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This is the fourth episode in our series about accountability in Ukraine. This episode focuses on the collection and collation of information (and potential evidence) using open-source intelligence.  As you will hear, OSINT has played a key role in the development of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and in the monitoring of conflict in Myanmar. Today we are speaking with a world expert in the skills required of open source intelligence collection – Benjamin Strick.

Benjamin is a digital investigator with a background in law, military and technology, specialising in open source intelligence (OSINT), investigations, influence operations, data and maps. He is known for his contributions to multiple streams of human rights abuse investigations; and accountability projects using his online investigation skills, as well as for generating discussion and sharing those skills to democratise OSINT analysis. 

Ben is the Director of Investigations for both the Centre for Information Resilience and the  Myanmar Witness Project. He was previously an open source investigator with BBC Africa Eye, is a Bellingcat contributor and a co-founder of Ocelli Project.  In 2021 he was awarded Open Source Intelligence Champion of the Year for his investment, commitment and contribution to the field. 

To learn more about OSINT and how it works, check out Ben's YouTube channel where he posts free digital research tutorials.  You can also learn more about Ben and his work by visiting his website or following him on Twitter. See also the OSINT Combine Academy.

To see the Russia-Ukraine Monitor Map, see:
https://maphub.net/Cen4infoRes/russian-ukraine-monitor

To check if your passwords have been hacked and are online, see: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

OSINT Volunteer projects:
National Child Protection Task Force
Europol Stop Child Abuse - Trace an Object



Episode edited by Rosie Carvdarski. 

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This episode is the third in a series of podcasts analysing accountability in the current Ukrainian conflict.

In this third episode, we are speaking with Dr Carrie McDougall, from the University of Melbourne, who has been heavily involved in the proposal for the establishment of a Special International Tribunal to facilitate the investigation and prosecution of crimes of aggression committed on the territory of Ukraine. 

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unprecedented support has been lent to efforts to ensure that those responsible for serious international crimes being committed in Ukraine are held to account. But what prospect is there for the prime mover, President Putin, being prosecuted?

Dr Carrie McDougall, formerly a legal specialist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Legal Adviser at Australia’s Mission to the United Nations, is currently researching and teaching international law at the University of Melbourne. She is an expert on the use of force and international criminal law, in particular the crime of aggression, having been heavily involved in the negotiation of the aggression amendments to the Rome Statute and having authored several works on the crime, including the leading monograph on the subject, The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Additional Resources:

    General Crime of Aggression Publications:

•  Carrie McDougall, The Crime of Aggression under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2nd ed, CUP, 2021).
• Claus Kress & Stefan Barriga (eds), The Crime of Aggression: A Commentary (CUP, 2016).
•  Carrie McDougall, ‘The Crime of Aggression’ in Pedro Caeiro, Sabine Gless and Valsamis Mitsilegas (eds), The Elgar Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminal Justice. 

    Special International Tribunal video recordings and key blog posts:

•  Chatham House: A Criminal Tribunal for Aggression in Ukraine . 
•  Chatham House: Aggression Against Ukraine: Holding Russia Accountable.
•  Edgehill Int Law: Do We Need a Special Tribunal for Aggression for Ukraine?  
•  Carrie McDougall, ‘Why Creating A Special Tribunal for Aggression Against Ukraine is the Best Available Option: A Reply to Kevin Jon Heller and Other Critics’, Opinio Juris.
•  Kevin Jon Heller, ‘The Best Option: An Extraordinary Ukrainian Chamber for Aggression’, Opinio Juris.
•  Alexander Komarov and Oona Hathaway, ‘Ukraine’s Constitutional Constraints: How to Achieve Accountability for the Crime of Aggression', Just Security.

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This episode is the second instalment in a series of podcasts analysing accountability in the current Ukrainian conflict.

In this episode we are talking to Rebecca Barber, an expert in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) powers and humanitarian action, to discuss the power of the UNGA and its role in providing accountability for actors in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This episode also addresses  the role of the UNGA in relation to the legitimacy of governments (with particular reference to Myanmar); the role of the UNGA in relation to humanitarian assistance (with reference to Syria); and the responsibility to protect.

Rebecca Barber is a PhD Scholar with the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland, and a Senior Human Rights Research Fellow with the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and is the recipient of the 2022 Article/Chapter (ECR) Award by the Australian Legal Research Awards.  Barber has extensive experience working with international humanitarian NGOs well as multi-sector humanitarian response programs in humanitarian crises around the world. She has also worked as a humanitarian advocacy advisor with Oxfam and Save the Children, and as a lecturer with the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership at Deakin University.

 
Additional Resources:

• Rebecca Barber, ‘The Powers of the UN General Assembly to Prevent and Respond to Atrocity Crimes: A Guidance Document’ (Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 29 April 2021) 
• Rebecca Barber, ‘Cooperating through the General Assembly to End Serious Breaches of Peremptory Norms’ (2022) 71(1) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 1 : 
• Rebecca Barber, ‘An Exploration of the General Assembly’s Troubled Relationship with Unilateral Sanction’ (2021) 70(2) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 343: 
• Rebecca Barber, ‘Does International Law Permit the Provision of Humanitarian Assistance Without Host State Consent? Territorial Integrity, Necessity and the Determinative Function of the General Assembly’ (2020) 23 Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 85. 
• Alex Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect at 15: A Promise Unfulfilled’ (Global Centre for R2P, 21 September 2020). Find other commentaries on the Global Centre’s website. 
• Watch ‘A conversation with the UN Special Advisers on the Responsibility to Protect’ (2020) here on the Global Centre’s website. 
• Read the Secretary General’s Annual Reports on R2P on the Global Centre’s website. Read the 2009 ‘Report of the Secretary-General: Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’ on the UN and the Rule of Law 

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This episode starts a series of podcasts analysing accountability in the current Ukrainian conflict. 

In this first episode, we are joined by Ana Filipa Vrodljak, the UNESCO Chair on International Law and Cultural Heritage, and Professor of Law at UTS, and Mayee Warren – a senior practitioner in the management of international criminal trials - to talk about the challenges presented in collecting and collating evidence of breaches of international law in Ukraine. In particular, we are going to focus on how the law protects objects of special cultural significance, what accountability measures exist when those objects are damaged in armed conflict, and then talk about how technology can assist in bringing perpetrators of these crimes to account.

Professor Ana Filipa Vrodljak has authored numerous books on International Law and Cultural Objects and Cultural Heritage; as well as the Oxford Commentary on the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions. Among her many other appointments, she is a General Editor of the Oxford Commentaries on International Cultural Heritage Law and book series entitled Cultural Heritage Law and Policy; President of the International Cultural Property Society and on the Management Committee, International Journal of Cultural Property.

Mayee Warren has decades of experience as a senior executive in the Office of the Prosecutor of several international judicial mechanisms – from Rwanda, Sierra-Leone. The ICC, the War Crimes Court for Bosnia-Herzegovina, the ECCC – there is barely an international criminal justice mechanism Mayee hasn’t been involved with.  She is notionally retired, but is still consulting on legal and judicial projects including Organisational Development Adviser to the Office of the Attorney-General in Somaliland, Organisational Transformation and Change Management Consultant to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions under the joint EU and UN Office on Drugs and Crimes'  Criminal Justice Sector Reform program in East Africa and is engaged at UTS with teaching and program management of Global Accountability Projects, as well as providing advise to Ana in her UNESCO role.

Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.

Additional Resources 

• Ana Filipa Vrdoljak and Francesco Francioni (eds), The Oxford Handbook of International Cultural Heritage Law  (Oxford University Press, 2020).
• Ana Filipa Vrdoljak and Francesco Francioni  (eds), Cultural Heritage Law and Policy (Oxford University press, 2013)
• ICC OTP, Lessons Learned Report.
• Read about the ICC OTP’s Policy of Cultural Heritage.
• Learn more about the Mali and Timbuktu prosecutions before the ICC. 
• Alexandre Skander Galand, 'A Special Justice Mechanism for the Crime of Aggression Against Ukraine – For Who, By Who, Against Who?' Opinio juris (9 May 2022)
• Generally: International Law Blog

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On 25 Aug 2022, the US Department of Defense released its Civilian Harm and Mitigation Response Plan, which has been created, in part as a result of the public scrutiny on civilian casualty incidents following the Iraq campaign. 

In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Marc Garlasco, who has been intimately involved with this issue, having been engaged in stakeholder engagement with the US DoD during their development of this plan when it was announced on 27 Jan 2022. 

Marc has a long history of observing and reporting on civilian casualty incidents, using his understanding of the process garnered from his time as a  a US intelligence analyst.  He has served with HRW, as a senior civilian protection officer for United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA);  and as the U.N. senior military advisor for the Human Rights Council's (HRC) Independent Commission of Inquiry on Libya, where he investigated civilian casualties while leading a survey of NATO's activities in Libya. He has worked with CNA on civilian harm mitigation, and co-hosts his own podcast, Civilian Protection with CIVIC.

He has been engaged in this Action Plan through his work with the NGO PAX since 2021 and will be talking to us today about the history of this Action Plan and his views on what it might do to address the causal issues identified across the numerous projects that have been analysing the contributing factors that result in civilian casualties.

Edited by Rosie Cavdarski.

Additional Resources

• Marco Garlasco, ‘Defense Department Finally Prioritizes Civilians in Conflict,’ Lawfare Blog (29 August 2022)  
• Dan E. Stigall, Anna Williams, ‘An Improved Approach to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response’ Articles of War Blog (Lieber Institute, Westpoint) (25 August 2022) 
• RAND, U.S. Department of Defense Civilian Casualty Policies and Procedures An Independent Assessment (2022) 
• See CivIC’s Report ‘In Search of Answers: U.S. Military Investigations and Civilian Harm’ (2020)  and other publications on their website.
• Listen to 'The Civilian Protection Podcast' - PAX
• Applying the DoD Policy on Civilian Harm to Protection of Civilians in Large-Scale Combat Operations (LSCO) , NGO Recommendations for DoD Policy on Civilian Harm - InterAction

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In this episode, Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Professor Christiane Wilke about the problem with accountability following civilian casualty incidents, and the impact of cultural and racial frames in imagining what has occurred on the ground. 

Professor Christiane Wilke is an Associate Professor in the Department of Law and Legal  Studies at Carleton University, Canada.  She researches how Western militaries and human rights organizations produce knowledge about and legal analyses of armed conflicts, looking at the recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. 

In particular, she works with visual and cultural assessments of civilian casualties from airstrikes and how their assessments are shaped by imperial imaginaries about race and space. Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law and critical law & technology scholarship, she ask how international law understands, regulates, and privileges technologically enhanced warfare.

Additional resources:

• Christiane Wilke: Legal Tragedies: US Military Reporting of Civilian Casualties of Airstrikes, Forthcoming in: Alexandra Moore and James Dawes (editors), Technologies of Human Right Representation (SUNY Press, 2022)
• Christiane Wilke and Mohd Khalid Naseemi, ‘Counting Conflict: Quantifying Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan,’ Forthcoming in: Humanity Journal (Summer 2022). 
• Christiane Wilke, ‘The Optics of War: Seeing Civilians, Enacting Distinctions, and Visual Crises in International Law’ in Sheryl Hamilton et al (eds), Sensing Law (Routledge, 2017).  
• Learn more about Azmat Khan’s work at her website and read her Pulitzer Prize winning report on The Civilian Casualty Files in The New York Times. 
• Learn more about Air Wars on their website. 
• Learn more about Pax for Peace on their website. 
• Learn more about CIVIC on their website.
• Learn more about the members of Wilke’s civilian casualty collective: Thomas Gregory, Helen Kinsella, Craig Jones and Nisha Shah. 

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In this episode Dr Lauren Sanders speaks with Associate Professor Shiri Krebs about cognitive biases inherent in targeting operations and what that means for compliance with the laws of armed conflict. 

The increased reliance on intelligence feeds from various remote sensors, and the fusion of these sensor feeds to make targeting decisions provides opportunity to entrench cultural and cognitive biases in armed conflict. Equally, the labels and interpretations ascribed to these sensor feeds impact the after action reviews, or fact finding or investigative processes that follow an engagement that results in civilian casualties. There have been many studies undertaken that demonstrate that data coming from machines is changes when it is interpreted by humans, and interpreted from that human’s cognitive and cultural frame, but what is the impact of this kind of bias in the context of targeting operations and compliance with LOAC? 

Shiri is an Associate Professor T Deakin University’s Law Faculty, as well as the Co-lead of the Law and Policy Theme in the Australian Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre (CSCRC).  In 2022 she was elected Chair of the Lieber Society on the Laws of Armed Conflict Chair (with the American Society of International Law), and she is an affiliated scholar at Stanford University’s Centre for International Security and cooperation (CISAC). Associate Professor Krebs has written and published broadly on algorithmic bias and drone data vulnerabilities, data privacy, and human-machine interaction in technology-assisted legal decision-making, at the intersection of law, science and technology. She teaches the outcomes of her work in many fora – including to governments and militaries; and her paper, “The Effects of Visual Evidence on the Application of International Humanitarian Law: A behavioural approach”, was awarded the 2021 David D. Caron Prize, awarded by the American Society of International Law.

Special thanks to Rosie Cavdarski for editing.

Additional resources:
Shiri Krebs, ‘Drone-Cinema, Data Practices, and the Narrative of IHL’ (2022) 82(2) Heidelberg Journal of International Law (forthcoming August 2022). Shiri Krebs, ‘Predictive Technologies and Opaque Epistemology in Counter-Terrorism Decision-Making’ in 9/11 and the Rise of Global Anti-Terrorism Law (Kim Lane Scheppele and Arianna Vedaschi, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2021), 199-221.
Shiri Krebs, ‘The Invisible Frames Affecting Wartime Investigations: Legal Epistemology, Metaphors, and Cognitive Biases’ in International Law’s Invisible Frames (Andrea Bianchi and Moshe Hirsch, eds., Oxford University Press, 2021), 124-140. ( recently shortlisted for the Australian Legal Research Awards (Article/Chapter (ECR) Category)).
Gavin Sullivan, 'Law, technology and data-driven security: infra-legalities as method assemblage, Journal of Law and Society, 2022
Fleur Johns - Data detection and the redistribution of the sensible in international law, 2017
Donna Haraway, 'Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Question of Partial Perspective, Feminist Studies, Vol. 14, No.

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In this episode Dr Lauren Sanders will be speaking with Dr Marta Bo about her work analysing how individuals can be held to account for the potential misuse of LAWS; and how ICL can be used as a method to regulate the use of LAWS.

Dr Marta Bo is a  researcher at the Asser Institute and the Graduate Institute for International and Development studies (Geneva).  She is currently researching on criminal responsibility for war crimes committed with autonomous weapon systems (LAWS and War Crimes Project); AI and criminal responsibility; automation biases and mens rea for crimes committed with autonomous or automated systems; disarmament and criminalisation. She has published on international and transnational criminal law, artificial intelligence and criminal responsibility, autonomous weapons. Marta is also associate senior researcher at SIPRI.

Additional Resources:
SIPRI Emerging Military and Security Technologies Research

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In this episode, Dr Eve Massingham talks to Fauve Kurnadi of the Australian Red Cross and Dr Jonathon Kolieb of RMIT about how businesses are affected by, and should consider the application of IHL in situations of armed conflict.

Fauve is a Legal Adviser in the International Humanitarian Law Program of Australian Red Cross where she is responsible for the organisation’s engagement with corporate actors and academic circles.  Fauve was recently named one of Pro Bono Australia’s Impact Award winners for her work in ensuring Australian businesses understand their responsibilities under the laws of war and play their part in creating better humanitarian outcomes for communities experiencing war.

Dr Jonathan Kolieb is Senior Lecturer in Law at RMIT University, where he is the Peace and Conflict Theme Lead at RMIT’s Business and Human Rights Centre.  Jonathan’s research and teaching interests focus on global governance issues, including projects on the legal protections of children in armed conflict and the human rights obligations of transnational corporations, in particular in conflict-affected areas. Jonathan is the academic advisory member on the Victorian ARC IHL Committee. 

Additional resources:

• Jonathan Kolieb (2020) Don’t forget the Geneva Conventions: achieving responsible business conduct in conflict-affected areas through adherence to international humanitarian law, Australian Journal of Human Rights, 26:1, 142-164.
• Red Cross, War, law and business: a module on international humanitarian law for future business leaders, 2022.
• Red Cross, Seven indicators of corporate best practice in international humanitarian law, 2021
• Red Cross, Doing Responsible Business in Armed Conflict: Risks, Rights and Responsibilities 

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In this episode, Damian Copeland interviews Professor Simon Chestermann about his new book, We the Robots: Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of War. They discuss what challenges exist in regulating autonomous weapons systems, as well as how states are currently approaching this problem.

Professor Simon Chesterman is Dean and Provost’s Chair Professor of the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Senior Director of AI Governance at AI Singapore. He is also Editor of the Asian Journal of International Law and Co-President of the Law Schools Global League.

Professor Chesterman is the author or editor of twenty-one books, including We, the Robots? Regulating Artificial Intelligence and the Limits of the Law (CUP, 2021); Law and Practice of the United Nations (with Ian Johnstone and David M. Malone, OUP, 2016); One Nation Under Surveillance (OUP, 2011); You, the People (OUP, 2004); and Just War or Just Peace? (OUP, 2001). He is a recognized authority on international law, whose work has opened up new areas of research on conceptions of public authority – including the rules and institutions of global governance, state-building and post-conflict reconstruction, the changing role of intelligence agencies, and the emerging role of artificial intelligence and big data. 

Additional Resources:

Simon Chestermann: We the Robots? 2022

Hitoshi Nasu: Autonomous weapons and the law

Kobi Liens: International Law Applicable to the Use of Nanotechnologies, 2022