How Digital Evidence Is Reshaping UN Investigations In Myanmar

(MENAFN- Swissinfo) UN investigator Nicholas Koumjian explains how his team is documenting atrocities in Myanmar – from mass sexual violence to airstrikes on civilians – and preparing evidence for future prosecutions despite shrinking financial resources. This content was published on August 27, 2025 - 09:00 9 minutes

Multimedia journalist reporting for the International Geneva beat and supporting editorial quality control in the English department. Swiss-Chilean multimedia journalist with two decades of reporting experience in the US, Europe and the Middle East, with occasional assignments in South America and Africa. I enjoy investigative and long-form stories, and have also worked in breaking news and every format in between.

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Nicholas Koumjian has spent his career pursuing justice in Bosnia, Sierra Leone, East Timor and Cambodia. Sitting in Geneva, he explains why Myanmar is a case apart.

At the top of the list of reasons is the sheer volume of digital evidence of crimes committed against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority long persecuted in Buddhist-majority Myanmar. Some 720,000 have been forced to flee since 2016, when the military regime in place launched brutal“clearance operations” against the minority.

“One of the big differences is just the effect of technology,” Koumjian says.“Rohingya, even as impoverished as they were, they all had phones. We have collected thousands of videos that they took on their phones as their villages were being burnt.”

Those atrocities are one focal point of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), which Koumjian leads. Created by the UN Human Rights Council in 2018, the mechanism's job is to collect and preserve evidence of the most serious international crimes committed in the country since 2011.

For Koumjian, the flood of mobile phone footage and social media posts from survivors of past and current crimes in Myanmar illustrates both the promise and the burden of this work. There is unprecedented access to real-time evidence, but also the challenge of sifting, authenticating, storing and translating millions of digital items.

“With the quantity of material that we're attaining we have millions of items; and an item could be everything from a photograph to a 300-page report,” Koumjian says.“An awful lot of what we have is from social media.”

Abu Afna, a Rohingya insurgent fighter shows a map of Myanmar on his smartphone during an interview with Reuters, in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, September 27, 2024. Reuters/Stringer

Since 2020, a specialised open-source investigations unit has become indispensable. Digital detectives scour the internet for videos, images and posts, then pin them to exact times and places using geolocation and chrono-location tools. The team also tracks online statements that expose intent or command responsibility, and follows the digital trail of those fuelling hate speech against the Rohingya. It's painstaking work that turns scattered pixels into evidence fit for tribunals.

“When a video circulates on social media of captured prisoners being executed – and we've had that several times – [the unit] can do a lot with that,” he says.“They can find the first time that it appeared on social media, identify the sources and do a whole lot of research”.

Artificial intelligence may soon reshape and speed up the pursuit of justice.“With AI coming along, we'll even be able to just make inquiries using AI,” he says. For instance:“Show me all the evidence that mentions this person or more complicated questions than that.'”

One of the key activities of the open-source team is to verify and authenticate videos and photographs to establish if they are genuine or deep fakes, but new challenges will also emerge as AI technology develops.“What is genuine, what is fake news – that's going to be more and more difficult to distinguish,” he says.

Ultimately, technology cannot solve everything. Unlike Bosnia, where NATO enforced court orders, the IIMM has no access to Myanmar and must work entirely from abroad, notes the investigator.

And, unlike conflicts with two clear sides, Myanmar's war involves a multiplicity of actors: the army, militias, and armed opposition groups, all accused of atrocities. Each generates its own body of evidence.

Nicholas Koumjian, head of the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, briefs reporters on the situation in Myanmar. UN Photo / Eskinder Debebe Crimes in detention – a pathway to conviction

With so many atrocities to investigate, the IIMM must weigh competing priorities. Detention-related crimes have become a central focus, Koumjian explains, because they often yield the clearest leads. This emphasis is also reflected in the mechanism's latest annual report.

“People often know the name, or they can identify the person that tortured them or that they witnessed torturing someone else in their prison,” he says.“The inmates often know the commander of the prison or the interrogators or there are other records available to us that can show who was commanding the prison.”

Witness accounts describe electric shocks, beatings, strangulation, burns, and gang rape, especially in informal detention sites shielded from outside scrutiny.

Koumjian says these locations are often the most abusive, with interrogators pressing for false confessions and women facing a constant threat of sexual violence if they refuse to comply.

“There is at least the implicit threat that if they don't cooperate, there'll be some kind of sexual abuse,” he says.

Sexual violence has long been a hallmark of the Myanmar military's operations. In the 2016-2017 so-called clearance campaigns against the Rohingya, the pattern was systematic.“Maybe the worst I've seen in all these conflicts,” Koumjian says of the scale of sexual violence during that period.

Investigators corroborated survivors' testimonies by speaking to health workers who treated genital injuries, pregnancies from rape, and requests for abortions.

A Rohingya refugee family cross the Naf River at the Bangladesh-Myanmar border in Palong Khali, near Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh November 1, 2017. R Reuters/Adnan Abidi

Documenting such crimes from afar remains fraught. Many interviews are conducted remotely for safety, often with the help of local civil society groups who make the first contact with witnesses.

The IIMM refers survivors to psychological support where possible, but Koumjian notes that a grant for witness protection and psycho-social support has run out, including witness relocation in rare cases.“We don't have any money for that at the moment,” he says.

Linking atrocities to Myanmar's top brass

Ultimately, prosecutors must prove not only that atrocities occurred, but that responsibility lies at the highest levels. That's the hardest link to establish.

“The tough part is why is this high-level person responsible for a crime in a village that maybe he's never been to and against a woman and her family that he's never met, committed by a perpetrator that he has never talked to,” Koumjian explains.“That's a matter of collecting evidence that shows the knowledge of the higher up, the pattern of conduct that they allowed, [and] the various orders that they did give.”

Past tribunals have shown it can be done. Charles Taylor, president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, was convicted for aiding rebels in Liberia's campaign of atrocities, and Khmer Rouge leaders in Cambodia were held accountable for killings they never directly carried out but ordered or enabled.

The mechanism's evidence has already fed into the International Criminal Court's request for an arrest warrant against Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, the ruler of Myanmar since 2021. The latter, along with 24 other suspects, is also facing arrest warrant summons from the Federal Criminal Court of Argentina.

Min Aung Hlaing at the Kremlin on March 4, 2025. CC 4.0

But justice will take time. At Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal, convictions came four decades after the crimes.“We don't want to wait 40 years, but it's very hard to predict when and where there could be justice,” Koumjian cautions.

In the meantime, the archive grows, spanning 600 eyewitness accounts, millions of documents, photos, videos and satellite images. Funding gaps, however, threaten specialist units on sexual violence, crimes against children, and open-source intelligence.

Still, Koumjian insists the work is not only about future trials, but also the present.“We're putting some pressure on these perpetrators and potential perpetrators that one day they may face justice.”

Torture and Sexual Violence in Detention – Evidence of beatings, electric shocks, strangulation, gang rape, and burning of sexual body parts, particularly in informal facilities. Commanders overseeing these sites have been identified.

Extrajudicial Killings – Perpetrated by Myanmar's security forces, affiliated militias, and opposition armed groups against captured combatants and suspected informers.

Airstrikes on Civilians – Targeting schools, markets, hospitals, and mosques, including during earthquake rescue efforts in March 2025, in apparent violation of the laws of war.

Ethnic Targeting – New investigations into atrocities in Rakhine State amid clashes between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army, alongside ongoing work on 2016-2017 crimes against the Rohingya.

Evidence Sharing – Cooperation with the International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice, Argentina, and United Kingdom authorities, contributing to international arrest warrants and legal proceedings.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/gw

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