Episode 1: Babacar Ndaye – Building Digital Archives at the UN

The 3-part series “Can the record be trusted?” explores the prospects and challenges of human rights documentation and archives in the digital age, with speakers from an international expert workshop that took place at Queens University Belfast in November 2024.

In this opening episode, Dr Julia Viebach speaks with Babacar Ndaye, former Senior Program Officer with the United Nations Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Daesh/ISIL in Iraq (UNITAD). The conversation explores the immense challenge of managing millions of digital files retrieved from ISIS-controlled territories—from battlefield evidence on hard drives and drones to administrative documents detailing the organization's operations.

UNITAD partnered with Microsoft to deploy AI tools for processing this vast corpus of data, while maintaining forensic standards and chain of custody. Babcar reflects on critical questions about authentication, the role of civil society organizations as first responders, and the uncertain future of UNITAD's archive, now held in New York without a clear mandate for use.

About: Babacar Ndaye has worked with the United Nations for over 11 years as an information systems specialist, including serving as Senior Program Officer with UNITAD in Baghdad from 2018-2024.

More information: UNITAD

https://lawpod.org/can-the-record-be-trusted/

Mentioned in this episode:

Series Introduction