A report that a human rights body can act on looks different from a report that something terrible happened. This is what makes the difference, and why. Read Reporting safely first.
Before you start
- Somewhere to write that will not be found
- The date — if you are not certain, the day of the week and what else happened that day
- Any consent you need from the people you are about to name
The six things every account needs
- Who
Full name, age, village, commune, district, province. If the person is a public official, their rank and unit if you know it. If you must protect a name, write "a man of about 40 from X commune" — a described person is still evidence; an unnamed one is not nothing.
- When
Date and, if you can, time. If you are unsure of the date, anchor it: the day after the market, the Sunday before Easter. An anchored uncertainty is far more useful than a confident guess.
- Where
Village, commune, district, province. The road, the building, the field. Places can be checked; that is what makes them valuable.
- What was done, in order
Only what you saw or what the person told you directly. Separate the two: "I saw" and "he told me" are different kinds of evidence and both are worth having, provided nobody has to guess which is which.
- Who else was there
Other witnesses, even if they will not speak now. A second account years later is what turns one testimony into a finding.
- What happened next
Was there a hospital visit, a detention, a summons, a fine, a village meeting? The aftermath is often more documentable than the event, because it leaves paper.
What makes an account stronger
- A photograph of a document — a summons, a fine, a pledge, a land certificate — is worth more than a photograph of a person
- Medical records, even a note of a visit
- The exact wording used by officials, in the language they used it in
- Saying plainly what you do not know
- Writing it down soon, before the order of events settles into a story
What weakens an account
Round numbers nobody counted. Words like always and never. Adding a motive you have inferred. Merging two incidents that happened to the same person. Repeating something you were told by someone who was told it. Every one of these gives a government a reason to dismiss the whole account, including the parts that were solid.
Result
A page or two that states who, when, where, what, who else and what followed, separating what was seen from what was heard, and naming its own gaps. That is the unit human rights organisations, UN special procedures and courts actually work from. Our own prisoner-of-conscience records are built from exactly this.