Transferability · ஒப்பீடு

Does the method generalise?

A method that only works on its home corpus is not a method — it is a private idiom. This page tests the three TLTE protocols against three adjacent contested-history corpora and names — honestly — where each protocol holds, bends, or breaks. Conclusion at the end.

Bosnia (Srebrenica file, 1995–present)

Anchor bodies

ICTY judgments · International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) · Mothers of Srebrenica · Sarajevo Memory Institute · Human Rights Watch reports.

Citation-Tier System

Where it holds: Maps cleanly: ICTY/ICMP are Tier-A; investigative journalism is Tier-B; survivor associations are Tier-A for their own constitutional documents and Tier-B for incident counts.

Where it bends: Denialist counter-archives (e.g. RS-government publications) require an explicit Tier-D 'state-denial' category that does not exist in TLTE today — would need to be added.

Mirror-Publish Protocol

Where it holds: ICMP and ICTY are accredited intermediaries for evidentiary submissions; mirror-publish to OSCE / Council of Europe is well-trodden.

Where it bends: Bosnia has 25+ years of intermediary infrastructure that TLTE does not yet have for the Tamil file. The protocol assumes intermediaries exist; in less-supported corpora it must be sequenced after intermediary-building.

Graduation-Gate Logic

Where it holds: Six gates apply unchanged: DPO, DPIA, independent legal review, two-Archon authorisation, indemnity, accredited partnership. Bosnian community archives that opened intake without these gates suffered known re-traumatisation harms.

Where it bends: Where state-level denial is criminalised (RS denial law context), gate 3 (independent legal review) must be jurisdiction-specific — a generic UK-law review is insufficient.

Caveat

Bosnia has European institutional infrastructure that Sri Lanka does not. The transferability is to the method, not to the political economy in which the method operates.

Rohingya (Myanmar, 2017–present)

Anchor bodies

UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) · UN Fact-Finding Mission report (2018) · ICJ provisional measures (Gambia v. Myanmar 2020) · Fortify Rights · BROUK · Arakan Project.

Citation-Tier System

Where it holds: Direct fit: IIMM/FFM/ICJ are Tier-A; survivor-led NGOs are Tier-A for their own constitutional documents; investigative journalism Tier-B.

Where it bends: Citizenship-denial context (1982 Burma Citizenship Law) means many anchors must be paired with a counter-history; TLTE handles this in the Tamil case via the GSP+ desk's convention-map approach — would transfer but requires per-corpus mapping work.

Mirror-Publish Protocol

Where it holds: IIMM is explicitly designed as a mirror-publish endpoint for civic actors; the protocol is in fact closer to designed-fit here than in the Tamil case.

Where it bends: Limited intermediary capacity for Bangladesh-based Cox's Bazar evidence; community archives currently shoulder both witness work and submission work.

Graduation-Gate Logic

Where it holds: All six gates apply unchanged. Refugee-context DPIA is more demanding than diaspora-context DPIA — the gate logic is the same; the bar is higher.

Where it bends: Indemnity cover for non-state actors operating cross-border is materially harder to obtain than UK CIC indemnity; gate 5 becomes a real choke point.

Caveat

Acute, ongoing displacement changes the time horizon. The Method was designed in an Aarambam (founding-era) frame with no live displacement; emergency contexts may require a fourth protocol — Velicham eval cases for emergency-context refusals would need to be authored.

Palestine (1948 + 1967 + post-2023)

Anchor bodies

UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices · OHCHR · ICJ Advisory Opinions (2004, 2024) · ICJ South Africa v. Israel (provisional measures 2024–) · Al-Haq · Adalah · B'Tselem · Forensic Architecture.

Citation-Tier System

Where it holds: Tier-A discipline is rigorously possible; the literature has already done much of the standards work TLTE applies.

Where it bends: The contested-history dimension is structural: parallel state archives (Israeli State Archives) are themselves under-classification contestation. A pure Tier-A approach must add 'archive-contestation' metadata that the TLTE registry currently lacks.

Mirror-Publish Protocol

Where it holds: ICJ and OHCHR mechanisms accept civic-actor submissions through accredited intermediaries; mirror-publish discipline already operates de facto.

Where it bends: Political and legal risk to actors performing the transmission is materially higher than in the Tamil case; the protocol does not currently address transmitter-protection.

Graduation-Gate Logic

Where it holds: All six gates apply, with particular force on gate 6 (accredited partnership) — Al-Haq, Adalah and PCHR provide partnership routes that newer projects can mirror.

Where it bends: Indemnity cover for organisations criticising state actors with extensive lawfare capacity is an order of magnitude harder. Gate 5 becomes the rate-limiting step.

Caveat

TLTE deliberately does not claim authority over the Palestinian file. This is a transferability exercise about METHOD only — never about substituting for the work of named Palestinian institutions.

Conclusion

The Citation-Tier System transfers cleanly with a small extension (Tier-D for state-denial archives). The Mirror-Publish Protocol assumes accredited intermediaries; where those do not exist, it must be sequenced after intermediary-building. The Graduation-Gate Logic transfers unchanged in structure but the bar on each gate is corpus-specific — particularly indemnity (gate 5) and accredited partnership (gate 6).

The method generalises. The political economy in which it operates does not. That is itself a contribution: a published civic archive that names what it cannot do for other peoples' files is more defensible than one that quietly extends.