High-resolution satellite imagery has emerged as an integral source of evidence for documenting human rights violations in contemporary international conflicts. While in 1995, the US government presented images of mass graves near Srebrenica in a closed session of the UN Security Council, by the 2020s, a far wider array of actors generates and globally disseminates satellite images of mass graves in conflicts such as the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict. This paper examines how the composition and interaction of different actor types have evolved over time by systematically mapping those directly engaged in documenting, analyzing, and verifying human rights violations using satellite data across two cases: the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995 and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict since 2022.

First findings of cross-case comparisons reveal a shift from a narrow, state-centric actor constellation in the 1990s to a more pluralized, multi-actor landscape in which governmental, nongovernmental, and commercial actors operate simultaneously, often in entangled or contested ways in the 2020s. Observed patterns include, among others, selective transparency in data sharing and persistent asymmetries in data access even when data flows are multidirectional. The findings further indicate that observed variations have implications for epistemic authority, accountability, and the politics of visibility.