Investigations and
criminal law

Sharper investigative capacity

To ensure criminal complaints the best chances of success, TRIAL has stepped up its investigative efforts, both prior to and after their filing.

TRIAL International spent several months investigating abroad, including in the Middle East. The investigators met with victims, witnesses and partners, and collected documental evidence, including from the archives of several countries.

Investigative capacities were further enhanced by specialized trainings, close collaborations with former international criminal courts investigators and the recruitment of an additional member formerly working with the French war crimes unit.

Corporations must be held accountable too

Reasserting its expertise on blood minerals after the Argor case, TRIAL International filed a new complaint for pillage, triggering the opening of an investigation by the Swiss war crimes unit. The case concerns the looting of minerals used in electronic devices in the Great lake region.

What is looting?

Doubling litigation with advocacy, TRIAL International took part to the Responsible Business Initiative, aiming at introducing a binding human rights framework for Swiss-based multinationals.

Swiss quality must include human rights protection

Universal jurisdiction: onwards and upwards

TRIAL is convinced of universal jurisdiction’s immense potential against impunity and hopes to give it further momentum in the future. Numerous victims made use of that principle to consult with TRIAL International: 5 criminal complaints were filed on their behalf in two war crimes cases.

From ICC to universal jurisdiction

After the success of its first edition, Make way for Justice #2 was published, in partnership with FIBGAR, ECCHR and FIDH.

The report analyzed 40 cases illustrating the developments of universal jurisdiction in 2015: the atrocities perpetrated by Boko Haram in 2014, the crimes committed in Syria since 2011 and many others.

40 cases to understand universal jurisdiction

What makes TRIAL International’s work unique?

• It is one of the only organizations to combine investigative skills are judicial expertise in universal jurisdiction cases

• It obtained a historic decision denying immunity to a former head of State for war crimes

No impunity for war crimes

• It initiated the first universal jurisdiction investigation in Switzerland for conflict-era sexual violence

• It triggered the first investigation in a national jurisdiction for pillage since the aftermath of World War II