Investigative Commons

In December 2019, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), Mwatana and their European partner organisations called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate the criminal responsibilities of corporate and government executives of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. In a 350-page communication submitted to the ICC, the organisations argued that by issuing export authorisations and exporting arms to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, these European actors may be contributing to serious violations of international humanitarian law in Yemen, including war crimes.

The platform, developed by the ECCHR, Forensic Architecture, FORENSIS, Bellingcat, and Yemeni Archive, the first project of the new Investigative Commons community of practice, exposes the patterns of indiscriminate attacks by the coalition against civilians and civilian infrastructure in Yemen. The platform demonstrates for the first time the direct impact of European arms exports on the continuous targeting of civilians and civilian spaces on the ground. It does so by exposing the relationships between documented airstrikes, found remnants of European weapons, and a timeline of arms exports from European countries to the coalition.

This exhibition showcases a new model for collaborative truth-production and investigative aesthetics, bringing together open source investigation, “counter-forensics” and strategic human rights litigation, Combining the knowledge of survivors of violence and dispossession with methods from journalism, law, activism and arts, it presents casework that confronts urgent contemporary issues: racist policing and border regimes, cyber-surveillance, environmental violence, the ongoing violence of colonialism and the complicity of institutions in them..

The exhibition and accompanying program mark the launch of Investigative Commons, an interdisciplinary practice initiated by Forensic Architecture, FORENSIS and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), which includes amongst others Laura Poitras/Praxis Films, Bellingcat, Mnemonic and HKW. Further, they introduce FORENSIS, a new Berlin-based association founded by Forensic Architecture, and named after its inaugural exhibition at HKW in 2014.