WhatsApp Bots

C4ADS equips partners not only with publicly available information for their own investigations, but with custom-built infrastructure to help them safely collect, store, and maintain ownership of their own data even in technologically constrained environments. In conflict zones, documentation of violence against civilians is critical for holding perpetrators accountable. In 2024, C4ADS partner Wayamo, a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on the domestic application of international criminal law, was working with a group of NGO partners in Sudan and needed a way to build a tool to collect legally admissible evidence of ongoing atrocities. This evidence was in the form of photographs, videos, or audio recordings, and would be sent from a conflict zone with intermittent internet connectivity, limited device access, and constant risk of search and seizure. C4ADS met them where they already were: on WhatsApp.

As part of an unfunded project, C4ADS designed and implemented a customized, automated WhatsApp chat platform that guides researchers in Sudan’s conflict zones through a structured evidence submission process, securely stores their data with full metadata preservation, and allows them to delete sensitive material from their devices immediately after. Partners maintain ownership and control of their evidence, but C4ADS assumes the risk of storage — on Horizons, C4ADS’ cornerstone investigative platform. Built around tools and workflows already familiar to partners on the ground, our solution prioritizes legal admissibility as well as personal safety.

A violent internal conflict has engulfed Sudan since April 2023. International humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations and Amnesty International, have accused both primary combatants — the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) — of multiple atrocities, including bombing civilian humanitarian sites, murdering unarmed civilians, and looting antiquities to finance the conflict. 

The proliferation of smartphones in the region has created a vast trove of user-generated video and photo content documenting the conflict. Yet the ubiquity of this material does not automatically make it admissible evidence in court. Preserving high-quality documentation, along with the metadata required for further investigation and legal proceedings, remains difficult in Sudan due to technical and safety challenges. 

Another challenge has been the ability to retrieve and review evidence following submission. While existing documentation systems store data for future legal prosecutions, they do not permit on-the-ground investigators who submit the evidence to maintain access to or otherwise work with their data. A key feature of C4ADS’ Sudan WhatsApp Bot is the ability of these researchers to revisit and analyze their submissions on Horizons for future legal proceedings, even after deleting the evidence from their devices.

C4ADS’ partners in Sudan often have staff working inside and outside the conflict area. While analysts working from outside have access to laptop computers and reliable Wi-Fi, researchers on the ground have limited connectivity, with only intermittent internet and cellular data access. Additionally, civilians are often subject to arbitrary search and seizure of their personal devices, making it dangerous for C4ADS’ partners to retain sensitive photos or videos longer than necessary.

C4ADS worked closely with Wayamo and Sudanese NGO partners to understand their specific needs before designing a solution. They needed a tool that was mobile-based, easy to use, and familiar enough that researchers could quickly submit evidence and immediately delete it in the event of a search. The partners also had clear requirements for how evidence needed to be collected and stored, to preserve its integrity and meet the standards for potential legal proceedings. The tool had to accept a wide range of formats, including documents, photographs, social media links, videos, and audio files, and needed to preserve evidence metadata, such as where and when a photo was taken. Most importantly, C4ADS’ partners wanted to retain ownership of the data after deletion from their devices to retrieve and review it following submission.

An automated WhatsApp chat platform — a bot — fulfilled the necessary technical requirements. Researchers initiate a conversation by messaging a dedicated phone number, which triggers the Bot to begin a structured series of messages. Researchers respond to each prompt as they would in any normal WhatsApp conversation, submitting files, links, or typed responses. While a WhatsApp bot does not completely solve connectivity issues, the users’ familiarity with WhatsApp and the platform’s ability to use either Wi-Fi or cellular data reduces these issues’ impact.

Once evidence is submitted, researchers can delete the chat and any associated evidence from their device storage, while WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption provides a base level of security for information in transit. Most importantly, WhatsApp is heavily used across Eastern Africa, so its presence on a phone raises little-to-no suspicion in the event of a device search or seizure. The working version of the Sudan WhatsApp Bot allows users to submit responses in English, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), and Sudanese Arabic, ensuring C4ADS’ partners can document evidence in their preferred language.

To fulfill storage and access requirements, the tool collates user submissions and their metadata into a structured, easy-to-read PDF format and stores them in Horizons. Within Horizons, each partner organization’s data sits in a dedicated sandbox, siloed from the platform’s other analytical data offerings. Only the partners themselves can access this data. Once ingested, evidence cannot be edited, preserving the information exactly as it was at the time of submission. 

As of March 2026, Wayamo and Sudanese partners have been using the Sudan WhatsApp Bot for over a year. Throughout this process, C4ADS has continued to work closely with both Wayamo and the wider partnership network to refine the tool, including adjusting submission formatting, refining prompt language and content, and expanding the Bot’s capabilities to accept audio and video files. At the time of this writing, the Sudan WhatsApp Bot has received over 100 submissions from more than seven organizations operating in Sudan. Future iterations of the project — funding permitting — would incorporate support for additional regional dialects and more advanced investigative support.

When an investigator submits evidence through the Sudan WhatsApp Bot, an AWS API Gateway captures the response, and triggers an AWS Lambda function. The Lambda function formats the submission’s metadata into a spreadsheet, which is then picked up by a scheduled crontab job running on an EC2 instance. From there, the tool formats the data as a PDF and stores it in a partner-specific S3 bucket, ensuring each organization’s evidence is kept separate from the outset. Once stored, the data is pushed to an organization-specific dataset within Horizons. Partners can then use Horizons’ Investigations tool to organize, analyze, and reference their submissions for future advocacy and accountability work. Their data remains siloed from other organizations and inaccessible to unauthorized users.

While the Sudan WhatsApp Bot was designed with C4ADS’ partners in Sudan in mind, the underlying approach can be applied to other conflict contexts where similar conditions exist:

1. Documentation systems need to be mobile-based;
   
2. On-the-ground researchers face arbitrary device checks, making the discovery of a bespoke app potentially risky;
   
3. Users are already familiar with WhatsApp and comfortable using it to send sensitive data;
   
4. A WhatsApp bot can feed submissions and their metadata directly into a data lake, where they are stored in an immutable format for researchers’ future reference.

In conflict regions with easier access to multiple electronic devices and higher technical capacity, simpler solutions may be more effective. For example, if individual researchers are comfortable sharing their evidence between mobile and laptop devices, it may be simpler to build a submission process that connects directly to an existing data lake or investigative software, eliminating the need to submit information via WhatsApp entirely.

Regardless of the platform, C4ADS analysts and partners recommend that any evidence collection and storage solution meet the following criteria:

1. The solution should be accessible in researchers’ preferred language;
   
2. Data — including metadata — should be stored in an immutable format;
   
3. Researchers should maintain control and access to their own data.

As bystander-captured evidence becomes increasingly central to documenting atrocities in modern conflicts, collecting and preserving it safely remains a persistent challenge. C4ADS’ Sudan WhatsApp bot demonstrates how a solution designed around the realities researchers actually face can turn a familiar tool into an instrument for accountability.