Building

ICTBD Tracker

What if every case, defendant, verdict, and fugitive from the International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh existed in one filterable public record, making decades of war crimes proceedings legible to researchers, journalists, and the diaspora in minutes rather than months?

Visit ICTBD Tracker

Problem

The International Crimes Tribunal Bangladesh prosecuted crimes against humanity and genocide committed during the 1971 Liberation War, but its proceedings — 51 registered cases, 28 defendants, 6 executions carried out, and a still-active fugitive register — are scattered across official records and inaccessible to most people who care about accountability. Journalists covering the tribunal, legal researchers, and diaspora communities have no single structured source to answer basic questions about where a case stands, who was convicted, or who remains a fugitive.

Exploration

A Next.js dashboard with five tab-based modules — Overview (aggregate metrics and timeline visualisations), Cases (51 proceedings filterable by stage), Defendants (28 named individuals with current status), Fugitives (domestic and international absconders), and Witnesses & Evidence (attendance rates and testimony records). Data sourced from official tribunal records and surfaced through card-based layouts, donut charts for defendant outcomes, and a bar chart for verdict breakdowns. Multi-language support covers English and Bengali. The execution timeline (2013–2016) and case pipeline distribution give temporal context to the proceedings.

Audience

Researchers and historians of the 1971 Liberation War, journalists covering war crimes accountability in South Asia, legal professionals working on transitional justice, and diaspora Bangladeshi communities who want structured access to tribunal outcomes. The dashboard is fully public with no authentication layer.

Possible Model

An independent, non-commercial research tool explicitly unaffiliated with the tribunal. The value is in curation and structure — turning dispersed official records into a queryable dataset that serves both historical documentation and active accountability awareness.

Risks

Data accuracy is the primary risk — errors in case status, defendant location, or verdict classification carry serious reputational consequences given the subject matter. The dataset requires ongoing maintenance as cases progress or fugitive statuses change. Official tribunal records are the authoritative source, but keeping the tracker in sync with them is a manual dependency. Multi-language accuracy in Bengali content needs native review.

Founder Notes

The product's clinical dashboard aesthetic — white background, red accent, official branding — is a deliberate choice to signal institutional seriousness rather than editorial advocacy. The five-tab structure mirrors how legal professionals think about a case record (status, parties, evidence, outcomes), not how a general news reader would. The Bangladesh flag's red appears as the primary accent throughout, grounding the tracker visually in its specific national and historical context.