Unredacted

Unredacted is based at the University of Westminster and run by a multidisciplinary team with extensive experience of investigative research in the field of national security and human rights. We produce original, high-impact research which maps secretive practices and associated human rights abuses, and which challenges the pervasive culture of secrecy in relation to UK national security. We utilise a range of research methods in our work, including field research, document analysis, ‘open-source intelligence’, archival research, and a strategic approach to Freedom of Information legislation and access to court records. We construct multisource datasets and use detailed mapping and triangulation techniques to uncover the contours of secretive practices, identify abuses of power and enable others to hold governments and corporations to account.

Our work has impact. Our findings have made headlines across national media, and have led to emergency parliamentary debates, Ministerial statements and changes in government policy. Our work has informed official inquiries into UK involvement in systematic human rights abuses, and has supported war crimes investigations at the United Nations and International Criminal Court, as well as cases brought before UK courts, the European Court of Human Rights, the US Supreme Court and military commissions at Guantánamo Bay.

Our investigations are underpinned in part by an analysis of thousands of primary documents, many of which will be made public for the first time as a direct result of our work. The Unredacted Archive will be a home for some of this material, which will sit alongside a range of other national security-related documents gathered by the team – such as those disclosed through public inquiries, courts, tribunals and use of Freedom of Information legislation. The Archive will grow significantly throughout 2024, and aims to become the UK’s largest permanent, public archive of material relating to national security and human rights.