A/HRC/27/56 importance of the process of uncovering, preserving, organizing, clustering and archiving pieces of evidence. 68. “Symbolic” or “paradigmatic” cases. Even in contexts in which the universe of violations is large and varied, there are some cases which “shake the conscience” either of humanity at large, or of a specific group. If faced with the impossibility of prosecuting all cases simultaneously or over a given period of time, there are good reasons to ponder whether prosecutorial efforts can be concentrated on this type of case.39 69. The difficulty in using this prioritizing criterion lies, precisely, in the definition of the terms. If they are reduced to meaning “being the object of popular concern”, the strategy would then automatically reproduce all sorts of biases contained in public opinion. For instance, it may be that violations against the marginalized (e.g. ethnic minorities) will not rise in popular opinion to the level of a “symbolic” case. By contrast, it may be that cases involving elites, some respected figures or those that for various reasons manage to attract international attention, will do so. 70. In theory, it is possible to come up with a list of “symbolic” cases organized around criteria including gravity, types of violation, geographical dispersion, the demographics of both victims and perpetrators, so as to show a defensible even-handedness in the distribution of prosecutorial efforts. But then, these criteria, and not popular opinion, are the core of the prioritization strategy. 71. Prioritizing the linkages in “structure crimes”. A criticism that may be levelled against all the above-argued elements is their insufficient attention to the contribution that all transitional justice measures should make to disabling the structures that made the initial violations possible. International crimes, notably crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes, are not the crimes of lone individuals, but require networks in which the individual authors of those acts are embedded.40 Thus, a strategy for prosecution should be particularly concerned with the systemic or structural dimensions of massive violations. 72. Mass violations usually require not just complex organization of the “armed” operations that immediately cause the violations, but the coordination of those operations with supportive political and economic actors, and even with social and cultural entrepreneurs, capable of mobilizing large groups and resources. A prosecutorial strategy at the domestic level which seeks to have long-term impact should therefore target the “nodes” in this web of actors. Clearly, this requires a particular prosecutorial focus that emphasizes patterns of violations, helps discover chains of command, links between armed actors and other groups, as well as financial and other support, including arms trade and smuggling. The challenge here is not only to establish individual criminal accountability for isolated violations, but to zero in on the structures or networks that enabled the various actors to jointly make the horrific violations happen. To target those enabling connections could contribute to the dismantlement of the whole criminal set-up. 73. Unquestionably, this is a particularly demanding strategy: (a) politically, because it targets powerful groups, in the political as well as in the economic sense; and (b) technically, as this strategy requires investigatory and prosecutorial skills which prosecutors (used to thinking about isolated cases) will not have had many incentives or opportunities to develop.41 It also requires a high degree of international cooperation and 39 40 41 14 See recent prosecutions in Argentina, Attorney General’s Office, instruction 13/08 (www.mpf.gov.ar//resoluciones/PGN/2008/PGN-0013-2008-001.pdf). Nollkaemper and van der Wilt, System Criminality. Experience from the prosecution of organized crime will be relevant in this respect.