Quality Control in Fact-Finding

Book excerpt: 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, internationalised and domestic fact-finding mechanisms since 1992, including by the United Nations human rights system, international commissions of inquiry, truth and reconciliation commissions, and NGOs. They are analysed and assessed in detail by 19 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, Chris Mahony, Dov Jacobs, Catherine Harwood, Lyal S. Sunga, Wolfgang Kaleck, Carolijn Terwindt, Ilia Utmelidze and Marina Aksenova. Serge Brammertz has written the Preface, and LING Yan a Foreword. The book emphasises quality awareness and improvement in non-criminal justice fact-work. This quality control approach recognises, inter alia, the importance of leadership in fact-finding mechanisms, the responsibility of individual fact-finders to continuously professionalise, and the need for fact-finders to be mandate-centred. It is an approach that invites the consideration of 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. The book also considers regulatory approaches to enhance quality and professionalisation.