FAQ

International Affairs Watch is a non-profit initiative that observes, explains, and showcases conflicts, humanitarian crises, and power dynamics worldwide. We provide open data, maps, severity indices (CSI), and analytical context. We are not a news outlet or an advocacy organisation.

To help the public, press, academia, and decision-makers understand what is happening in the world and why it matters. We prioritise methodological transparency, cited sources, and accountability. We believe rigorous information is a precondition for public debate and responsible action.

We publish conflict files with dated chronologies and linked sources, our own research, graphics and visualisations, commentary from invited specialists, the Global Monitor and the Conflict Severity Index (CSI). We do not do breaking news: when something has just happened, the best service we can offer is to wait until it can be verified. Nor do we publish our own casualty estimates or forecasts: we describe what is documented and flag what is not known.

International Affairs Watch is independent of any government, political party, religious denomination, company and party involved in the conflicts it documents; it engages in no partisan or religious political activity; and it does not lobby governments or other actors. In practice that means two things: we do not recommend what any government should do, and we do not describe an actor with the label its adversary gives it. Where two solid sources contradict each other, we publish both and explain how they differ, rather than choosing one.

We prioritise situations with significant humanitarian impact, escalation risk, or clear geopolitical relevance, and for which we have verifiable sources and sufficient data. Selection is reviewed periodically and our methodology is public.

We use primary sources (reports from organisations, official databases), OSINT, academic work, and reports from international bodies. We cite and link when possible. We prioritise sources with known methodology and traceability. We do not reproduce claims without cross-checking.

We state explicitly when there is uncertainty or limitations. The CSI methodology and selection criteria are public. We update data and analysis when new information arises; we indicate last-updated dates in our content. We correct errors and acknowledge corrections.

The CSI is our own indicator, composing a conflict’s severity across five dimensions — military, civilian impact, escalation, humanitarian situation and internationalisation — each scored 0 to 20, for a total of 0 to 100. This needs saying plainly: the methodology is under development and forms part of ongoing postgraduate research that has not yet been defended. Until it is complete, the index is published identified as under construction and should not be treated as a validated measure or as comparable to established indices. Where a conflict lacks sufficient evidence, its page carries no score — and that is information too.

Very little. If you subscribe to the newsletter we store your email, the language and the section you subscribed from; nothing else. If you write through the form, your message reaches our mailbox and is not stored in the site database. For general page use we record which pages are visited, in which language and from which type of device, with no IP address, no user identifier and no cookie: that record cannot reconstruct any individual’s path, and the limitation is deliberate. If you never write to us and never subscribe, we store nothing that could identify you.

The public site installs no tracking cookies and uses no Google Analytics or any third-party tool that builds a profile of you. We keep two preferences in your browser’s local storage, which never travel to our servers: whether you accepted or declined the cookie notice, and whether you have seen the reading guide for reports. The team’s internal console, which is access-restricted, does use a session cookie, strictly technical.

The address is used to send you the newsletter and nothing else. It is not sold, not shared and not used for advertising, which does not exist on this site. To unsubscribe, writing to contacto@iawatch.org is enough and we remove you from the list.

Write to contacto@iawatch.org from the address concerned, or telling us which one it is. Under Argentine Law 25.326 on Personal Data Protection you may request access, rectification, updating and deletion of your data, and access is free at intervals of no less than six months. The Agency for Access to Public Information is the supervisory body and handles complaints from those whose rights are affected.

Reach out via the contact page or contacto@iawatch.org with your profile and interests. We are building a more formal application process; for now, we evaluate each case individually.

Yes. We look for people in research, data analysis, design, development, editing, and communications. We do not always have open roles; if your profile fits, you can contact us and we will review it.

Most work is currently voluntary. For some roles we are evaluating remuneration depending on funding and project. This is communicated in each call or initial conversation.

The Expert Commentary series publishes analysis and opinion from external voices. Proposals are submitted through the site’s submission portal, with a 200–400 word abstract, the intended structure and two or three key sources. Each proposal is assessed against our published editorial criteria.

Today the project is sustained by its team’s work, with no external funding. When there is funding, our funding policy establishes that no contribution may be accepted that conditions, directly or indirectly, the content of our publications or the outcome of our measurements, and our editorial policy sets concrete disclosure thresholds: above a certain amount or a certain share of the annual budget, a contribution is published with the contributor’s name, the amount and its purpose. No funder sees content before publication or takes part in editorial decisions.

There is no donation channel open yet. We will only accept contributions through a traceable route and with the contributions policy published; when that is available it will be announced on the site. In the meantime, organisations interested in supporting the work can write to contacto@iawatch.org.

We do not currently offer commercial consulting, custom reports, or private dashboards. This is under evaluation for the future depending on capacity and project priorities.

Write to contacto@iawatch.org with as much precision as possible: what the publication says, what it should say and, if you can, the source. We correct and record the change: our editorial policy defines five categories of correction by severity, from a typographical fix to a retraction, each with its own way of being marked on the piece. Any person or organisation mentioned may also request rectification of factual data concerning them.

Via the site’s contact page or by email at contacto@iawatch.org. We respond within a reasonable time depending on the type of enquiry.

Yes, with attribution. You may quote passages in academic, journalistic or educational work citing the source and linking to the page of origin, and you may link to any page on the site without asking. Our suggested citation format is: International Affairs Watch, title of the piece, date accessed, iawatch.org. What requires prior written authorisation is extensive reproduction, systematic extraction of the database, and any commercial use. If you are a journalist and want to reproduce a full visualisation, write to us: the answer is generally yes, and that way we can send you a high-quality file and confirm the data is still current.