The Fénix Foundation 2024 End of Year Round Up
As we close out our first year, 2024 has been a momentous start for the Fénix Foundation. With a mission to advance human rights and accountability through innovation in technology and law, we’ve launched transformative projects, welcomed brilliant minds to our team, and expanded our partnerships globally. From advancing the use of digital evidence in domestic courts to exploring cutting-edge applications of AI and satellite data for human rights, the Fénix Foundation is proud to be at the forefront of these critical developments. This newsletter offers a glimpse into our impactful year and the exciting initiatives that lie ahead for us in 2025.
Co-founders Kate Keator and Sabrina Rewald at the Build Peace Conference in Manila, Philippines, where they spoke about Fénix’s Digital Evidence in Domestic Courts projects.
Meet our fénix fellows
The Fénix Foundation was very pleased to welcome our two Fénix Fellows, who will be with us into 2025.
Inshira Faliq
Inshira holds an Advanced LL.M. in European and International Human Rights Law from Leiden University, graduating cum laude, and an LL.B. (Hons) from the University of Colombo. She is a licensed attorney in Sri Lanka and has worked on a number of accountability, justice, and human rights projects through her work at Legal Action Worldwide, the Centre for Policy Alternatives CPA, the Sri Lankan Special Committee on Criminal Justice Reform, and for Sri Lanka’s first-ever Right to Information Commission.
Jana van Megeren
Jana holds an LL.M in Public International Law from Utrecht University, graduating cum laude, and a B.A. in European Studies from Maastricht University, also cum laude. She has worked on projects addressing international security, humanitarian law, and accountability through her roles at Airwars and the Public International Law and Human Rights Honours Clinic. Her academic and professional focus includes arms trade regulation, civilian harm assessment, and defense policy. Jana is also an alumna of Sciences Po Paris, where she specialized in International Security Law and Security Studies.
Expanding the Digital Evidence in Domestic Courts Project
Our ‘Digital Evidence in Domestic Courts’ (DEDC) project continues to gain momentum as we expand the number of countries involved in our pilot scheme. Over the course of 2024, we conducted trainings with students and lawyers in France (University of Lille, Paris Dauphine University), Egypt (Alexandria University, Ain Shams University), and Jordan (University of Jordan) on how to undertake the digital evidence research needed for the DEDC project.
The DEDC project leverages the joint power of domestic legal experts and artificial intelligence in order to examine the use of digital evidence in domestic jurisdictions around the world. By using this knowledge to develop guidelines, the project fosters legal certainty and supports efforts to use digital evidence in the fight against impunity. The DEDC project is a significant scaling up of the Leiden Guidelines on Digitally Derived Evidence in International Criminal Courts and Tribunals project, carried out within the Kalshoven-Gieskes Forum on IHL at Leiden University.
During 2024, Fénix co-founders Sabrina Rewald and Emma Irving delivered a series of trainings on the Leiden Guidelines, including to ICCBA members and legal advisors at the UN. In a two-part series with Bram Burger of the Auxiliary Chamber podcast, Emma and Sabrina discussed how they came to be involved with the Leiden Guidelines, and how this led them to develop the ‘Digital Evidence in Domestic Courts’ project. The episodes can be found here: Part 1 and Part 2.
As the year draws to a close, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our DEDC project partners, in particular the Queen’s University Conflict Analytics Lab, whose AI tool OpenJustice is key to making the global scope of the DEDC project possible.
Creating ‘DDE GPT’ and hosting the first AI + Digital Evidence Hackathon
As part of our efforts to disseminate legal knowledge about digital evidence, the Fénix Foundation has teamed up with OSINT FOR UKRAINE and TeamTeacher.ai to develop a large language model chatbot, dubbed the 'DDE GPT'. Once operational, the DDE GPT will make the Leiden Guidelines on DDE more accessible than ever before.
As part of the development of the DDE GPT, Fénix is co-organising a Hackathon from the 15th to the 17th of January 2025 with our partners and the University of Amsterdam's Digital Methods Initiative. This event will bring together motivated young lawyers and programmers to make ‘an efficient and reliable chatbot assistant specialised in the use of digital evidence in international criminal courts and tribunals’.
More information about the Hackathon is available here, and applications will be accepted until the 6th of January.
Promoting mobilisation of Earth Observation Data for accountability
The Fénix team is paying close attention to developments in the use of satellite and other earth observation data for evidentiary and human rights monitoring purposes. Fénix co-founder Sabrina Rewald shared her expertise on the topic in the blog post ‘The Satellite Era: How Earth Observation Data is Being Mobilized as Potential Digital Evidence’, written with Dr. Jonathan Hak. Sabrina was also interviewed for Nature magazine’s spotlight article on satellite imagery in the courtroom.
Other activities in 2024 included Sabrina’s supervision of the interdisciplinary Leiden-Delft-Erasmus (LDE) Thesis Lab on ‘Legal, Technical and Business related challenges for the use of satellite data for detecting and proving violations of human rights’ as a member of the group Space Evidence for Human Rights, and her contribution to EUSPA’s user consultation session the topic of Emergency Management and Humanitarian Aid: Human Rights.
Looking forward to 2025, stay tuned for Fénix fellow Inshira Faliq’s forthcoming blog post on the evidentiary implications of the use of generative AI in satellite imagery.
‘Fénix Speaks’ - conferences and panel discussions
In addition to the above, the Fénix team members have been active this year speaking about our foundation’s work.
Fénix co-founder Kate Keator presented Fénix’s digital evidence work at the Build Peace conference in Antipolo, the Philippines, highlighting the critical role of peacebuilders in the collection of potential digital evidence.
Fénix co-founder Emma Irving gave a presentation on the need for standards for digital evidence at the University of Vienna and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute’s workshop on ‘User-generated and open-source evidence in trafficking in human beings’.
Fénix co-founder Sabrina Rewald spoke to the role of Open Source Information as Evidence at OSINT FOR UKRAINE’s inaugural conference ‘OSINT: From Theory, Intelligence, to Evidence’, hosted at Leiden University.
Fénix fellow Jana van Megeren spearheaded Fénix’s joint contribution with AirWars to the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence on the topic of ‘Civil society initiatives to document serious human rights violations and international humanitarian law breaches in transitional contexts.’
Together, we’re building a future where law and technology are more effectively integrated for the protection of human rights. Thank you for being part of our journey.
Have questions or want to connect? Reach us anytime at info@fenix.foundation.
With best wishes for 2025,
Emma, Kate, Johanna, Sabrina, Inshira, and Jana
The Fénix Foundation