3.4 Documenting Information From Victims and Witnesses This section discusses guidelines for the interaction with victims and witnesses when documening information on serious human rights violations. Interaction with victims and witnesses requires the utmost care as it may otherwise lead to further trauma and victimization. The first rule is always to do no harm. As was more elaborately discussed in Chapter 2, given the likelihood that additional harm is inflicted, unofficial investigators should avoid interaction with traumatized children and refer traumatized individuals to psychosocial counseling. Before any interaction with victims and witnesses, unofficial investigators should obtain their informed consent and manage their expectations with regard to the likelihood that their statement leads to redress in whatever form. Unofficial investigators should make clear that they are not official or professional investigators and make no promises that they cannot keep. For the purpose of criminal investigations, usually only the witness statements that are taken by authorized legal professionals are taken into consideration.127 If a testimony of an individual appears valuable as evidence in court, unofficial investigators should therefore seek to put the victim/witness in contact with such a professional. If no such professional is available, in line with the situations described in Chapter 2 of this Handbook, unofficial investigators may consider to documenting their statements but only by following the guidelines outlined in this section and in conformity with the general guidelines on documenting serious human rights violations that are provided in this Handbook. In line of principle, unofficial investigators should not ask witnesses to sign statements, should take notes in third person (meaning should note their own observations of what was discussed, rather than a literal account of what the witness said), and should wherever possible seek to audio/video record the meeting if there is a likelihood the witness in question might become of interest to subsequent criminal investigations. 127 Marie Nystedt (Ed.), Christian Axboe Nielsen, Jann F. Kleffner, A Handbook On Assisting International Criminal Investigations, THE FOLKE BERNADOTTE ACADEMY, 68 (2011), available at http://folkebernadotteacademy.se/Documents/Kunskapsomr%C3%A5den/Rule%20of%20Law/A%20Hand book%20on%20Assisting%20International%20Criminal%20Investigations.pdf. 94