2.6 ORGANISING THE EVENT INFORMATION In other circumstances one might start with a large event that encompasses smaller events. Again, look for ways to organise events in the narrowest possible way. For instance, a counter-insurgency operation may be considered as an event, but one should also try to identify a smaller unit, such as the raid against a particular office or house in the context of the counter-insurgency operation. For example, a campaign of ethnic cleansing in which members of an ethnic minority living in several villages are killed, wounded and displaced, can be viewed as a very big event, which encompasses numerous smaller events as well as separate acts, such as executions. Chain of Events Relationships between two or more events should be explicitly recorded. In the “events” methodology now being discussed this is done by establishing chains of events. Definition A Chain of events defines the relationship between two events. The possible relationships are:  a large event encompassing a smaller event  an event preceding a related event  an event causing another event Distinguishing Acts from Each Other The possibility of having numerous acts in a single event has already been mentioned. In the process of documentation, each individual act will need to be recorded separately. It is therefore necessary to distinguish acts from each other. As a rule, each act consists of:  type of act  victim  perpetrator  location  date and time For instance, when a man is arrested, one act is committed. If he is later killed, another act is said to be committed, as the type of act differs from the first. Likewise two acts are committed when two persons are executed, there being a difference in terms of victims. We also say that two acts of torture are committed when a victim was tortured by the police at a certain time, and was tortured again by the army at a later time, there being a difference in terms of perpetrators and of time. Involvement Systematic documentation of human rights violations requires recording not only what exactly was done to a victim but also who did it and in what capacity. Indicating who did what to whom is done with the use of the act and involvement concepts together. 11