Using open data to stimulate new methods of human rights monitoring - Sunlight Foundation Blog

" ... As we’ve laid out in our previous post, there are potential limitations and benefits to using open data to monitor human rights. Throughout this post, we will identify ways that open data can enhance human rights litigation, as well as explore examples where open data could inspire alternative methods for human rights monitoring. Data cannot replace personal testimony in courts, but it can bring more detail to legal briefs and provide evidence to enrich human rights legal cases. Supplementing tradtitional interviews, personal testimony with reliable data could make for a clearer picture and more compelling evidence to help put these claims in context. The UN Dispatch has highlighted the important role that data analysis has played in several war crime prosecutions, helping to provide concrete and vivid evidence to hold perpetrators to account. Organizations, such as the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG), are incredibly valuable resources in supporting these ends by applying data science to the analysis of human rights violations globally. HRDAG was founded in 1991, after its founder compiled and cross-referenced databases on the victims and perpetrators of violence in El Salvador during its civil war. The database helped identify nearly 100 officers who were involved in some of the worst atrocities during the war. Since then, HRDAG has used data analysis to support a variety human rights legal cases ..."