Mechanism launches Unified Court Records database

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (Mechanism) today launched a new Unified Court Records database (UCR), which for the first time brings together all public judicial records of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Mechanism.

The UCR provides integrated and enhanced public access to a wide array of records from these three institutions, including indictments, trial transcripts, motions, orders, decisions and judgements, as well as public evidence admitted in court and audiovisual recordings of hearings.

In addition, the UCR has been designed to facilitate legal research by enabling searches across ICTR, ICTY and Mechanism records. The new search function allows users to better tailor their research according to their specific requirements. Users can search for materials in a more targeted way by selecting multiple cases, searching the full text or title of the records, or searching by other information such as date filed or admitted, accused name, document type, case name and case number. Among other features, the UCR also includes the ‘’Recent Court Records’’ function, which displays the latest 50 court records that have been added to the database.

Records in the UCR will be updated on a regular basis, and users are invited to provide feedback on the functionality of the UCR by sending an email to marshague@un.org. Other judicial records databases currently maintained by the Mechanism, including the ICTY Court Records (ICR) and Judicial Records and Archives Database (JRAD) will gradually be discontinued.

The UCR is accessible at the link ucr.irmct.org with prior registration for first-time users. In addition to English, the UCR is also available in Albanian, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, French, Kinyarwanda and Macedonian.