Methodology

What we publish and what we do not

We publish claims attributed to their sources, the evidence behind them, and a verification status. We do not publish a single merged version of events, and we do not publish attribution of responsibility unless it is supported by evidence and approved by a reviewer.

A statement such as "23 civilians were killed by Actor X" never appears on this site. Instead you will see "Local source A reports 23 civilian deaths" and, separately, "UN source B confirms an incident at the location but has not confirmed the casualty count."

Verification statuses

Unverified: a claim has been recorded but no independent source supports it. Not shown publicly by default.

Reported: at least one identifiable source describes the incident. Shown when a reader asks for reported incidents.

Corroborated: two or more independent sources describe the same incident and their accounts are consistent.

Verified: corroborated, including by a primary or official source, and approved by a reviewer after examining the evidence. Only reviewers can set this status.

Disputed: credible sources contradict each other. The contradiction is shown, not resolved by us.

How sources are handled

Every document we retrieve is preserved with its URL, publication date, retrieval time and a SHA-256 content hash. Claims are extracted from the document and stored verbatim per source. Our AI tools identify what a source says; they never decide what happened.

Tigray Monitor outreach is first-hand information actively collected by our editorial team. Outreach notes pass source-protection and human review. Multiple notes from the same outreach effort count as one evidence lineage, and our review of an account is not counted as a second independent source.

Sources currently connected: HDX HAPI (IOM DTM, OCHA), UN News, Addis Standard (via news index), internet news search (Google News, Bing News). ReliefWeb and ACLED are integrated and switch on when credentials are approved.

A confidence score is computed from the number of independent sources and primary sources. It informs prioritisation and never replaces the status.

Geography

The reference administrative map is the pre-2018 configuration of Ethiopia: nine regional states plus Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, with Tigray including its Western zone. Where administrative designation, claimed control and observed control differ, we show all three and do not resolve the dispute.

Humanitarian datasets that use newer regions are folded into their pre-2018 parent, and this is stated on the figure.

Two time dimensions

Current situation and historical record are kept apart. Every figure carries its as-of date, geography, source, data type (estimate, reported or verified) and coverage. A displacement round from 2024 is shown as 2024 data, never as today's number.

Public submissions and source protection

Reports from the public go through: security scan, preservation, hashing, metadata extraction, duplicate detection, geolocation check, comparison with existing incidents, source-protection review, and human verification. Nothing submitted appears on the map automatically.

Exact coordinates, contact details and original file metadata stay private. Published copies of images are re-encoded without metadata. Contact details are encrypted at rest.

Corrections

Every reviewer action is recorded and shown on the incident page under "Why do we say this?". If you believe something is wrong, use the contact page and quote the incident identifier.