México

Mexico suffers from serious problems in its criminal judicial system. Torture and other forms of unlawful treatment by police officers has been documented throughout the country. The lack of diligence from authorities to investigate and trace people responsible for human rights violations compounds these problems. In several northern states in Mexico, murders and disappearances of women has been carried out with impunity. The phenomenon of feminicide (the sexually violent murder of women) has reached a crisis point in places like Ciudad Juarez. In cities located near the USA-Mexico border, violations against migrants are daily issues in the work of local human rights organizations. The Martus database has helped many NGOs (especially in the north part of the country) securely document torture and human rights violations.

In response to this situation, Freedom House opened its Mexico offices in September 2003 with the aim of strengthening the ability of organizations to document the human rights cases they accept and/or litigate. Freedom House chose Martus as the tool to organize and secure this information.

Freedom House, which is an international human rights and democracy non-profit organization, now uses Martus in two of its main projects in Mexico. The first project is the Torture Treatment and Prevention Project (VOT) The program is transdisciplinary involving non-governmental organizations, legal professionals and physicians, as well as human rights advocates. These parties review cases and provide legal assistance, medical treatment and rehabilitation services. They also intervene to prevent torture. The VOT project creates new strategies to treat torture victims and document abuse cases.

Freedom House’s second project is the Human Rights Defenders Program (HRD). This program focuses on strengthening organizations that work directly with victims of human rights violations. It pays special attention to organizations and groups that work to protect and defend indigenous people and women’s rights. The HRD supports human rights lawyer’s networks, promotes young lawyers’ specialization in human rights and assists in efforts to improve documentation and registration of human rights violations. Martus is being used successfully in this application by organizations in the states of Oaxaca and Chihuahua.

The Martus Search Engine has also been employed to search and cross-reference information about human rights violations, making a difference in the work of the organizations that use it. One of the groups utilizing Martus in this way is the Promotion of Human Rights and Frontier Studies Center (Centro de Estudios Fronterizos y de Promoción de los Derechos Humanos) (CEFPRODHAC). CEFPRODHAC is an NGO located in Reynosa in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. Reynosa is a frontier town that sits on the border with Texas. This organization evaluates and documents child trafficking and human rights violations cases that affect migrants arriving at the USA-Mexico border with the purpose of entering the United States.

CEFPRODHAC manages a vast Documentation and Information Center (CDI). This center has collected data from the Tamaulipas north border area since 1990. The CDI also conducts daily monitoring of articles published in the main print and digital newspapers that cover the human rights situation in the north part of Mexico.

The CDI stores a large quantity of information on paper. This information is adequately organized in files, but it has created a need for more and more physical space. Due to the storage conditions, some newspaper clippings have deteriorated and in some cases have become illegible. For this reason, the CDI decided to digitize its information.

Each time the CDI selects information from the printed media, they clip the article, scan it, save in PDF format, and attach it in a private bulletin to their Martus database. The files include a description of the case - including the victim’s full name, date, place, brief case description, name of the publication, and date of publication - in order to facilitate efficient searches of the information.

Martus is mainly used as tool in CDI cases for locating and cross-referencing information. For instance, the CDI receives visits and calls from relatives of people who try to cross the border. When family members look for information about these people, the CDI inputs the possible victim’s name in Martus and if he or she is registered, the system finds the corresponding information about the alleged victim. This process has allowed CDI to locate people that would have been difficult to track.

Another group that uses Martus is the Mexican Commission to Advocate and Promote Human Rights (La Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, A.C. (CMDPDH). The CMDPDH was funded in 1989 to provide judicial support to the victims of human rights violations in Mexico. The CMDPDH performs the monitoring of the main newspapers and information agencies in regard to human rights in Mexico.

Locating an article that appeared in the media became a complex task that required an efficient way to search among many papers. This action was even more complicated in cases where the information required was urgently needed to attach to a human rights file or support a claim.

When the CMDPDH discovered Martus, it found two important ways to use this tool. Martus first helps the organization organize its own work. It also saves time finding precise information quickly and allows CMDPDH to distribute its media monitoring via the Internet, using the public access features of the Martus Search Engine.

A third group that uses Martus is the Oaxaca’s Human Rights Network (Red Oaxaqueña de Derechos Humanos). Oaxaca’s Human Rights Network is a civil society organization founded on August 13, 1996. It is currently made up of six organizations that work in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. This group has been characterized by its independence, commitment and solidarity with the indigenous population and with other parts of civil society. It uses Martus to document and organize information related to human rights violations in Oaxaca. The main goal of the group is to organize information on urgent actions and to keep digital information on the cases they investigate. In the future, the organization intends to use Martus to share their information with other organizations they work with including the Technical Secretariat of their information network.

Originally based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), HRDAG has provided technical assistance in the following countries:

Africa

• Chad
• Ghana
• Liberia
• Sierra Leone
• South Africa

Asia

• Afghanistan
• Bangladesh
• Cambodia
• India
• Timor-Leste
• Sri Lanka

Europe

• Kosovo

Middle East

• Iran

Central America and Caribbean

• El Salvador
• Guatemala
• Haiti
• México

South America

• Colombia
• Perú

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The Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) applies information technology solutions and statistical techniques to help human rights advocates build evidence-based arguments.