|
Texto en Español Guatemala Case Study
Collecting and Protecting Human Rights Data (1991-2007)
In 1996, a peace accord brokered by the United Nations ended thirty-six years of internal armed conflict in Guatemala. During the hostilities, non-governmental organizations asked the scientific community to gather and analyze information about human rights violations. Many of these projects were carried out by scientists who later formed the the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) in 2003.
HRDAG Director, Dr. Patrick Ball, worked with the International Center for Human Rights Research in Guatemala (CIIDH) to collect evidence of over 43,000 human rights violations. The accounts were collected from press reports, NGOs and victims. In 1992, Dr. Ball gathered this data into one large database and protected the information by encrypting it with PGP encryption software.
This project served as complementary data source to support the work of the UN-organized Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH). Established in 1994, the mission of CEH was to objectively clarify human rights violations and acts of violence in Guatemala. The CEH investigated a portion of the 200,000 deaths and disappearances that took place during the Guatemalan conflict, more fatalities than the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador combined.
These deaths and disappearances caused tremendous suffering in Guatemala, which at the time had a population of only about 10 million people. The CEH also found that acts of genocide were committed against Guatemala’s indigenous Mayan communities.
In 1997, the Commission asked the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to send Dr. Ball to advise them on the development and implementation of an information management system. Dr. Ball also designed quantitative analysis and estimated the total number of deaths due to the conflict by innovatively applying established demographic methods to human rights questions. These projects continued when HRDAG became a project of the Benetech Initiative in 2003.
In the years following the peace accords, Guatemalan human rights organizations continued to experience harassment from authorities. Their offices were broken into and their computers were stolen, resulting in the loss of months' worth of work. In 2004, HRDAG team member Miguel Cruz traveled to Guatemala to help human rights groups set up automated back-up systems that encrypted and transferred their accounting records, their documents and other work files nightly to a secure data storage facility in the U.S.
HRDAG later trained staff members at Guatemalan NGOs how to secure their data with Benetech’s free and open source Martus information management tool. The Martus software allows users to create searchable and encrypted databases and back this data up remotely to their choice of publicly available servers. Martus is used by organizations and individuals around the world to protect sensitive information and shield the identity of victims or witnesses who provide testimony on human rights abuses. Martus is the Greek word for witness.
Benetech funded the initial Martus design and development effort after the inception of the project in 2000. While developing this tool, the Martus team consulted with Human Rights Watch, the Open Society Institute, the United Nations, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and grassroots organizations from more than a dozen countries.
Martus has been introduced and used in Colombia, Egypt, Iraq, Kenya, Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Peru, the Philippines, Russia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the U.S. Martus is still being used in Guatemala, most recently to support the Guatemalan
National Police Archive project.
| 
