Mapping Report > Introduction > Methodology

A “mapping exercise” is based on a number of methodological premises.⁷⁴ A mapping exercise itself should be concerned not only with the violations themselves but also with the context(s) in which they were committed, either in a given region or across an entire country, as is the case here. Such an exercise may include various activities, such as the collection, analysis and assessment of information, surveys and witness interviews, and consultation with field experts and consultants, among others. This type of project is not a new concept. It has much in common with international commissions of inquiry, commissions of experts and fact-finding commissions. It functions perfectly as a preliminary step prior to the formulation of transitional justice mechanisms, whether they be judicial or not, to enable the identification of challenges, the assessment of needs and better targeting of interventions. It can also be found in international and hybrid jurisdictions, where it is used to better and devise global investigation and prosecution strategies. Among the recent examples of mapping exercises, some have been based solely on documents in the public domain (Afghanistan) and others on interviews with thousands of witnesses (Sierra Leone).

One of the major premises is that mapping remains a preliminary exercise that does not seek to gather evidence that would be admissible in court, but rather to “provide the basis for the formulation of initial hypotheses of investigation by giving a sense of the scale of violations, detecting patterns and identifying potential leads or sources of evidence”.⁷⁵ With regard to human rights and international humanitarian law violations, the Mapping Exercise should provide a description of the violation(s), their nature and location in time and space, the victim(s) and their approximate number and the – often armed – group(s) to which the perpetrators belong(ed), among others. As a result, the findings of such an operation should be very useful for all transitional justice mechanisms, whether they be judicial or not.

The six-month deployment timeframe set by the Secretary-General for the Mapping Exercise, with the mandate of covering the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed across the whole territory of the DRC over a ten-year period, imposed certain constraints in terms of the methodology to be used. It did not foresee in-depth investigations, but rather the gathering of basic information on the most serious incidents, chronologically and province by province.⁷⁶ The collection, analysis and use of any existing information sources on the violations committed during the period under examination was also established as a starting point for the Exercise, in particular “the outcome of past United Nations missions to the country”.⁷⁷ The subsequent six-month deployment of five in-field mobile Teams allowed for this information to be verified and either corroborated or invalidated in accordance with the standards set out herein with the aid of independent sources, while also enabling the reporting of previously undocumented violations.

A document outlining the methodology to be followed by the Mapping Team was drafted on the basis of United Nations-developed tools, in particular those of OHCHR. These methodological tools covered the following areas in particular: a gravity threshold for the selection of serious violations, standard of evidence required, identity of perpetrators and groups, confidentiality, witness protection, witness interviewing guidelines with a standardised fiche d’entretien, and physical evidence guidelines (including mass graves), among others. It was important that the methodology adopted for the Mapping Exercise catered for the requirements and constraints of the ToR, in particular the necessity to cover the entire Congolese territory as well as the period from 1993 to 2003, to report only the “most serious” violations of human rights and international humanitarian law and to ensure that the security of witnesses was not compromised and that information was kept confidential.

Gravity threshold

The expression “serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law”, used by the Secretary-General to define the first objective of the Mapping Exercise, is non-specific and open to interpretation. Generally speaking, it is intended to apply to violations of the right to life and the right to physical integrity. It may also cover violations of other fundamental human rights, in particular where such violations are systematic and motivated by forms of discrimination forbidden under international law. In international humanitarian law, violations are considered serious when they endanger protected persons and property, or when they violate important values.

Given the scale of the violations committed in the ten years of conflict over a very vast territory, it was necessary to select from the most serious crimes. Each recorded incident demonstrates the commission of one or several serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law localised to a given date and location. Occasionally, a wave of individual violations (e.g. arbitrary arrests and detentions, summary executions, etc.) is considered as one incident.

To identify the most serious incidents (those describing the commission of the most serious violations) a gravity threshold similar to that used in international criminal law to identify the most serious situations and crimes for investigation and prosecution was used. The gravity threshold provides a set of criteria enabling the identification of incidents of sufficient gravity to be included in the final report. These criteria function as a whole. No one criterion alone can be the decisive factor and all may be used to justify the decision to class an incident as serious. The criteria used to select the incidents listed in this report fall into four categories:

Nature of the crimes and violations linked to a given incident: Each recorded incident points to the commission of one or more crimes under international law, be they war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide or other crimes constituting serious human rights violations. All of these crimes can be classified on the basis of the objective gravity threshold, where violations of the right to life are considered most serious (murder, massacre, summary execution, etc.), followed by violations of the right to physical and mental integrity (sexual violence, torture, mutilation, injury to body, etc.), the right to liberty and security of person (arbitrary arrest and detention, forced displacement, slavery, recruitment and use of child soldiers, etc.), the right to equality before the law and equal protection of the law without any discrimination (persecution) and, lastly, violations relating to the right to own property (destruction of civilian property, pillage, etc.).

Scale (number) of crimes and violations linked to an incident: Each recorded incident points to the commission of numerous crimes resulting in many victims. The number of crimes committed and the number of victims is taken into consideration when establishing the gravity of an incident.

How the crimes and violations were committed: Crimes and violations of a widespread and systematic nature, crimes targeting a specific group (vulnerable groups, ethnic groups, political groups, etc.), and indiscriminate/disproportionate attacks with many civilian victims are all elements that will contribute to raising the gravity level of an incident.

Impact of the crimes and violations committed: Aside from the number of victims of the crimes revealed, some incidents may have a devastating impact in the context, either by triggering conflict, threatening existing peace efforts, or preventing humanitarian relief efforts and the return of refugees or displaced persons, etc. The regional impact of an incident or its legacy for a specific community, and its particular significance for certain ethnic, political, religious or other groups may also contribute to raising its gravity level.

Standard of evidence

Since the primary objective of the Mapping Exercise is to “gather basic information on incidents uncovered”, the level of evidence required is naturally lesser than would normally be expected in a case brought before a criminal court. It is not a question, therefore, of being satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt that a crime was committed, but rather having reasonable suspicion that the incident did occur; a level of evidence decidedly lower than that required to secure a criminal conviction. Reasonable suspicion is defined as “a reliable body of material consistent with other verified circumstances tending to show that an incident or event did happen”.⁷⁸ In cases where such reliable bodies of material were gathered by the Mapping Team, it was decided that incidents would be described using the past tense.

Assessing the reliability of information

Assessing the reliability of the information obtained was a two-stage process involving evaluation of the reliability and credibility of the source, and then the pertinence and truth of the information itself. This method is known as the admiralty scale. Reliability of the source is determined using several factors, including the nature, objectivity and professionalism of the organisation providing the information, the methodology used and the quality of prior information obtained from the same source. The validity and authenticity of the information is assessed by comparing it to other available data relating to the same incidents to ensure that it tallies with already verified elements and circumstances. In other words, the process involves cross-checking the originally obtained information by ensuring that the corroborating elements do in fact come from a different source than the primary source that provided the information in the first place. Such corroboration will generally be obtained from evidence gathered in the Mapping Exercise, but may also come from other reports and documents. However, different reports on the same incident and based on the same primary source would not constitute corroboration by a separate source.

Identification of individual and group perpetrators

Unlike some commissions of inquiry with a specific mandate to “identify the perpetrators of violations and make them accountable for their actions”,⁷⁹ the objective of the Mapping Exercise is limited to compiling an inventory of the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed within the territory of the DRC between March 1993 and June 2003.⁸⁰ The objective of the Mapping Exercise was therefore not to establish or to try to establish individual criminal responsibility of given actors.

The only reference to this matter in the ToR for the Mapping Exercise can be found in the Methodology section, in which it states that the Exercise “should gather basic information (e.g. establishing the locations, timings and backgrounds of major incidents, the approximate numbers of victims, the alleged perpetrators, etc.) and not replace in-depth investigations into the incidents uncovered”. Although the primary objective of the Mapping Exercise is not to identify the alleged perpetrators or people who should be held accountable for their actions, it was nevertheless necessary to gather basic information relating to the identity of alleged individual or group perpetrators. Given the level of evidence used in this Exercise, however, it would be imprudent, and unjust, to seek to ascribe criminal responsibility to certain individuals. Such a conclusion should be dependent on legal proceedings pursued on the basis of an appropriate level of evidence. However, it seems essential to identify the groups involved in order to classify these serious violations of international humanitarian law. Finally, the identities of the alleged perpetrators of some of the crimes listed will not appear in this report but are held in the confidential project database submitted to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, who will determine the conditions for its access.⁸¹ However, the identities of perpetrators under warrant of arrest and those already sentenced for crimes listed in the report have been disclosed. It should also be noted that where political officials have assumed public positions encouraging or provoking the violations listed, their names have been cited in the sections relating to the political context.

Other aspects accounted for in the methodology

Beyond the methodological tools presented above, certain constraints particular to the Mapping Exercise, the prevailing situation in the DRC and the accessibility of certain sites have been taken into consideration during investigations to verify previously identified incidents. For example, the capacity of the Mapping Exercise to investigate certain incidents has at times been limited due to difficulties in accessing some remote regions of the country, or due to security issues that prevent their access. The choice of priority areas for investigation and the main incidents for verification was also influenced by the short timeframe – six months – allocated to the implementation of the Mapping Exercise itself. Investigations that would take too long to achieve the anticipated findings that would feature in the final report were not included. To an even greater extent, acknowledgement of the global mandate of the Mapping Exercise – to cover the entire Congolese territory for the entire period from March 1993 to June 2003 so as to present a detailed and well-balanced report of the many violations of human rights and international humanitarian law committed at that time – for the most part dictated the choice of the main incidents reported.

In this report, each incident verified in accordance with this methodology is reported in a separate paragraph, indented and preceded by a bullet point. Each of these paragraphs includes a brief description of the incident identifying the nature of the violations and crimes committed, their location in time and space, a description of the individual or group perpetrators involved and details of the victims and their approximate number. In the reported incidents, figures relating to the number of victims have been provided as a means of assessing the scale of violations and are in no way intended to be definitive. As a general rule, the Mapping Exercise has used the lowest and most realistic assessment of victim numbers indicated by the various sources and has sometimes resorted to estimates. In light of its mandate, it was not the responsibility of the Mapping Exercise to ascertain the total number of victims of violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in the DRC during the period in question, given that precise victim counts are not essential to determining the legal classification of violations. Each paragraph describing an incident is followed by a footnote identifying the primary and secondary sources of the information reported. Incidents not corroborated by a second independent source have not been included in this report, even in cases where the information came from a reliable source. Such incidents are, however, recorded in the database.