1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of Purpose Increasingly, civil society actors engage in documentation and investigation processes, seeking to collect evidence against those responsible for serious human rights violations. The purpose of this Handbook is to provide guidelines and best practices for the collection and management of information on serious human rights situations for those that are not professionally trained in such documentation practices. While the Handbook strongly emphasizes the need to refrain from investigating human rights abuses and to refer to professionals, practice shows that this is not always possible. Only under such circumstances and as a last resort may civil society actors consider engaging in certain documentation practices and not in others, always seeking to include professionals when and where possible. They may however only do so by adhering to the ethical principles and documentation guidelines that are provided in this Handbook. These enable unofficial investigators to do no harm, identify security risks, preserve crime scenes, prevent the loss of evidence, and manage the information in manner that preserves confidentiality, security and probative value, with an eye to possible use in later redress processes and without jeopardizing the future work of professionally trained and officially appointed investigators. 1.2 A Societal Need Realizing the importance of evidence to buttress claims of human rights violations, and that in many situations such information is lost by the lack of investigations, a growing number of actors from civil society have started to engage with or conduct documentation and investigation processes of serious human rights violations. Civil society documentation of serious human rights violations dates back to the origins of the human rights movement itself. Though largely utilized for various domestic purposes, it was in the late 1980s and early 1990s that reports and materials collected by human rights groups began making tangible contributions to the project of international justice. Increasingly, civil society actors have sought to contribute to regional human rights bodies such as the Inter-American Court and Commission for Human Rights and the European Court for Human 11