United Nations selects records management solution for war crime tribunals

By EgovAsia Editors | Aug 17, 2010

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The United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (UNAKRT/ECCC) has selected key modules from ZyLAB's eDiscovery & Production to help achieve the first conviction of a major Khmer Rouge figure. The July 26, 2010, verdict against Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, convicted him of crimes against humanity, murder and torture. It is an historic first for a U.N.-backed war crimes tribunal, and other cases are still pending against Khmer Rouge leaders connected to the deaths of 1.7 million people from 1975 to 1979.

“The UN has selected our technology for the world’s war crimes tribunals based on its robust and user-friendly capabilities for accessing and reviewing vast amounts of information, coupled by our extensive support for multiple languages and scripts, " said a ZyLAB representative.

The UNAKRT/ECCC’s application of the eDiscovery & Production system is modeled off the solution ZyLAB provided for the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and its prosecution of Slobodan Milosovich. That experience led to collaboration among ZyLAB and legal and information management professionals at the United Nations to define the de facto standard for e-discovery and e-disclosure in future war crime tribunals. In addition to being replicated for the ECCC, the technology is also currently being leveraged by The Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Charles Taylor trial.

“During the Slobodan Milosovich trial, we found ZyLAB to be the ideal technical partner to implement our vision for bringing justice, managing millions of documents, and complying with the stringent rules of international law,” said Gonzalo de Cesare, former records manager for several UN war crimes tribunals. “The ZyLAB solution - including collection, text mining of unstructured data, analysis, and web-based legal review for the prosecution, defense, and the court - became the standard for all UN war crime tribunals including those against the Khmer Rouge leaders.”