Evidence begins with investigation..
Accountability begins with evidence.
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The Yellow Notebooks is an independent initiative exploring how investigative capacity can be sustained and strengthened in a changing world.
Through stories, field observations and conversations, it explores how evidence is gathered, tested, and used to support accountability.
Conversations
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Learning from people who have investigated, documented, or pursued accountability across places and issues.
Examine
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What happened afterwards? What changed? What worked, what failed, and why?
Resources
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Methods, tools, guides and reading to strengthen the practice of investigation and accountability
Investigate
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Field observations, inquiries and reporting from places where power, resources and accountability intersect
23.1%
drop in international aid in 2025 — the largest annual fall ever recorded
OECD preliminary 2025 ODA data2,253
land and environmental defenders have been killed or disappeared since 2012
Global Witness50
number of countries that
have seen academic freedom decline over the last decade
Academic Freedom Index / V-Dem72.4%
world’s population liveing under closed, repressed or obstructed civic space
Civicus MonitorSystems causing harm are scaling faster than the systems investigating them.
That is why independent investigation matters — and why the ecosystem that makes it possible must be bolstered and protected.
The problem
The human rights field is changing.
There is more advocacy, more policy work and more demand for visibility — but less funding, capacity and institutional space for long-term, on-site investigation.
Less time is spent in the field. Less first-hand verification takes place. Fewer investigations are sustained over time.
At the same time, corporate power has expanded, supply chains have become more complex, and companies are increasingly expected to carry out human rights due diligence. But too often, that work is not grounded in real-world findings.
A growing reliance on AI and remote analysis risks widening the distance between decision-making and lived reality.
The work that grounds accountability — long-term investigation, journalism, field presence and direct engagement with people — is under pressure.
Without grounded investigation, we risk replacing observation with inference, and reality with abstraction.
And yet, the investigative layer is thinning.
The solution
Strengthening accountability means investing in, and protecting, the investigative layer.
That means supporting the conditions that make credible investigation possible: field presence, first-hand verification, local knowledge, funding, trusted relationships, time, security and care.
Investigation is not just a method. It is a practice shaped by risk, judgement and responsibility. It involves people affected by harm, and investigators who may themselves be exposed to pressure, threats, trauma or isolation through the work.
Technology, AI, satellite imagery and remote analysis can strengthen investigations, but they cannot replace observation, context, judgement or lived reality.
Serious investigations require continuity. They need the ability to follow patterns across years, sectors and geographies.
They also require collaboration. Journalists, researchers, technologists, open-source investigators, lawyers, civil society organisations and affected communities increasingly need to work together.
If corporate power has become more global and complex, accountability must become more grounded, collaborative and evidence-based.
