Glossary
This is the Glossary for Totem’s course on Human Rights Documentation
Accountability: Holding someone responsible for their actions
Ally/Allies: Other organizations that strive for the same goal, from whom you can ask advice or share experiences with
Archiving: the practice to preserve, use and access documentation
Chain of custody: A record of who has had something in their possession. It can be used to prove that data is trustworthy.
Community consent: Consent from a whole community or from representatives of that community.
Consent: Permission for something to happen. Consent is continually negotiated.
Corroborate information: To verify whether information is correct.
Data: Information
Database: A place where data is organised and stored online.
Do no harm: An approach or principle that seeks to limit or prevent unintended negative effects
Duty to disclose: The legal obligation to disclose certain information, even if it would be bad for your cause
Human rights documentation: A way of recording a violation. It is necessary to get the “who, what, where, when, and how” of the incident.
Human rights investigation or fact-finding: Determining the cause of human rights violations, period, and material evidence.
International Criminal Court (ICC): A court in the Hague that investigates human rights violations.
Information Life Cycle: The process of determining the information that you need, getting the information, preserving the information, understanding the information, and using the information.
Informed consent: the persons involved understand implications when they are identified, and give their consent to use
Justice: The principle that people receive that which they deserve.
Litigation: A type of legal action
Link rot: Also known as link death, link breaking or reference rot, refers to when hyperlinks point to web pages that have become permanently unavailable.
Metadata: information about the file, either technical or descriptive with keywords
Pathways to justice: Different ways through which you can achieve justice, such as through legal action or through changing narratives.
Personal identifiable information (PII): Personal information that can be used to identify, locate or contact you. Types of PII include, your address, your date of birth, and your phone number.
Preservation: the system to store, archive and access to documentation
Provenance: The place of origin of something.
Reasonable security: The idea that it is impossible to have perfect security. Instead, it is better to focus on getting reasonable security.
Solidarity: Mutual support among individuals with a common interest
Stewardship: The job of supervising or taking care of something, such as an organization or property.
Transparency: Transparency ensures that information is available that can be used to measure the authorities' performance and to guard against any possible misuse of powers.