• NGO representatives
– specialists in the particular issue
– human rights generalists
• academics
• religious and community leaders
• opinion leaders.
They can have quite divergent views about the inquiry and display different attitudes towards assisting
its work through providing evidence. Some will be supportive and the inquiry will need to capitalise on
their support and ensure it is expressed through evidence. Others may be hostile to the inquiry but it
will need to reflect accurately any evidence they give. Others may be neutral towards the inquiry and will
need to be educated, convinced and activated to contribute to the inquiry. A number of strategies can
be used to engage those who can assist the inquiry with evidence:
• briefings, for example
– meetings, both with individuals and with groups
– written information about the inquiry
– updates on developments and progress with the inquiry
• requests, for example
– to provide information
– to make a formal submission
– to appear before a public hearing
• consultation to solicit their views on the inquiry, including on evidence available and how to
obtain it
• participation in the inquiry.
10.5. INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
The inquiry will collect a great deal of information from its research, from public submissions and from the
public hearings. It will need an excellent information management system to ensure that this information
is categorised, catalogued and kept securely and accessibly.
Categorising the information appropriately enables decisions to be made about the level of security
required for individual documents or other pieces of information and then the provision of appropriate
security for those needing to be kept securely. Most of the inquiry’s information can and should be made
public. That is a part of the public nature of the inquiry itself. However, some information will be sensitive.
It might contain personal information about victims and their families. It might describe serious human
rights violations and name alleged perpetrators, who are entitled to the presumption of innocence. It
might expose the sources of the information to the risk of reprisal.
The inquiry should adopt information management procedures that establish a presumption that all
information will be released except information that falls within predetermined categories. It should then
carefully classify information for the purposes of these procedures and ensure the secure, safe storage
of information determined to fall within a category requiring security. Secure information should be
accessed only by persons needing and entitled to have access to it.
The volume of information will inevitably be so great that a good cataloguing system is essential if the
information is to be easily and usefully retrievable. The inquiry should establish the cataloguing system
before the volume becomes too great to handle and then ensure that all information is catalogued
and stored appropriately. Storage should enable individual pieces of information to be identified and
accessed easily so that they can be used for the purposes of the inquiry.
Chapter 10: Obtain information: Research and evidence | 45