Making Missing Data Visible in Colombia

Valentina Rozo Ángel has worked with HRDAG and the Colombian Truth Commission to acknowledge victims of the 50-year conflict who are not visible or easily counted.

Can the Armed Conflict Become Part of Colombia’s History?

Paula Amado and María Juliana Durán Fedullo reflect on how the Truth Commission may change Colombia’s history, finally officially acknowledging the 50-year conflict and its casualties, and reckoning with who did what to whom.

Tech Note

Using large language models for structured information extraction from the Innocence Project New Orleans' wrongful conviction case files.

Human Rights and the Decentralized Web

Our partners were eager to learn and talk about emerging decentralized technology.

Remembering Scott Weikart

HRDAG’s core values all have a connection to Scott Weikart, 1951–2023.

More updates

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

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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:

HRDAG team members present talks around the world to communities who want to better understand the power of data analysis to defend human rights.

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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

More than 25 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

Data Scientist

Bailey began as a data scientist with HRDAG in 2022.

See the team

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

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HRDAG publishes the largest dataset in the history of the human rights movement

Making Missing Data Visible in Colombia

Can the Armed Conflict Become Part of Colombia’s History?

Tech Note

Human Rights and the Decentralized Web