The Al Ghouta Chemical Attack Dataset - METHODOLOGY

Why the 21 August 2013 Al Ghouta chemical attack?

Ten years after the sarin gas attack on Al Ghouta, it remains the most-documented attack on social media since the Syrian conflict began in 2011.

About the data

For this project the Syrian Archive team preserved and analysed 564 open source materials – also called “observations” – documenting the 21 August 2013 sarin gas attack on Al Ghouta. It has been made publicly available to support justice and accountability for human rights violations and other serious crimes in Syria.

The sheer amount of content being created and the near constant removal of materials from public channels means that Syrian Archive is in a race against time to preserve this important documentation. While we strive to work with key tech platforms to restore important human rights documentation and evidentiary material, you may nevertheless come across broken links when searching this dataset.

Confidential and sensitive data withheld

Our reporting discusses 564 of open source materials whereas the publicly available dataset includes only 435.

While Syrian Archive strives to be detailed and transparent in our work and presentation process, we have taken into account the need to protect documenters and other community members impacted by this attack. Taking these interests seriously, there is some content we have deemed too sensitive for inclusion in the public database that has been withheld to protect the security and comfort of our sources and their communities.

The types of materials withheld from publication include, for example: footage in which people can be heard saying “please do not film this” or similar statements, all currently offline footage, or immediate aftermath footage showing emotional reactions especially if those reactions include statements that might put people at risk.

About the tagging

All documentation in this dataset has been independently examined by Syrian Archive researchers and structured into a standardised and searchable data ontology. Additional descriptive information is provided to support the research of journalists, lawyers, human rights monitors and investigators for their pursuit of evidence-based reporting, advocacy and accountability.

While examining the materials, the team manually annotated them to flag and highlight key information depicted. This dataset’s tagging system was designed to facilitate analysis of:

1. Indicia that toxic chemicals were in fact used as weapons in the attack under examination;
2. Patterns in and scope of civilian impact(s), and any apparently systematic intention behind widespread harm; and
3. Perpetrator attribution and linkage information.

For detailed tag definitions, see the Tagging Guide.

Where judgement was required in the tagging process for this project, a definitive tag was assigned if available information met our chosen ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’ standard of information. In other words, each individual tag was assigned only if the researcher was convinced by the available information that there are reasonable grounds to suspect the tag is applicable or accurate. We have chosen to point to and aim for this standard of information with the end goal of being as accurate as possible while also erring on the side of inclusion when assigning tags. For almost all subsequent uses, the facts established in the published dataset will require additional investigation and corroboration. Since Syrian Archive does not have the resources or mandate to research and evaluate every single material to the highest possible evidentiary standard, use of the ‘reasonable grounds to suspect’ standard enables us to assign tags both in instances where we are very confident in the tag based on available open source information as well in instances where we reasonably suspect that subsequent investigation and analysis will confirm the tag.

This may also mean that we have seen claims in the source materials that our team has decided does not meet the chosen standard of information. However, any decision to not affirmatively tag these claims does not mean that they are necessarily false. We simply could not verify them to the chosen standard.

The Tagging Guide illustrates how this discretion was exercised and this standard of information met, in practice. Researchers also maintained open lines of communication or otherwise flagged and revisited after consultation the more challenging discretionary decisions encountered. Further, each tag for each observation was reviewed multiple times, at multiple stages of the workflow, by multiple Syrian Archive researchers. This helped to ensure that all tags were assigned as consistently as possible across the entire database.

About the Chemical Weapons Dataset

Syrian Archive initially published its Chemical Weapons Dataset in April 2018. It was the first publicly available collection of open source content documenting chemical weapon attacks in Syria between 2012 and 2018. It included information about 212 distinct attack incidents during which weaponised toxic chemicals were allegedly used.

This original dataset was built first around a list of incidents created from publicly available research by the French Foreign Ministry, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic, findings from various OPCW fact-finding missions (including those by the OPCW-UN Joint Initiative Mechanism), and reports from civil society organisations (e.g., Human Rights Watch). The team then sifted through its existing archive of what was then approximately 1.5 million materials to identify and assess documentation of the listed attacks. In this process, the team uncovered incidents not included in the initial list. Syrian Archive preserved all open source materials collected in the course of this work.

Syrian Archive is now in the process of updating this Chemical Weapons Dataset, beginning with this incident: the 21 August 2013 Al Ghouta sarin gas attack. In the five years since Syrian Archive’s Chemical Weapons Dataset was initially published, our archive of open source human rights documentation has grown substantially from approximately 1.5 million to over 5 million materials. Our methods and tools have also advanced, in collaboration with our partners in the open source research field of practice. Our commitment to documenting and supporting advances in accountability for chemical weapons use in Syria remains the same.

About Syrian Archive

Syrian Archive aims to support human rights investigators, advocates, media reporters, and journalists in their efforts to document human rights violations in Syria by developing new open source tools as well as providing a transparent and replicable methodology for collecting, preserving, verifying and investigating open source documentation of conflict areas.

Syrian Archive is a Mnemonic archive.

Syrian Archive project team

Haneen, Jeff, Libby, Michael, Mohammed, Mustafa, Rahaf, Safa, Suhail, Taha, and Mnemonic’s Tech Team

Acknowledgements

The Syrian Archive project team wishes to acknowledge the survivors, victims, and their families who are still waiting for reparation and justice.

The Syrian Archive project team also wishes to acknowledge the documenters working on the ground in Al Ghouta during a chemical attack in 2013. This dataset and the evidence it contains would not exist without the dedicated activists, journalists, and others who have documented and are still documenting grave crimes and human rights violations in Syria. Our work is only possible because they believe in accountability and justice for the terrible harms they witness.

Errors, corrections, and feedback

Syrian Archive strives for accuracy and transparency of process in our reporting and presentation. That said, the information publicly available for particular events can, at times, be limited. Our datasets are therefore organically maintained and represent our best present understanding of the collected information. If you have new information about a particular event, if you find an error in our work, or if you have concerns about the way we are reporting our data: please do engage with us. You can reach us at info [at] syrianarchive.org.