4. IDENTIFICATION OF ISSUES TO BE INVESTIGATED AND CRITERIA FOR PRIORITIZATION Apart from the few cases in which commissions/missions have been set up to investigate one or more pre-identified incidents, commissions/missions are required to prioritize the issues and incidents they will investigate, within the broad terms of their mandate, to ensure that their tasks are completed within the limited resources and time at their disposal. The commission/mission will have to adopt criteria for prioritization, which may include: • Geographic location (e.g., ensuring that different parts of the country are covered or only some parts); • Threshold for violations (e.g., focusing only on serious violations); • Types of violations (e.g., torture, killings, forced displacement, sexual violence, destruction of homes); • Discrimination (e.g., targeting of specific groups); • Perpetrators (e.g., focusing on specific perpetrators such as government security forces, armed groups); • Illustrative value of the incident with regard to patterns of violations; and • Access to information. The background information and review of open sources will assist in defining the criteria for prioritization and in defining the issues, places, incidents and perpetrators that will be investigated. In determining priorities the following should be considered: (a) Mandate; (b) Time and resources available for investigations; (c) Geographic area to be covered; (d) Access to victims, witnesses and sources, and their location; (e) Protection of victims, witnesses and sources; (f) Access to sites of violations; (g) Expectations of the people of the country concerned and the international community; (h) Availability of expertise to conduct specialized investigations. 5. INVESTIGATION PLANS Investigation plans identify the issues to be investigated, the methodology for gathering information and the field missions to be undertaken (if relevant), and define who will carry out the various tasks. Essentially, the investigation plan will define what needs to be done, by whom and how. The investigation plans have to: 38 COMMISSIONS OF INQUIRY AND FACT-FINDING MISSIONS ON INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS AND HUMANITARIAN LAW