The Natalia Estemirova Documentation Center (NEDC) was established in 2010, through the cooperation of a number of international and Russian human rights organizations to ensure the documentation of grave human rights violations in the North Caucasus.
The fundamental principle of our work is the vision that lasting peace in the North Caucasus is impossible without justice, the establishment of truth and the preservation of a factual history of the armed conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s.
The Center promotes the analysis of facts, particularly the collection and processing of statistical data on killed and missing persons – or victims of other serious violations of human rights – and the overall understanding of conflicts and their consequences for the entire region and population.
To document violations and preserve historical memory.
To contribute to eliminating impunity and achieving accountability.
To strengthen the capacity of human rights organizations documenting international crimes, and violations of human rights and humanitarian law.
Along with its core objectives, the Documentation Center aims:
The second phase of the Center's work involves describing and systematizing the materials received, identifying victims and incidents, and registering this data in the electronic database
Analysts have worked hard compiling materials from various organizations – including data from state and international organizations – determining the number of victims described in separate incidents and verifying the information. For the first time, materials registered in the electronic database provide a more accurate figure of the number of civilian casualties of the second armed conflict in the North Caucasus (the majority of the materials relating to the first Russian-Chechen war, as well as the Ossetian-Ingush conflict, are yet to be analyzed). It has become possible to determine the minimum number of incidents during which human rights violations occurred, including the varying degrees of destruction and looting of property.
Statistical data and the analysis of various types of violations can be found under "Publications". Based on 33,320 documents registered in the Database, more than 5,794 incidents have been identified and described by the Center's analysts. Currently, the interactive website map illustrates a number of these incidents. However, this will continue to be updated with descriptions of other incidents and new publications.
The Documentation Center is named after the well-known Chechen human rights defender Natalia Estemirova, who was abducted and killed on 15 July 2009. The materials of her work are partially analyzed and registered in our electronic database. There are also testimonies of our other friends and colleagues who gave their lives to the struggle for truth and justice. We hope that the activities within the framework of our project will be commemorative of their courage.
