Dilemmas recorders confront when recording status

Recorders often face difficulties when making status categorisations, such as contradictions, ambiguity, concealment, misinformation, or barriers to investigating status.

Difficulties in determining status that recorders had to overcome arose for a number of reasons:

  • The victim’s family or armed group gave misinformation or concealed a victim’s status;
  • The perpetrator of the incident gave misinformation or concealed a victim’s status;
  • Difficulty accessing relevant information;
  • Grey areas in the definitions that the recorder used and/or data sources used.

DEFINITION AND CATEGORISATION IN CASUALTY RECORDING, p. 23