The Press Office of the Global Campus of Human Rights had the opportunity to interview the 2024 Right Livelihood Laureate Forensic Architecture about their role as activists, their findings and their aims. Please share with us about your background and role advocating for uncovering and documenting the truth about environmental and human rights violations using cutting-edge technology? Forensic Architecture (FA) is a research group based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Our mandate is to develop, employ, and disseminate new techniques, methods, and concepts for investigating state and corporate violence. As to our backgrounds: we are an interdisciplinary team, and our teams are made up of architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers. We are a highly interdisciplinary team, operating across human rights, journalism, architecture, art and aesthetics, academia and the law in pursuit of accountability for rights violations. Our practice was born in the ‘open source revolution’, and still today, our core practice involves geolocating and analysing videos and images within navigable 3D digital models, alongside open source research and a range of methodologies, drawing from software development, interactive cartographies, ‘remote sensing’ and satellite image analysis, fluid dynamics simulation, and witness interviewing. Visit our website – forensic-architecture.org – and you’ll get a sense of how all of these things fit together! We always try to work directly with and for the survivors, victims, and witnesses of human rights violations, to ensure that our research and advocacy – whether in the media, in courts, in art galleries, or in any other forums – are oriented by the ‘lived experience’ of those groups, and that our work supports their claims for accountability and transparency in relation to the harms they have suffered. We are privileged to have the space and resources to develop and experiment with a pioneering set of research methods and practices, and it is our goal to put them into the service of the claims and demands of individuals, families, and communities around the world who may not have the same privileges. How was being recognised as Right Livelihood Award 2024 and how did it help with your activities and mission to boost urgent and long-term social change? It’s a little bit early to say how the award has supported our long-term ambitions for social change. Unfortunately, the field of human rights is facing some serious headwinds at present; the landscape in which FA operates looks very challenging, and things are likely to get harder in the short term for any organisations who call for – fight for – truth, justice, and accountability. But being in Stockholm at the award ceremony, meeting so many remarkable fellow laureates – not just Anabela, Joan, and Issa, but many laureates of previous years – was a very powerful, strengthening experience for all of us. One of our friends in attendance at the award ceremony said to us, ‘this is the place I come to every year, to fill myself up again with hope for the year ahead’. And by the end of a wonderful few days in Stockholm, in the company of the Right Livelihood team, we could really see what they meant. Hope can sometimes be a hard thing to find these days, and we are grateful to have found more of it there. How are you benefiting with all this visibility? How are you helping victims and survivors? How could we support your causes? We are sure that the visibility afforded to us by the Right Livelihood Award will be important in supporting our work in the long-term. Already, we have been heard from institutions across the landscape of human rights and social justice seeking to collaborate, to hear from us and to exchange learning, and suggesting avenues through which to find new partners, and new supporters – including financial support, which is of course fundamental, and increasingly hard to secure in these times of shrinking civic spaces. We are already seeing how the reputation of the Right Livelihood Award shines so brightly, acting as a beacon to other activists and rights advocates. As we grow into our new position as laureates, and grow into this new family, we expect to see more benefits. To be plugged into this network of almost 200 remarkable laureates – among them, some of the individuals and groups in the modern history of human rights whose example has guided our own work and history – is not only an honour but an incredible resource, and we look forward to hosting fellow laureates as they pass through London and Berlin (where our sister agency Forensis e.V has its home), exchanging ideas, and learning from their experience. What is your opinion on the importance of human rights education in the field of investigating the past to bring truth, justice and accountability? What are the most important challenges ahead in the field of Human Rights and Democracy in the world? Could educational programmes like ours at the Global Campus of Human Rights contribute to create a safe space for discussion on these challenges? With the second inauguration of President Trump, rightward political shifts across the globe, and a deeply fragmented public sphere, we are entering one of the most challenging periods for human rights, for public truth, and for international law, since the end of the second world war. As a field, we will require every piece of support and good fortune that we can find, as we continue the fight to protect fundamental values, rights, and human dignity. Education has to be at the heart of that, of course, and for that reason, the work that the Global Campus does is essential: to nurture and empower future generations of human rights practitioners, to equip the human rights sector for the challenges of tomorrow and, hopefully, to train the Right Livelihood laureates of the future. We’re delighted to be connected to the GCHR as it continues that vital work, and we look forward to
