I feel duty-bound to direct you towards two exciting articles which are also quite brief, so they won’t take up too much of your day. I realise that you’re busy.

First up, it’s Sahana getting a mention in the Wall Street Journal, in an article with the snappy title of (sigh) Managing Disaster. Actually it’s just a puff piece written by the Business Roundtable, but it’s nice to see IBM and Sahana getting mentioned for the Chengdu earthquake deployment.

Second, it’s another insightful article by me for ICT Update magazine, entitled Communicating Peace. In it, you’ll find words of wisdom like ” What is important is not the technology itself, but how people use it.” It will only take 5 minutes of your time to read it - but a lifetime of enlightenment will follow.

As everybody realises by now, technology is neutral when it comes to issues of war and peace. A lot of the positive stories around the use of sms to mobilise activists need to be balanced out by a recognition that in many cases, the government and private sector are in a position to challenge that use - and of course to use the same technology to promote their own messages. The Eldis community board picks up the story in Kenya:

As tensions and violence began to spill into the streets in Kenya in late 2007, the government decided to ban local live broadcast. Whilst this is obviously controversial, there were fears that radio, in particular, could be used, as it had done in Rwanda, to incite violence. The ban of live reporting meant that SMS began to be utilised as an update method and thus ‘mobile reporters’ were born.

The Government realised that they couldn’t control the internet or the text messages which were being sent to incite hostility, so they countered them with their own blanket text messages stating that the violence was illegal and that Kenyans should be concentrating on peace.

The role of radio broadcasts in supporting the genocide in Rwanda is well-documented (see the Nahimana and Barayagwiza cases at ICTR) and is a valuable cautionary tale. However few people have stopped to think much about how SMS could be an even more powerful tool for those inclined to mass violence. Radio broadcasts can incite the mob, but they are a weak tool for co-ordinating the mob; SMS, on the other hand, has the capability to be much more dangerous in the wrong hands. But when I say “the wrong hands”, what do I mean?

The Kenyan government were acting benevolently in attempting to curtail the bloodshed but others could use it for their own means… It demonstrates how the same information can be used for very different ends and poses questions about safeguards: can and should they be put in place to ensure that ICT tools are used for empowering and not repressive purposes?

The Kenyan government may have been acting benevolently - although it’s worth pointing out that it was in their interests to prevent violence simply because they hold the monopoly of violence. In most countries in the world, if not all, governments are not naturally inclined to empower their citizens. Communications technology should be available as widely as possible, and I don’t want anybody - least of all the government - legislating about who should have access to it on the basis of their ideology.

I think it’s dangerous to talk about “safeguards” to ensure that ICT tools are used for empowering and not repressive purposes; there’s no such thing as the wrong hands. The short version: technology can be used for good or ill, and preventing people using it for ill can only be achieved if you also prevent people using it for good. I’m happy to be challenged on this one - are there cases where I might be wrong?

In Science News, Julie Rehmeyer writes a short piece on Humanitarian Statistics, with a focus on the “controversial” Iraq war studies carried in the Lancet. I haven’t posted about the Lancet studies before; I recognise that the Lancet studies have an important role to play in tallying the cost of the Iraq war, but anything I could add to the debate would be largely redundant, since it’s been driven by political rather than humanitarian interests.
Although Deltoid characterises the article as being “about the Lancet studies” - and fair enough, that is his particular interest - it is thankfully wider than that, noting the increase in the use of statistics in the human rights (and to a lesser extent, humanitarian) sector while also being aware of the limitations:

But humanitarian crises pose huge challenges. Little information may be available—even from before a crisis—about how many people live where. Even if a previous census was taken, the high birth and death rates in developing countries tend to quickly make censuses outdated. Areas within continuing war zones can be unsafe for survey workers.

Examples from Sierra Leone and East Timor are referenced in the article. The latter case is particularly interesting because it wasn’t just based on a straight survey - which is what we generally think of when we think of statistics - but on pulling together separate and incomplete datasets to build a bigger picture, which is the norm in humanitarian crises, particularly in developing countries.

In the comments section at Deltoid, commenter Jeff Harvey laments

I can only shake my head in disbelief. Who will do the survey? The US and British governments, who are responsible for an illegal invasion that has turned Iraq into a country of wreck and ruin? This is the bitter irony. Aggressing nations do not tally the numbers of their victims. Ian Gould summed it up in the thread below this: because the real death toll of civilians conflicts with the well-cultivated myth of US benevolence, western crimes are not a part of history because they are never allowed to become a part of history. They thus get sent straight down the memory hole.

Jeff misses the point that (I think) Julie was trying to make. Although he gives many examples of past victims of war who have been lost to history, we don’t live there any more. There are more people working on these issues than ever before, and we have a better idea of how to approach these problems. However it’s this attitude - that information gathering and analysis should be a political project - that is likely to prove the biggest obstacle to moving forward.

The only way to do justice to the victims and to persuade belligerent parties to accept the results is to treat these issues as impartially as possible - and to do so with the perspective that our work is at the service of the beneficiaries, rather than of our own political interests.

There’s been frequent discussion here - and blogs like MobileActive, of course - about how cellphones can be used in humanitarian responses. It’s worth remembering, however, that technology is neutral - both “good guys” and “bad guys” use it (if you can be bothered with that way of looking at the world) - and that, in conflict situations, communications technology is seen as a legitimate target. So for all the talk of how empowering mobile technology is, we haven’t had much discussion about the other side of the coin.

This bring us neatly to an amazingly interesting post by Barnett Rubin on Informed Comment, entitled Taliban and Telecoms — Secret Negotiations Just Got Easier, and at a Price You Can Afford! Rubin is interested mainly in high-level policy issues - the post was sparked by a conference discussing political solutions in Afghanistan - but has some interesting stories about the role of mobile telecommunications in state-building. There are some interesting anecdotes about how reliant on cellphones people have become, as in the case of

a friend of mine who negotiated the release of two of his Afghan staff who had been taken hostage by Taliban in Wardak (just next to Kabul) said that it was always difficult to reach the kidnappers at night, because they moved away from the road up into the mountains where the reception was poor. Finally they had to explain to the Taliban that they needed to stay within the coverage range to reach a deal.

Coverage is not great but, according to the Afghanistan Telecom Regulatory Authority, mobile phone penetration is targeted at 10% for 2008, forecast to rise to 3% by 2013. That’s not bad, although a glance at the fixed line and internet penetration targets is quite depressing. In 2002 I had a couple of meetings with the Minister for Communications, Mohammed Masoom Stanekzai, and it doesn’t look as if the plans that we discussed back then have come very far.

Rubin publishes a letter from a Taliban military group to one of the mobile phone companies (apparently the Taliban prefer Areeba, because they have the cheapest top-up cards - good to see that they’re keeping an eye on their budget). As Rubin explains

I have been told that Taliban (or people claiming to represent them) sometimes call up mobile phone companies and claim that they are right at a tower with explosives, which they will detonate unless money is immediately transferred to their mobile phone. This is a new technology that enables migrant workers to send cash home without going through either a hawala or Western Union.

The hawala system has operated on mobile phones for quite a long time - in fact, hawaladars adopted mobile phones almost as soon as they were introduced - but it’s fascinating to see a technology which undermines the hawala grip making extortion so much easier. However it’s clear that the notewriters aren’t that worried about law enforcement catching up with them - because they provide a mobile phone number where they can be contacted.

Rubin’s concern is what the prevalence of these threats tell us about the level of Taliban control (or lack of it) across the country, and he also notes that this demonstrates that the Taliban are trying to work within the existing structures of the nascent Afghan state. However I find more interesting the way in which a new technology is being used in an entirely unexpected way. The Taliban are holding the cellphone network hostage - while at the same time requesting that their protection money be transferred through the same network.

Any lessons for the humanitarian or human rights community? Not really. We already know that cellphone networks are vulnerable in unstable environments, and we already know that technology gets used in unexpected ways by overlooked groups. However there is a significant positive in these developments. Rubin points out that in the 1990s satellite comms contributed to avoiding some conflicts (although they undoubtedly helped to co-ordinate many, many more). Cellphones are cheaper to use and easier to access, creating lines of communication did not exist before - or at least, were the monopoly of a powerful few.

Essentially, the increased penetration of cellphones creates more opportunity for dialogue and negotiation at more levels in Afghan society - even if that’s only whether they can get discount on top-up cards if they buy in bulk.

The White African faces a quandary:

Global tools that have real time read/write access are extremely powerful. Depending on ones motives, your impact can be good or bad. Even if your motives are good, your tool can be used for bad. How’s that for a quandry?

It’s certainly a quandary, but not a new one. It’s the same question that’s been asked about humanitarian aid since at least the 1970s, and has been one of the motors behind the humanitarian reform process. What’s more interesting is the assumption behind that question, an assumption that he describes quite clearly:

Just decades ago those who were not in close enough proximity to an event were unable to do much, if anything about it. Today, we can successfully effect change through digital tools and be thousands of miles away.

As I wrote in the comments, neither of these statements is quite true. Decades ago you could have joined Amnesty International campaign, or given money to a relief agency, or written to your MP; these options are still available, and will make a difference. The problem we have today is that many people feel that such actions don’t make enough of a difference - that they don’t have a big enough impact, or they don’t bring change quickly enough.

We have to start being honest, though; just because the internet works reliably and at high speeds, it doesn’t mean that humans work at similarly high speeds or with similar reliability. The impact of our actions will almost never be immediate, and will frequently lead to outcomes that we didn’t predict. Our expectations have been raised by the relentless cheerleading for the information revolution, and we need to lower those expectations or risk alienating people who want to get involved.

The real questions are the same ones that I ask myself in my own work whenever I approach a new project. What decision or action will this information inform, and who is responsible for making that decision or taking that action? The answers to those questions determine a) whether it’s worth collecting the information in the first place, and b) what we will do with the information once we’ve collected it. Unless we answer those questions clearly, and build our systems around them, we’re unlikely to effect any significant change, no matter how powerful our tools are.

(For a bit more on Ushaidi, Sanjana has a great interview with Ory Okollah, in which she explains clearly that the site has been used as an information-gathering tool, rather than a resource for conflict mitigation or resolution. Just to be clear, I think Ushaidi is absolutely worthwhile - but I’m looking forward to what comes next.)

• Following the collapse of the political process in Kenya, bloggers White African and Kenyan Pundit - both of whom are worth reading, by the way - have developed a Google Maps mash-up which deals with electoral violence in the country.  Called Ushaidi (’witness’ in Swahili, I think?), it enables people to report events either online or via SMS.  It’s not the first time something like this has been tried, but this an interesting organic attempt to pin down exactly what’s happening in the country.  As anybody working in human rights knows, gathering this sort of information is extremely difficult - particularly later on when it might be needed.  More explanation from White African in this blog post, coverage at Global Voices (with an interesting article on cyber activism in Africa) and the BBC.

• There’s been a fair amount of discussion about how the media and responders can work more effectively together in the last couple of years, and of course a whole heap of blogs and similar about how the new technology is going to change the face of disaster response, etc, etc.  So far, not much has happened, but TVE Asia and the UNDP Regional Centre in Bangkok have just published a free resource called Communicating Disasters.  It’s an interesting but disjointed read - I’m not exactly sure who it’s targeted at, to be honest…

• There was a brief flurry of blogging around Nathan Eagle’s article, The Mobile Web is NOT helping the Developing World - and what we can do about it, mainly because it burst the bubble of optimism around bringing the internet to the poorest through the Miracle of Mobile Telephony (TM).  Of course, Nathan’s position is not that it isn’t possible, just that we’re not doing it right at the moment.  Personally, I’m still waiting for some hard evidence that these efforts benefit the poor rather than the relatively well-off - but that might just be splitting hairs.

• Witness have launched The Hub, their online platform for human rights-related videos and media, after a long incubation period. Cutting through the bumf, it’s intended to connect individuals and organizations who are working on human rights around the world. It’s an interesting lunge at building global connectivity in a sector (human rights) that is notoriously factional, and the focus on media is potentially powerful - particularly new media forms, such as mobile phone content, which are incredibly powerful tools for mobilizing support. You can register at http://hub.witness.org/login.

Maybe they could form a support group? I know, I know, that’s not the sort of thing we’re supposed to joke about.

Yan Rebois of CartONG has written to let me know that their displaced mapping project with UNHCR is now public, an interesting application based on Google Maps, for general use by humanitarian organisations. Although it requires a log-in to edit anything, you can view the information without any authorisation.

The application maps the locations and background information on the displaced communities that UNHCR and partner agencies are working with in Uganda, centred around Gulu, which makes sense. It’s specifically listed as “operation information” rather than a public information (i.e. not just another press release).

Now what’s interesting about this application is not that it’s being used to map displaced people - we’ve seen that before, as my earlier posts showed. It’s that behind each of the locations, as well as the obvious geographic information, you get a link to a narrative Return Monitoring Site Report, which is far more useful for everybody.

It appears that the data will largely be updated by UNHCR, possibly with the assistance of its operational partners, which would be fantastic if they can manage it. However for me this raises some interesting questions about data security on the site – for example, I can see who the “community leader” is quite easily on the reports I downloaded, which might have security implications.

That’s a minor concern though – the main issue is whether this project can be shown to add value to the work being done with the displaced, as well as giving outside observers a better chance to see the scale of the problem in northern Uganda, which is massively under-reported in the media, while all eyes are on Darfur.

Naturally I have opinions about what’s happening in the middle east at the moment. However I’m not going to write a single word about it, because I find it confusing. Perhaps you find it confusing too?

Here’s some interesting infographics to help you follow the situation:

• The Middle East Buddy List (Slate)

• The Middle East Self-Organising Network (orgnet.com)

• The Israeli / Lebanese Coffin Counter

I find this type of thing fascinating, particularly because these types of graphics can persuade us that things are in fact quite simple. Of course they’re not, but that’s not the fault of the graphics themselves - all attempts to represent the real world necessarily simplify. Yet presentations like this create a space in which we can comprehend the real world a little more easily. Plus they look cool.

Courtesy of Infosthetics.