2. MONITORING AND DOCUMENTING HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS: SOME BASIC CONCEPTS 2.4 USING THE “EVENTS” METHODOLOGY TO MONITOR VIOLATIONS In this documentation method, information on human rights violations is put together using “events” as organisational units. It involves identifying the various acts, whether of commission or omission, that cause or lead to human rights violations, and which on their own, or in combination with related acts, constitute events. As any documentation methodology the “events” methodology is basically a two-stage process. The first stage consists of determining conceptually how the information is to be divided up and organised, and the second stage of completing the data for each of the resulting divisions. The first stage of the “events” documentation methodology contains several steps. These are:          Identifying the acts that cause violations Determining the victims Organising the acts into events Determining the perpetrators and their levels of involvement in an event Identifying the relationships among events Identifying other roles performed in relation to the event, and the persons or groups who perform these roles Showing relationships between the various individuals or groups Giving further information (updates) about the various individuals or groups Identifying where additional information is needed In summary, these steps involve two main sets of information: WHAT HAPPENED? WHO DID WHAT TO WHOM? WHAT ACTIONS WERE TAKEN IN RESPONSE? WHO DID WHAT? In the following pages these two sets of information will be examined more closely. 2.5 WHAT HAPPENED AND WHO DID WHAT TO WHOM? The following concepts are relevant to these questions: events and acts; victims and perpetrators; and involvement. Events and Acts Definition An Event is something that happens, with a beginning and an end, and which progresses until its logical conclusion. It can be a single act, a series of related acts, or a combination of related acts happening together. For an event to be included in human rights monitoring, at least one act that it contains should be qualified as a human rights violation (e.g. arbitrary arrest, which is a violation of the right to liberty), or be akin or similar to such (e.g. legal arrest). 8