HRDAG awarded the prestigious 2021 Rafto Prize

We show that statistics have human consequences

PARTNER SPOTLIGHT

Invisible Institute

Invisible Institute, a Chicago grassroots organization, works closely with HRDAG and relies upon a team of community organizers, human rights experts, and other community members. HRDAG trains the team to read and code extracted allegation descriptions from police misconduct documents in order to give visibility to allegations that would otherwise be lost.
Learn more

Data science and police accountability

Human bias is baked into criminal justice data, from who gets arrested, to what charges they are booked on, to what happens after they are in custody. HRDAG investigates how these data inform the artificial intelligence that underpins tools used by police and judges. Read more.

Statistics and Covid-19

Most of the available data on the coronavirus pandemic are incomplete and unrepresentative, which creates uncertainty. But HRDAG excels at making sense of imperfect data sets. We identify and interpret the best science, and we provide guidance through original publications. Read more.

Finding Mexico’s hidden graves

For more than ten years, Mexican authorities have been discovering hidden graves. HRDAG creates models to predict the probability of finding a grave in each county, which helps families of the disappeared develop search strategies. Read more.

Analyzing patterns of violence in Colombia using more than 100 databases

The institution’s objectives were to learn the truth about what happened during the armed conflict.

Lessons at HRDAG: Holding Public Institutions Accountable

Principled Data Processing is a way to prove to someone, usually yourself, that what you did was right.

HRDAG Retreat 2022

A week in the California redwoods amongst a hodgepodge of people united by their passion for using quantitative analysis to combat injustice.

Learn more about HRDAG's new and ongoing human rights projects.

Sign up for our quarterly letters

We are statisticians for human rights

When we partner with human rights defenders, from truth commissions to UN missions to local activists, we help them understand how data science can be used to answer questions about human rights violations. Three directives guide our work:

Apply science to create new knowledge

Through our publications, statistical analyses, and expert testimony in war crimes trials, we help to establish a rigorously and accurate historical record of human rights abuses.

Conduct basic research and development

We invent and extend scientific methods so that we can better understand patterns of mass violence, relying on our core concepts to guide us.

Educate and train the next generation

We help those working in the human rights community to better understand the role and power of statistical data and reasoning. We do this by: training HRDAG interns and fellows in our methods; working closely with partners to teach them data science principles and methods; and through speaking engagements and training sessions for potential partners.

Inaccurate statistics can damage the credibility of human rights claims—that’s why statistics about human rights violations must be as scientifically accurate as possible.

Learn about our methods

Working with Partners

When we partner with an organization, we commit ourselves to providing radical service—that is, we spend countless hours with our partners so we can gain a deep understanding of how we can help them answer their human rights questions. Here are some of our past and current partners:

Who we are

Megan Price, PhD

Executive Director

Designs strategies and methods for statistical analysis of human rights data for projects in a variety of locations including Guatemala, Colombia, and Syria.

Patrick Ball, PhD

Director of Research

More than thirty years of quantitative analysis for truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, international criminal tribunals, and United Nations missions.

Tarak Shah

Data Scientist

As HRDAG's data scientist, Tarak cleans, processes and builds models from data in order to understand evidence of human rights abuses.

Suzanne Nathans

Operations Coordinator

Over 20 years of experience in non-profit administration. The operations hub for HRDAG, supporting Megan and the rest of the team from the San Francisco office.

Michelle Dukich

Data Processing & Record Linkage

Michelle is HRDAG's record linkage expert responsible for data cleaning, canonicalization, and matching.

Bailey Passmore