Finding facts in a "post-fact" world

We are repeatedly told that we live in a “post-truth” or “post-fact” world, but of course all that really means is that politicians are constantly lying to us and that many people make their political choices based on lies rather than evidence. (Actually, rather than “post-truth” I prefer Professor Harry Frankfurt’s notion of Bullshit, which I insist my students brush up on.) For those of us who live in the real world, facts still matter. Whether people are tortured, suffer domestic violence, have enough to eat, or live in a healthy environment are objectively verifiable through fact-finding.

Earlier this month I was in Istanbul for a training event organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The aim was to develop fact-finding skills among investigators from national human rights institutions from Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Many human rights bodies are not as good at fact-finding as they might be. Capacity assessments of national human rights institutions (that is, Ombudsman institutions and human rights commissions) repeatedly find that they lack skills, experience and trained personnel to conduct investigations and research. UNDP asked me to develop a training syllabus covering various aspects of human rights fact-finding. The Istanbul workshop was a first opportunity to pilot this training package.

One of the weaknesses of NHRI fact-finding is that much of it is built around a complaints-handling model, a legacy of the Ombudsman role that many of these institutions play. Typically, fact-finding in this context consists of little more than shuffling papers, rather than any attempt to visit the scene of alleged human rights violations in order to gather material evidence or testimony from witnesses. I found myself repeatedly encouraging participants to get out from behind their desks (a message that was well-received, I have to say).

Something that has increased the urgency of developing fact-finding skills, as well as encouraging NHRI investigators to leave their desks, has been the increasing involvement of human rights institutions in investigating conflict. Just over a year ago, there was a global gathering of NHRIs in Kyiv, at the instigation of the Ukrainian Ombudsman and with the support of the UNDP. The Ukrainian institution has faced considerable obstacles in fulfilling its mandate when part of the country is in conflict and under foreign occupation. The Kyiv declaration, adopted by this group of NHRIs, lays down some important principles for human rights work in conflict.

NHRI engagement in conflict work is divided into three distinct phases, all of which have important implications for fact-finding. Aside from the challenges of working in situations where there is actual fighting, NHRIs also need to be active in identifying human rights issues that might serve as early warning of impending conflict. And many European NHRIs now find themselves dealing with the aftermath of conflict, particularly in their work to protect refugees and internally displaced persons.

Several of the NHRIs represented at the Istanbul workshop had experience of working in active conflict environments (or in situations such as Georgia, Azerbaijan or Moldova, in which conflict has been frozen into a status quo where the authority of the NHRI does not extend to the entire national territory). Many more have worked with refugees. In the western Balkans especially, NHRIs have had an honourable role in refugee protection over the past couple of years – a positive outcome at a time when xenophobic sentiments often seem so overwhelming in the region. In fact, Balkan NHRIs have a fairly long history of supranational cooperation. In the aftermath of the wars of the 1990s, Ombudsman institutions were often the only national bodies talking to each other across borders, even if the contacts were usually informal. This tradition continues across the several borders along the “Balkan route” followed by refugees who cross the Aegean into Greece.

Monitoring the rights of refugees entails a series of skills covered in Istanbul, including how to conduct a visit to a closed institution such as an immigration detention centre and how to interview people who have experienced trauma.

Once the training package is completed, the materials will be publicly available and UNDP will be organizing further training activities to support NHRIs at the national level.