From Testimony to Justice: The GCPEA Toolkit as a Framework for Accountability

• In Event: From Testimony to Justice: Linking Evidence, Law, and Practice to Address Attacks on Education in Divided Societies

Proposal

One of the central challenges in accountability for attacks on education is the credibility of evidence. Survivors’ testimonies often appear in advocacy reports, but without standardized definitions, ethical protocols, and analytical rigor, they may not meet the evidentiary standards required for prosecutions, reparations, or truth commissions. The Toolkit for Collecting and Analyzing Data on Attacks on Education (GCPEA, 2023) was created to address this gap by providing a methodological framework that bridges community testimony and formal accountability mechanisms.

The Toolkit emphasizes that evidence must be comparable, credible, and survivor-centered. It provides shared definitions for classifying attacks, trauma-informed interviewing protocols, and data quality standards. As GCPEA (2025) notes, such practices are not technical exercises alone but essential for justice: without rigorous evidence, survivors’ experiences risk being dismissed as anecdotal, and perpetrators remain unaccountable.

This presentation will focus less on step-by-step mechanics and more on the rationales that underpin the Toolkit. It illustrates how rigorous documentation achieves three aims: it validates survivors by ensuring their testimony is formally recognized, it strengthens accountability by generating evidence usable in legal or policy processes, and it contributes to peacebuilding by embedding education protection into broader transitional justice agendas (GCPEA, 2023, 2025).

To illustrate its application, the presentation will provide a short overview for how evidence can be structured into records that establish patterns of attacks, attribute responsibility, and inform both prosecutions and reparations programs. This presentation links the methodological elements of the Toolkit to its normative purpose.

The central contribution is to show that systematic data collection is an act of transitional justice in itself: it acknowledges harm, provides a basis for remedy, and lays the groundwork for advocacy efforts and policy change. The Toolkit thus equips practitioners, researchers, and advocates with the tools needed to transform testimony into justice, ensuring that education protection becomes integral to peacebuilding.

Author

• Allyson Bachta, U Mass Boston