While
gathering testimony in remote rural areas, ICG staff encountered communities
that had not been serviced by the international humanitarian relief
net, which was still in its early stages of development. ICG staff
facilitated the delivery of humanitarian items such as food, clothing,
hygiene packs, blankets, and coffins.
In conjunction with Médecins Du Monde (MDM) Sweden, a War Crime
Trauma Unit was established through which the services of psychologists
and social workers was offered to witnesses. Interview training and
debriefing sessions were also organised for local staff members by
MDM Sweden, and a lecture series was conducted with the World Health
Organisation (WHO) which dealt with psycho-social dimensions of rape,
preventing mental distress from becoming a disorder, relaxation techniques,
and rational psychotropic drug use. Close cooperation with local human
rights NGOs in the field made the operation more effective by utilising
local knowledge. This partnership was reciprocated at the end of the
project through the capacity building donation of laptops, digital
cameras, CD ROM writers, printers, and scanners to 24 local organizations
working on human rights and psycho-social projects.
With the advent of the International Criminal Court (ICC), this evolutionary
process has the potential to develop still further. Well managed and
resourced NGOs can collect and store testimony to be interfaced with
the data requirements of international tribunals, and this can be
of value to fledgling institutions which may not be as well funded
or resourced as their mandate would require. The number of conflicts
involving gross violations of humanitarian law and/or human rights
abuse does not appear to be decreasing and thus, while war crime documentation
field studies remain problematic to say the least, the ICG Project
offers a model upon which future projects might be based.
Incorporating humanitarian aid, psycho-social, and local capacity-building
dimensions into such a documentation project also provides the testifying
communities with tangible benefits, made all the more important by
the fact that, although substantial bodies of testimony have been
amassed, those indicted for crimes in Kosovo remain at large. A 292-page
report based on the seven months of field research conducted by the
project entitled "Reality Demands" is available from the
ICG web site at www.crisisweb.org
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