ReliefWeb

Abstract

At the evolving frontier of modern humanitarianism, non-governmental organizations are using satellite technology to monitor mass atrocities. As a documentation tool, satellites have the potential to collect important real-time evidence for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, the field remains experimental and ill-defined, while useful court evidence cannot be produced without a standard methodology and code of ethics. Members of the groundbreaking Satellite Sentinel Project review the historical development of satellite documentation and some of its landmark projects, and propose necessary measures to advance the field forward.

Introduction

Satellite imagery, as a type of remote sensing technology, can provide accurate and detailed information of a specific geographic region anywhere on Earth in a relatively short period of time. Traditional uses of satellite imagery include development planning and modeling, environmental conservation, oil and gas exploration, agriculture management, and meteorological modeling. For governments, the first entities who have had access to this asset, satellite imagery has traditionally been employed for intelligence gathering and military planning purposes.

Changes to US laws and policies in the 1990s allowed private companies to provide satellite imagery to a broader range of actors. This development enabled non-governmental actors (i.e. non-profit organizations, media, academia, etc.) to acquire previously classified geospatial imagery and task private satellites to collect new imagery. The humanitarian and human rights community soon began exploring the application of this technology to its unique advocacy and operational objectives. This trend has rapidly changed the longstanding paradigm for how satellite imagery has most often been employed. Once the sole province of militaries and intelligence services, this tool is now being used by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to support international justice mechanisms for holding perpetrators of crimes against humanity to account.

In order for satellite imagery analysis to become a more effective tool for these means, however, a currently absent framework of procedures and methodologies needs to be established to standardize and scale-up the efforts of non-governmental actors. This paper identifies operational feasibility, data reliability, and legal admissibility as the three key criteria that should be used to determine whether and how satellite imagery can be employed to document alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity. Three past landmark projects of remote sensing by NGOs are reviewed in context to the three criteria identified above.