The ingenuity of Julian’s undemocracy.com, which slices-up debates in the UN General Assembly and Security Council into a usable form, is making it ever harder to put up with some of the UN’s websites.

One particular offender is this portal set up by the Human Rights Commissioner to provide information about the sessions of the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights (UPR), a diplomatic speed-dating process for states to assess each other’s overall record on human rights. The UPR’s novelties are the “interactive dialogue” between states, and the direct, mandated involvement of civil society organisations in the review process of individual states.

So, with all this novelty going around, might we see some innovative thinking about how to communicate the proceedings in a modern, web-savvy way? Hardly. Staffers have resorted to the double-sin of scanning in the draft statements of delegations and dumping them onto the portal as a PDF. Here’s a clip from the statement of the Bangladesh delegation in Brazil’s first review session:

.

Perhaps a graphologist can help us read between the lines here, giving us unprecedented access into the minds of diplomats.

In comments a while back, Mike Staresinic came up with a fascinating comment:

The human rights story of the past 6 decades is a kind of Moore’s Law in crimes against humanity, in that the feedback between crime and comeuppance is ever shortened.

Perhaps we can go further - it’s partly because of the improvements in technology brought about by Moore’s Law that the gap between crime and punishment in international law has been narrowed.

Apropos of the recent article in the CSM, I think we’re just beginning to see how technology can have a real impact in this regard - primarily in terms of documentation, but also in terms of making sure that justice is seen to be done (as per the ICTY website). The question is, will international law be able to take full advantage of these new developments? Notwithstanding Mike’s comment, the wheels of justice continue to grind exceedingly slow…

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?

As we discussed before (see Electoral Geography and Political Violence in Zimbabwe), Zimbabwe goes to the polls this Saturday. The long term field monitoring efforts of Zimbabwe Election Support Network and many others should ensure that the government’s tight restrictions on accreditation of international journalists doesn’t create an information draught. Whilst the usual international outlets (HRW, Economist, ICG) have already released rich contributions about the election, it still remains challenging to get a feel for ongoing events. Perhaps the lack of international media on the ground will widen the space for citizen journalism, and force observers to rely more on non-traditional sources of news.

I had hoped to have some of the maps from the Violations Early Warning System  (ViEWS) of Zimbabwe Peace Project, but these have not hit the Net. The next best thing is Sokwanele.com’s Google Maps mashup of election-related incidents:

You can also read their blog post introducing the project. Like with Ushahidi.com, Sokwanele’s map will drive human rights documentalists (myself included) mad: its primary sources are unverified from the media, its mapping is necessarily imprecise since Google gazeteer for Zimbabwe is far from extensive, categories are overlapping, confusing and sometimes hyperbolic (”political cleansing”).

But that’s really not the point: it’s attractive, accurate and expressive enough, and provides easy links into the source materials. It’s an example of where information design trumps documentation. In Sokwanele’s own words, in the caveat about their data:

The map aims to give an impression of the scale and range of challenges facing Zimbabweans as we head towards the March 29th elections. Even though this is based on a small sample of information we have logged since July 2007, it clearly shows that conditions in the country are not conducive for a free and fair democractic elections.

The only thing I would suggest adding to it is a filter-by-date widget, so we can see what happens on election day.
Via Zuckerman.

No sooner had I written yesterday’s post about digital security than the New York Times has a piece by Nicholas Kristol on how the Save Darfur campaign website has been under attack recently - from Chinese IP addresses.

As the coalition’s China advocacy campaign has intensified, officials have noticed increasingly sophisticated and subversive attempts to intercept emails and infect computers with malicious programs.

Kristol relies mainly on innuendo to suggest that the Chinese government might be behind the attacks, with very little evidence to support the accusation. From a technology point of view, though, it’s irrelevant who’s responsible - this is a cautionary tale for NGOs and other organisations. We can enjoy the benefits that technology brings - but we also need to guard against the dangers. The price of liberty, and all that…

Public transport doesn’t often provide pointers for the humanitarian community. The recent cracking of the London OysterCard (following hot on the heels of the earlier crack of the Dutch transit card system) came as no surprise to digital security experts, but it should teach us fundamental lessons about information security and personal privacy issues.

Security researchers say they’ve found a way to crack the encryption used to protect a widely-used smartcard in a matter of minutes, making it possible for them to quickly and cheaply clone the cards that are used to secure office buildings and automate the collection of mass transportation fares.

No electronic identification scheme is secure. It doesn’t matter how good your technology is, any system which is built by humans can be cracked, and the only defense is to make the cost of cracking it as prohibitive as possible. (The kicker is that you never know if you’ve successfully achieved that - until somebody cracks it and it becomes embarrassingly obvious that you haven’t.) On top of that, the more complex and expensive a system is, the more difficult it is to fix it when something like this happens.

In themselves, these obstacles aren’t insurmountable - largely because they’re technical in nature - but you see the real issues when you look at how these schemes are implemented. Governmental (and intergovernmental) organisations are notorious for a) thinking that technology can fix problems which are not technical in nature (for example, running a public transport system) and b) frequently mismanaging technology projects, often with the assistance of the vendor.

In a public transport system, this is not a life-and-death issue. What if this was a tracking system for food aid, though, where RFID has begun to be introduced as the solution to our logistics inefficiencies? Or a refugee registration database in a country where human rights abuses are endemic? Or an employee identity card scheme in a country where terrorists are targeting UN and NGO offices? You start to see where this might be going…

There was also related news that MI5 have requested “full automated access” to the OysterCard database. In a liberal democracy where the rule of law holds, that might not be too worrying - but there are a number of countries in the world that don’t fit that description, and where giving access to this sort of information to the government might not be in the best interests of the beneficiaries.

The fear of cyber-warfare has climbed Whitehall’s agenda since last year’s attack on the Baltic nation of Estonia, in which Russian hackers swamped state servers with millions of electronic messages until they collapsed. The Estonian defence and foreign ministries and major banks were paralysed, while even its emergency services call system was temporarily knocked out: the attack was seen as a warning that battles once fought by invading armies or aerial bombardment could soon be replaced by virtual, but equally deadly, wars in cyberspace.

It’s only a matter of time before humanitarian organisations come under similar attack - and we’re not prepared for it in the least. None of this means that this technology shouldn’t be used - it absolutely should be. What it means is that we need to be a lot more savvy not just about the technology issues but about the entire range of processes - procurement of the system, implementation within the organisation, sensitivity to the situation (including security concerns), and so forth - in order to make sure that we’re prepared to address these situations when they arise.

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.)

Since last year, I’ve been doing some work with Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP) on human rights monitoring stuff. In the course the work, one man Perl strikeforce Sam Smith coded a script which claws its way through ZPP’s Human Rights Monthly Monitoring Reports (MMRs) and makes the content more accessible.

The MMR is an information-rich rundown of politically-motivated acts of violence which its 240 field monitors investigated that month (here’s a sample, for July 2007). As you’ll see, the documents are structured along geographical and chronological lines: Region > Province > Constituency > Incidents ordered in date order. There are easily 500 incidents in each report, which has been produced monthly since late 2002: that’s more public domain information about Zimbabwe than you could shake a stick at, but its format makes it very hard to get at, even for the authors. Sam’s script takes this content and puts it into an Excel sheet, allowing a better measure of re-use and quick analysis than is possible from the document itself.

What’s striking in seeing this vast amount of retooled information (or spreadsheet of horror, as a colleague named it) is the absence of a stable, detailed geography underpinning the recording of incident information. Constituencies can be changed, so it’s probably short-sighted to use them as the main locational value when recording or processing data from incident reports.

Just such a thing has happened on quite a grand scale at least twice in the last five years in Zimbabwe. I have just seen the list of freshly updated constituencies for the forthcoming 29 March 2008 election in Zimbabwe. There are now roughly double the number of parliamentary seats up for grabs, but how have the boundaries changed? In the absence of accurate geographical data, though, it’s not clear to me how the constituencies differ precisely and which areas would now find themselves in different constituencies.

For any monitoring organisation, boundary changes are a nightmare. Obviously, an incident happens in a place irrespective of the constituency it’s in; if this precise location isn’t captured in a database or somesuch system first time, the original records - most likely paper monitoring forms - will have to be hauled out and re-processed. This radically increases the cost of making useful comparisons between patterns of violence currently being experienced and those observed in previous elections.

To avoid this problem, future monitoring efforts should make sure that precise locations are recorded first time. So, here are two questions for our five or so readers: what’s working well on this issue in the real world; and, what’s the most practical way to manage information about electoral boundaries?

Update - 25/02/2008:

On Disruptive Proactivity, Sam has responded in more detail about his part in this work, with some smart comments about how to resolve the geography issue.

• 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.

I’m Tom Longley, and for the next few months I’ll be guest blogging here at humanitarian.info. My own background is in law, and I have been working in the human rights sector since 1999. After NGO field work investigating crimes against humanity in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, and then managing Aidworkers.Net for a while, I’m presently consulting for a neat NGO called HURIDOCS.

A key theme of this blog is how international and governmental humanitarian agencies develop and incorporate ICT into their field work. Through his writing, Paul has tracked how they try to balance techno-optimism and the huge potential of new tech tools, with the reality of organisational cultures and relentless working environments. After listening to me rant and rave talk about very similar issues I was facing in my work with a group monitoring human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, he bravely handed me the keys to his blog to start a conversation about how they were handling these challenges.

In smaller human rights organisations, information workers usually do a bit of everything. They manage a clutch of processes including fact-finding, documentation of the results of investigations and production of public materials, management of the organisational email account, and more. In this context information management spans a wide range of disciplines: legal, library science, political communications, statistics, technology. As a result, doing this job better means we have to beg, borrow and steal knowledge from anywhere we can, and mash it together in practical, creative ways. Given the critical importance of this work to effective human rights advocacy, it’s clearly something worth writing about.

So, through a series of posts about information management and human rights - and with your comments - I hope to bring a little clarity to the resources available to organisations which investigate, document and analyse human rights violations.