Truth Hounds is a team of experienced human rights professionals that has been working on documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity in the war contexts since 2014. We aim at fighting against the impunity of perpetrators of international crimes and grave human rights violations through investigation, documentation and monitoring, advocacy, problem solving for vulnerable groups.

Some of our experts have got experience in documenting international crimes committed during Russian-Georgian war back then in 2008. Our team also documented excessive use of force by police in Yerevan during the summers of 2015-2016 and in Belarus in March 2017. Since 2014 Truth Hounds team carried out over 50  fact-finding missions to document war crimes in Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea in close collaboration with Brussels based International Partnership for Human Rights. Moreover, we carried over 30 mission within other projects. Findings are fed into advocacy process vis-à-vis Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Council of Europe, United Nations and European Union.

Truth Hounds documenters seek to mobilize intellectual resources and methodological approaches for the creation of the systemic approach to the documentation work and promote accountability for grave human rights abuses and international crimes. Having prepared three extensive submissions to the International Criminal Court (the Hague) we developed thorough knowledge of international standards and best practices of evidence collection and systematization. We constantly seek to develop new innovative approaches to the documentation work, fighting impunity and restoring accountability and justice in the post-conflict societies.

We have have recorded testimonies of more than 1500 witnesses and presented to mass media and general public 19 comprehensive reports. In Georgia, Truth Hounds team together with its partners implements the project Tbilisi Shelter city. It is a shelter for human rights activists, that provides safe environment and necessary counseling for activists who are in trouble.

Click here to see more of Truth Hounds’ projects.

 

 

Truth Hounds in a nutshell:
• documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity since 2014
• gathering information from eyewitnesses, personally documenting the crime scenes with photos and video, carrying out measurements or collecting from independent, reliable sources – the approach is in line with the ICC standards
• presented 20 reports to the public (as of May 2019 hereinafter)
• submitted 3 reports to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague
• training and consulting state authorities
• 84 week-long field missions
• recorded testimonies of more than 1500 witnesses
• visited circa 70 settlement along the contact line in Eastern Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula
• spent in dangerous zones for more than 1 year in total.
• covered 156 000 km, the distance almost four times as long as the Equator
• collaboration with Council of Europe, European Commission, OSCE/ODIHR, the International Criminal Court, became a member of the Civic Solidarity Platform and Coalition for the International Criminal Court
• member of CivilM+ coalition
• established relationships with Joint Monitoring and Coordination Center, Command of Joint Forces Operation and Civil-Military Co-operation and many local activists