Amassing Evidence of Human Rights Abuses

Gathering local evidence, creating a database of abuses, and analyzing patterns that may reveal genocide or gross violations of human rights is challenging and dangerous work. Much of the data gathered by grassroots human rights groups is lost to confiscation, destruction, or neglect, making it difficult or impossible for prosecutors, truth commissions, and others to use that information as evidence.

With funding from MacArthur, new file-sharing and data analysis technologies developed by Beneficent Technology (Benetech) in Palo Alto, California, are helping human rights organizations around the world improve their work and protect it from interference or seizure. Martus is a scattered-site, secure database developed by Benetech that allows groups to collect information, encrypt it, and store it on servers that are located outside of the countries where the organizations are working. Named after the Greek word for “witness,” Martus is currently available in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Arabic, Thai, Persian, and Nepali.

In situations like the genocide in Rwanda or the forced expulsions in Kosovo, human rights documenters can deal with tens of thousands of stories and details obtained through interviews, newspaper accounts, prison records, and even gravestones. Many of these provide overlapping information, making it difficult to sort out who did what to whom, when, and where. Benetech’s Analyzer is an open-source statistical program that draws on demographic and epidemiological methods to aggregate and process large data sets. Using Analyzer, researchers can aggregate vast quantities of information to reveal patterns of gross human rights abuses — even genocide — as they are occurring.

Offered free of charge, Benetech’s software has been downloaded by over 1,000 people in 60 countries, including Afghanistan, Colombia, Russia, Sierra Leone, and Sri Lanka. It is already making a difference. For example, a network combining over 100 researchers used these programs to help a UN commission prove that genocide was committed against the indigenous population in Guatemala between 1981 and 1983. In East Timor, 9,000 testimonies were taken and over 300,000 graves were surveyed to discover how many people died during the Indonesian army occupation and how they were killed. Similar work has taken place in Peru and Kosovo.