms. And so I do leave it up to the advocacy community to advocate for what you want to create. Okay, great. So that's perfect, we're exactly out of time. So yeah, I wanna say thank you to all the speakers for your participation and also for the important work that you do in pursuit of justice and human rights. Thank you also to all of those of you who attended. We hope to connect with you again so that this conversation isn't just a one-off but this sparks and continues mutual support and knowledge sharing. So please, if you get a chance, we'll post some of the links on our websites and then as well if you have any questions you can shoot them to info at accessaccountability.org and we'll make sure that it reaches the right person. And yeah, we look forward to hoping to hear from you more in the future.


Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday ordered his armed forces to observe a unilateral 36-hour ceasefire in Ukraine this weekend for the Orsada Christmas holiday, the first such sweeping truce move in the nearly 11-months-old war. Kiev indicated it won't follow suit. Ukrainian officials have previously dismissed such Russian moves as playing for time to regroup their invasion forces and prepare additional attacks. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had little faith in the intentions behind this announcement, adding that Kremlin officials have given us no reason to take anything they offer at face value. He told that the United States is concerned that the Russian Federation could use a temporary truce to regroup its troops and then launch an intensify attack. It does not appear to be a strategic change in Russia's plan or its approach, Price said. It appears to be in a bid to continue to do what it has inflicted upon the Ukrainian people for nearly a year now, as it seeks to rest, refit, regroup and ultimately re-attack.


Many people have not experienced what it is like to not be able to afford clothes. This special business in Pressensburg provides a platform to give and receive clothing items in a time of need. It's been going on, I guess, for about a week now. I put out the coats, and every day I go out and check and straighten up, and every day it's a new set of coats, and this morning when I come out there was absolutely none left. So luckily I had a few in the back I could pop out there because it's pretty chilly this morning. We definitely need more coats, kid sizes, there hasn't been any kid sizes out there, blankets, scarfs, gloves, hats. Somebody put out some gloves and they were going within no time. And you've got to think about it too because if you, for example, don't need a blanket, you wouldn't pick up a blanket off the side of the street. If you need a blanket, you're going to pick up a blanket. The rack stays out 24 hours a day, so you can easily jump out of your car, hang up stuff out there, there's clothes hangers for the ready. Or if you don't want to do that, it's too cold out, you can bring them in here and I'll hang them up for you. Now if you are to pick up a coat, if you need a coat, I can't even see you from in here.  So don't feel ashamed, don't feel embarrassed because no one can see you. Owens also mentions that Lose Place for Pets provides free coats and winter accessories at their location in downtown Prestonsburg. Well I think that's the whole point of being a small business is, you know, obviously I'm not going to get rich from this, so it puts me in a position to be able to help people. And I'm right here downtown so why not?  A lot of people can't afford a lot of things. You'd be surprised because, I mean think about it, how expensive are our electric bills? Some of these people don't have electricity. And you think that that would be a given that somebody has heat in 2019, but they don't. And you know, any little way we can help would be great. Please keep this rack filled. You have no idea how many people you're helping.


Gestational diabetes mellitus, GDM, is a common condition among pregnant women with significant health risks for both mother and baby. Early detection and proper management are essential to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. This article was authored by MF.Kiva and DA Permitova.


We will talk about how to create and style PowerPoint presentation slides using our Matdown and my new package PPTS templates, which will take care of a lot of the styling and formatting. So you're at work, you're doing some analysis, you did something cool and you need to share it with someone else. This is very common workflow for most of us, as in the end of the day, analysis or result doesn't mean anything unless we tend to show it to someone else. And you want to make sure that you're sharing it in a way where we keep the reproducibility. So we will turn to some of our common slide creation tools, Swingian, Reveal.js, Beamer, IOSlides. And a lot of these libraries work really well for presentation, but it can be difficult to share and collaborate with collaborators that are not as well versed in R, since they are a little bit wider, a little bit harder to handle, and with that the whole HTML slide format. What would be really nice if we were able to keep all the power from R and reproducibility, but would be able to output PowerPoint presentation slides, because they are by far the most common presentation software out there. And most everybody have some familiarity of how to use and interact with it. So there's three main ways to create a PowerPoint presentation from R. We can use just the standard arm-up-down package, using pan-dot as a bad end. We can use the office-down and the office-up-package. The office-down and office-up-package provides a lot of flexibility with what it can do, but there are quite a lot more work to do it into, and this is why I would only be focusing on the arm-up-down route. So what can we do without going into any of these extra packages? So the PowerPoint presentation output format is a very simple format we can use, and it gives us four different types of slides. So we have the title slide, with the title and content slide, which is the main slide you'll be using. It's the one with the bit area where it protects off it just. There's the session error, which is like the intermediate section one you can use to divide up your presentation into sections. And then we have a class of two, content slide layout with a left and a right-hand side. Let me just show you what they actually look like. So we'll start our PowerPoint presentation with a YAML file. Here's how we specify the output to be a PowerPoint presentation. And we see that the first slide we see will be our title slide, and the title slide is specified with what information we have in the YAML. So we see we have a title, we have all for an update, and these are placed in the PowerPoint presentation. We can also use standard markdown features, such as links and making things bold. It's important to note right here that we used section two header to denote new slide. So every time we're using this double pound symbol, this will denote our next slide. And we can use other features such as bulleted lists. So most of the standard markdown functionality will work inside these PowerPoint presentation slides. Our section header will be a level one header, and this will be a differently styled slide that will only contain this section header right here. So we retain that anything else that is from our markdown. This is the only thing we can do. Our title and content slide is what I think would be your most used ones. This one we've seen a couple times before. We can also add in plots or tables. Anything non-interactive. It's important to note that it can only take one thing. So if you have something that includes text and some kind of element that is a plot or a table, it will be pushed down to the next one. If you want to do the two-toned one, which is like a Ptolema one, it has a left hand side and a right hand side. We have to use this pain.tolum specification to see if the one on the left or the tolerance and it would then place things in these left and right hand side. So we saw a couple of things and there's a couple of different problems. One of them is the slides we saw were fairly plain. Our black and white wasn't much going on and we also saw that we were limited to our more retangular slide format. And additionally, we saw that all the fitters didn't quite fit in the slides as much as they maybe could have been. So this is some of the problems that the PPTH template's practice will try to solve when you install it. You'll get a couple of things. You will get a studio add-in that when used will insert the pain.tolum. So you don't have to remember how many there are. You just use the add-in, you plug it right in. It also includes a couple of templates that show you how to use the different features. And my hope is that you can use those templates and modify them to your corporate theme or whatever theme you like and be able to take full advantage of everything with minimal changes on your part. So this has a much lengthy document showcasing a lot of different things. But this is like the beginning and the main part of it. What you see at the top right here, we have a new reference document. So it includes another PowerPoint presentation file where we have changed the styling of it. And we're telling PowerPoint presentation, hey, use this as a reference of how to style. And then we're loading in PPTH template. And what this one does is pulling out the sizes of the different content areas and saving those as option templates. But this means that now when we move forward, every time we're putting in a plot, we can use this options labels argument in our chunk to say full left and right. And it will make sure that the output of all your plots will fit perfectly inside the template. So now using this template, we can see that our title slide has done a little update. We even added other fancy elements of this line for small gradient in it. We see there's a wider format. And we see that all the content is the same as before, but the styling has been modestly improved. See different ones. And notice how the plots now fill the area perfectly. And this is also just a showcase that when you're doing a two-tonsent layout, you don't need to do a 50-50 split. Everything will just follow our template. So I'd like to thank you very much for listening along. The repository will also include a video of how to format these PowerPoint presentation templates. Thank you.


We are trying to do everything to help member states to prevent criminals and terrorists on nuclear material falling into the wrong hands that could be used for malicious acts. The threats are there, the threat is really real and terrorists of course are there and looking for such possibilities or opportunities to meet their goals without any hesitation. On an iPass we offer to our member states, open their requests to help them assess the effectiveness of their physical protection systems. From UNF, everyone has a badge to sign in here. In average we conduct three to four missions per year and so far we have organized more than 50 missions in more than 35 countries. We do visit a wide range of nuclear and radiological installations and this includes nuclear power plants, research reactors, other fuel cycle facilities like storage facilities like fuel fabrications facilities, enrichment facilities but also other radiological facilities like radiotherapy departments and so on to check the effectiveness of the physical protection of such installations and such material. With the selection of the teams that conduct such missions are made by the agency and usually we are talking about five to seven experts with a team leader coming from member states and these are internationally recognized experts in physical protection and nuclear security. We do concentrate on all the detection system, intrusion system, alarm systems and also the check also the protected areas, the vulnerable areas, the inner areas and the fences so they look at the whole system. The cameras have full coverage, it has full coverage but I showed you there are two places, I have two small images. Any deviation then would result in a gap so for those gaps then we make recommendations for improvements but at the same time we also identify good practices or best practices that we take with us and then disseminate this to other countries that would benefit from such best practices. So in summary there are two results of such missions, improvements for the country that has requested the mission in terms of making recommendations and suggestions for improvements but also to identify best practices that globally the global international community benefits from such best practices to improve physical protection worldwide.