Molly did a reporting trip to Ukraine to write about international justice issues. She found herself in a new situation; not focused on the legal parts of the courts and the conflicts but in amongst the nitty-gritty of evidence.

This is slippery stuff. And so much has changed over the years in what constitutes evidence in a war crimes case.

On the podcast, we have reflected with the team at Swansea University on social media evidence-gathering. In particular, we enjoyed the ‘mock case’ they did with GLAN – the Global Legal Action Network – and Bellingcat in front of a real British judge (now she’s an ICC judge) with real British lawyers and a fictional Yemen war crimes case, intended to test whether such evidence would be accepted.

We also did an episode with veteran war crimes evidence-gatherers Anya Neistat and Eva Buzo who explained what documentation is actually needed for, and the different roles played by the actors investigating international crimes – human rights groups, journalists, and international lawyers.

In the podcast we give a shout out to the episode with Danny Kemp of AFP who documented the bodies in Bucha a suburb of Kyiv shortly after the Russians withdrew. Bucha has become a symbol of the violence and horrors caused by Russian soldiers against Ukrainian civilians. The pictures of numerous bodies lying in a quiet residential street after the Russian withdrawal forced the world to take the allegations of war crimes to a new level of seriousness. 

And we mention this new set of articles in the Journal for International Criminal Justice on the role that civil society is now playing “is more diverse than ever before” in documentation and more, edited by Danya Chaikel, Priya Pillai and Pubudu Sachithanandan.

Molly was not allowed by Janet to mention any books. Check our Patreon instead to catch up on all our reading. But you can also hear her on the wonderful Called to the Bar podcast talking about how to explain international law to a broader audience.