Paper short abstract

The monitoring of human rights violations in international conflict via satellite technology has evolved into a contested, multi-actor practice. While unequal data access and selective transparency persist, the increasing institutionalization of new actors could transform evidentiary standards.

Paper long abstract

Earth observation satellites have emerged as an integral tool for monitoring human rights violations in contemporary international conflicts. While in 1995, the US government presented satellite images of mass graves near Srebrenica in a closed session of the UN Security Council, by the 2020s, far more actors generate and globally disseminate imagery of war atrocities. I explore this proliferation by conducting cross-case comparisons of three cases: the Bosnian War (1992-1995), the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2022, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2023. A systematic mapping of those engaged in documenting, analyzing, and verifying human rights violations using satellite data in all three cases reveals a shift from a narrow, state-centric actor constellation in the 1990s to a more pluralized, multi-actor landscape in which governments, commercial actors, civil society organizations, and intergovernmental organizations operate simultaneously, often in entangled and contested ways in the 2020s. Presumed democratizing effects of an increasingly pluralized actor landscape and multidirectional data flows, for example, are directly challenged by observed patterns including selective transparency and persistent asymmetries in data access and control. In a second step, I discuss to what extent a pluralized, multi-actor landscape coupled with the growing institutionalization of civil society organizations can reconfigure evidentiary practices and epistemic authority.