Source hierarchy

Not all sources carry the same weight, and HSNet says so openly. Sources are ranked in two tiers.

  • Primary sources — the body that made a decision or a finding, in its own words: courts (e.g. the International Court of Justice), United Nations bodies, governments, and human-rights organisations publishing their own reports (Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B'Tselem).
  • Secondary sources — news organisations reporting on those primary sources: Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, CNN, CBC, DW, France 24, Al Jazeera and others.

Where a primary source exists, HSNet cites it. A conclusion attributed only to news reporting is labelled as such and is never presented as if it came directly from the originating body.

Verification states

Every section of an event, and many individual facts, carry one of four states, shown beside them:

  • ✅ Verified from primary source — HSNet opened the originating document and confirmed the wording, the date and the link.
  • 🟡 Verified from reputable secondary sources — confirmed via named news organisations; a primary document has not yet been obtained.
  • ⏳ Pending primary-source verification — under review; not yet confirmed.
  • ❌ Not yet verified — not yet checked. Nothing is attributed to it.

Each event shows a verification progress indicator — how many source groups are verified, and when the page was last reviewed. A page publishes its verified sections rather than waiting for its weakest source; what is still under review is disclosed, not hidden.

Attribution rules

  • Every factual statement identifies its source.
  • Every conclusion is attributed to the body that reached it. HSNet does not state contested conclusions in its own voice.
  • Differences in wording are preserved. "Genocide", "acts of genocide", "may amount to genocide" and "risk of genocide" are not treated as interchangeable.
  • Secondary reporting is never represented as an official statement.
  • A finding or contested claim with no attached source is not displayed as a finding.

How claims are grouped

Facts are shown in bands so a reader can see the status of each at a glance:

  • Procedural — matters of record: filings, court orders, publications, formal responses.
  • Findings and assessments — each attributed to the body that made it. A finding by an investigative body is not a court ruling.
  • Contested legal conclusions — where the dispute actually sits. HSNet does not resolve these.

For events where a legal question is unresolved, HSNet disables its numerical "consensus" score entirely and says so. Agreement among publications is not a legal judgment, and HSNet does not present it as one.

Verification history and change log

Each event keeps a permanent, append-only verification history — every status change, with the date, the editor, the source and a note — and an event change log recording new documents, corrections, timeline additions and editorial revisions. Readers can see not only the current state but how the record reached it.

Editor notes

Editors may attach notes explaining a decision — why a source is still secondary, why a section awaits review. Notes explain the record; they do not alter it.

Corrections policy

If HSNet gets something wrong, the correction is made in place and recorded in the event's change log as a correction, with the date. The record is never quietly rewritten; a reader can always see that a correction was made.

What HSNet is not

HSNet does not determine legal truth, does not deliver verdicts, and does not tell readers which organisation to believe. It compares evidence and attribution so that readers can judge for themselves. Its defining feature is transparent verification, not editorial conclusions.