The Reckoning Project: seeking justice for war crimes

Janine di Giovanni sees it as her mission to help bring justice to Ukraine as the country fends off Russia’s aggressive war. War journalists “hold the keys to historical memory. We’re responsible for bringing justice to Ukraine”, she said while speaking at the IX LMF, a major media conference that took place in the Ukrainian city of Lviv in late May.

A renowned human rights reporter and investigator, Janine di Giovanni has over 35 years of experience reporting from conflict zones across the Balkans, Africa, and the Middle East. Last year she co-founded The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, a journalistic project that combines the tools of storytelling and international law to bring war crimes perpetrators to justice. 

The Fix spoke with Di Giovanni at the IX LMF about the project and her advice for war journalists.

The Reckoning Project – blending journalism and international law

The Reckoning Project is a war crimes documentation initiative Janine di Giovanni created with Peter Pomerantsev, a British Ukrainian researcher who codirects the Arena Initiative, a program focused on disinformation and polarisation. They brought in Natalia Humeniuk, a well-known Ukrainian journalist and author specialising in foreign affairs and conflict reporting, who started gathering the team of researchers in Ukraine. 

The project’s goal goes beyond journalism; it seeks to combat impunity and bring perpetrators to justice. They collect testimonies from victims of war crimes to hold Russia accountable for its brutal actions during the war in Ukraine. Their stories gathered in the process were turned into articles, podcasts, and videos published by major news outlets like Time, The Atlantic, NPR, and Vanity Fair.

The Reckoning Project was formed in February 2022 right after Russia’s full-scale invasion started. “We believed there was a niche in training investigative journalists to report and document war crimes and take it even further to use their verified evidence towards international justice. I have worked many years in war zones and seen impunity in the aftermath of war,” says Di Giovanni.

In Ukraine, they have nearly 30 researchers trained in the project’s methodology and led by Natalia Humeniuk. “We train them in trauma, ensuring [they do not] traumatise the people they’re interviewing, and in international humanitarian law. Then, we give them specific areas they look at and get witness statements,” explains Di Giovanni. Once researchers have the witness statements, they verify them using different tools. And then, the process of building cases for international courts begins. 

The work isn’t easy. “We're new; the whole concept [of our project] is new. Working in a war zone and gathering evidence during a war is very challenging. We have to perfect our methodology”, says Di Giovanni. They also have to establish credibility in a field where many have been doing war reporting in Ukraine since 2014.

Yet, they managed to build a strong team, along with expert advisors, in a little more than a year. “The project is getting well known, and we’re working on beginning to work with prosecutors. I'd like to see [international] tribunals happen. I would like to see the people responsible for such pain that has been inflicted on Ukraine to be held accountable,” says Di Giovanni. 

The Reckoning Project team hopes to expand, so they will be looking for more journalists who want to be trained in their method and could work on specific projects. “We've got our hands full in Ukraine, but eventually, we will expand to other countries. Our vision is to work in places where there's impunity [for war crimes]. Syria, Congo, Sudan,” says Di Giovanni.  

Advice for journalists covering the war and war crimes

“We [at The Reckoning Project] are not journalists. We're human rights monitors, but we have something to share from experience,” Di Giovanni says.

She is convinced that journalists should be cautious in war zones going to funerals, hospitals, and susceptible areas so as not to traumatise people who’ve suffered from the war. “It is not your right as a journalist to go to these things. You have to be incredibly careful and sensitive to the people involved; these are people's lives you are crashing into,” Di Giovanni says. The concept of “do no harm” must always be in the mind of a journalist while reporting from a war zone. 

Storytelling is the first tool that psychologists will use to work on trauma. However, journalists who are not sensitive to signs of trauma or push too hard can cause significant harm. “When working in a war zone, you cannot retraumatize people. You have to consider that most people are traumatised. You need to hear their stories with great delicacy, be delicate, listen to them,” says Di Giovanni.  

Journalists reporting on war crimes must adopt a lawyer's mindset. The procedures for gathering testimonies in this context are distinct and significantly different from those typically used by journalists seeking a story. “Our journalists need to think like lawyers because they're getting a statement that will be useful to prosecutors when prosecutors build their cases,” Di Giovanni explains.  

Di Giovanni hopes that more people will understand concepts such as war crimes, crimes against humanity, and crimes of peace, as well as the provisions of the UN Convention on Children and the Geneva Conventions. This knowledge will help people recognize and categorise crimes when they occur. “I hope that there's more awareness among people who are suffering during wartime to know when there are indiscriminate attacks against civilians,” she says. Di Giovanni is convinced people must understand their rights and know the law because it offers them a sense of security in a difficult situation.

Source of the cover photo: Olenka Odlezhuk, courtesy of Lviv Media Forum

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