This book discusses how fact-finding mechanisms for alleged violations of international human rights, humanitarian and criminal law can be improved. There has been a significant increase in the use of international(ised) and domestic fact-finding mechanisms since 1992, including by the United Nations human rights system, international commissions of inquiry, truth and reconciliation commissions, and NGO fact-finding. They are analysed and assessed in detail by 22 authors under the common theme 'Quality Control in Fact-Finding'. The authors include Richard J. Goldstone, Martin Scheinin, LIU Daqun, Charles Garraway, David Re, Simon De Smet, FAN Yuwen, Isabelle Lassée, WU Xiaodan, Dan Saxon, Christopher B. Mahony, Dov Jacobs, Catherine Harwood, Lyal S. Sunga, Wolfgang Kaleck, Carolijn Terwindt, Ilia Utmelidze and Marina Aksenova. This Second Edition includes new chapters by Geoffrey Robertson QC, Emma Irving and William H. Wiley, as well as a new foreword by Mads Andenæs.
The book considers how the quality of every functional aspect of fact-finding can be improved, including work processes to identify, locate, obtain, verify, analyse, corroborate, summarise, synthesise, structure, organise, present and disseminate facts. Emphasis is placed on the nourishment of an individual mindset and institutional culture of quality control. This book concerns fact-work outside criminal justice systems. It is supplemented by Quality Control in Preliminary Examination: Volumes 1 and 2 and Quality Control in Criminal Investigation in the same Series.
About the Author :
Morten Bergsmo is Director, Centre for International Law Research and Policy (CILRAP). He has previously been an academic at Georgetown University, Peking University and Stanford University. Carsten Stahn is Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden Law School and Queen's University Belfast.
Review :
Gunnar Ekeløve-Slydal, review of the first edition in the Nordic Journal of Human Rights:
"This anthology raises key questions for the international human rights community. Fact-finding remains among the core activities of UN bodies, international commissions of inquiry, truth and reconciliation commissions, as well as a large number of non-governmental human rights organisations. How can these organisations ensure that fact-finding is of high quality, specifically in terms of the rendering of facts, legal analysis and in the way it fulfils its mandate? Important overarching questions regard how fact-finding can effectively contribute to peace and the prevention of further atrocities. [...] The book, inspired as it is by Professor Kalshoven's emphasis on quality in fact-work, shows both the importance of fact-finding and the importance of improving it. It might be hard to get at the truth, and sometimes the truth does not seem enough to change the world. The rational response, the book says, is to perfect one's skills."
James G. Devaney, review of the first edition in the European Journal of International Law:
"Quality Control in Fact-Finding is, above all else, a very welcome addition to the literature on international fact-fnding. Whilst there has been a marked increase in the number of fact-fnding inquiries established in the last couple of decades, this has not been matched by a similar increase in the number of scholarly studies of such inquiries. In light of both the number and high-profle nature of such inquiries, the absence of scholarship focusing squarely on the contemporary role of inquiries up to the present day seems like an oversight. This collection [...] attempts to address this lack of academic attention. The collection ostensibly sets out to 'make a contribution to the emerging discourse on fact-fnding mechanisms' by 'focusing specifcally on quality awareness and quality improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work' [...]. Its accessible style, open access format, and the breadth of topics covered will attract the attention not only of international legal scholars, but practitioners and policy-makers too."
