How I document

DAR Talks documents testimony to a standard that can be used — by journalists writing carefully, by lawyers building cases, by tribunals that may, one day, sit. This page sets out how.

No testimony appears on this platform without informed consent from the person who gave it. Informed means:

The survivor was told what DAR Talks is, what publishing means, and who is likely to read the testimony.
She was told what details can be redacted on request — names, locations, relatives, dates — and she chose what to redact.
She was told she can withdraw consent at any future date, and the testimony will be removed from the public archive within 14 days.
The consent conversation was held in her first language, with no time pressure.

I do not pay for testimony. Where I can offer practical support — travel costs, a meal, a medical referral — I record what was offered.

Verification

A testimony reaches the public archive only after:

A second account, document, or contemporaneous record corroborates at least one specific, falsifiable detail in the testimony — a date, a place, a name, a hospital admission, a contemporaneous photograph, a public report by a humanitarian agency.
Where the testimony names individuals as perpetrators, I either redact the name on publication or follow the higher evidentiary standard used for legal submissions.
The survivor confirms the published wording before publication.

I do not publish testimony I cannot corroborate to this standard. I keep those accounts in secure storage for future verification.

Redaction

Every published testimony has a redaction log. Where text has been removed, you see [redacted — at survivor's request] or [redacted — to protect a person still in Sudan]. The category is shown; the detail is not.

Security

Survivor identities, contact details, and full case files are held in encrypted storage. No file is shared by unencrypted email.

Other records

Where another organisation has already documented an incident, I link to their record rather than duplicate it. For incident-level records I point readers to The Sudan Record, an independent open-source database. My own contribution to the documentary record is survivor testimony, held to the consent-first standards above.

What you can do with this archive

You may cite, quote (with attribution to DAR Talks and the testimony identifier), and link freely to any testimony page. You may not re-identify a survivor who has chosen pseudonymity. You may not reproduce full testimonies on other platforms; link instead.

Researchers, journalists, and lawyers requesting access to redacted material for non-public purposes can write to research@dar-talks.com.

TODO(team-fr) Last updated 17 mai 2026.