158 results for search: truth commissions
In Colombia: HRDAG and Dejusticia on the Importance of Missing Data
It’s inevitable that databases will have information gaps, and special care must be taken to account for these gaps.
The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.
Audrey Chapman and Patrick Ball. “The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.” Human Rights Quarterly. 23(4):1-42. 2001
Liberia
In July 2009, The Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) concluded a three-year project with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help clarify Liberia's violent history and hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for their actions. (This work was conducted by HRDAG while with Benetech.)
In the course of this work, HRDAG analyzed more than 17,000 victim and witness statements collected by the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and compiled the data into a report entitled "Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission." The report is included as an annex to the final ...
Seeking the Truth with Documentation
The need to establish the truth around events is central to goals of transitional justice, particularly securing accountability, establishing legitimate and effective justice mechanisms, and laying the foundations for a peaceful society.
Documentation to provide verifiable and widely accepted accounts of such events is a critical component of establishing this truth, or the multiple truths that may exist for a population. It is difficult to overstate the important role of documentation in transitional justice efforts. If some of what follows sounds familiar, echoing points of previous posts, it is no coincidence. Documentation, in a word, is the ...
Podcast: Dr. Megan Price Explores Fact Finding in a Failed State
How do scientists and statisticians stand up to authoritarianism, especially when it happens in their home countries?
Letter from Alejandro Valencia Villa
Alejandro Valencia Villa is a Former Commissioner of the Colombian Truth Commission. (Letter in English, and letter in Spanish.)
Introduction
One of the most obvious and most difficult questions to answer when analyzing an armed conflict is determining the number of victims. In a conflict like Colombia’s, prolonged and with complex characteristics due to the different nature of the armed actors and because they committed a great variety and quantity of human rights violations and breaches of humanitarian law, the challenge is even greater. As if this were not enough, Colombia also had a large number of records of these violations and infract...
Collaboration between the Colombian Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, and HRDAG (Dataset)
The Colombian Truth Commission (CEV), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) have worked together to integrate data and calculate statistical estimates of the number of victims of the armed conflict, including homicides, forced disappearances, kidnapping, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Data are available through National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the Truth Commission, and GitHub. Published in 2023.
The Colombian Truth Commission (CEV), the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP), and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) have worked together to integrate data and calculate statistical estimates of the number of victims of the armed conflict, including homicides, forced disappearances, kidnapping, and the recruitment of child soldiers. Data are available through National Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE), the Truth Commission, and GitHub.
Colombia
Data integration and statistical estimation: A collaboration with the Colombian Truth Commission (CEV) and the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP)
The Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla group reached a Peace Agreement in 2016, which created the Commission for the Clarification of the Truth, Coexistence and Non-Repetition (CEV). The objective of this temporary institution was to discover the truth of what happened in the context of the armed conflict.
2020–2022: The Truth Commission joined with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) and HRDAG in the “Joint JEP-CEV-HRDAG data integration and ...
Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission Data
In July 2009, The Human Rights Data Analysis Group concluded a three-year project with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission to help clarify Liberia’s violent history and hold perpetrators of human rights abuses accountable for their actions. In the course of this work, HRDAG analyzed more than 17,000 victim and witness statements collected by the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission and compiled the data into a report entitled “Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”
Liberian TRC data and the accompanying data dictionary
anonymized-statgivers.csv contains information ...
Timor-Leste
During the violence in Timor-Leste in June 2006, armed gangs broke into the offices of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) in Dili and stole their motorbikes.
The Human Rights Data Analysis Group, then at Benetech®, and other human rights observers wondered whether the mobs would soon return to loot the irreplaceable paper records used by the CAVR to compile their definitive report entitled "Chega!"
The Benetech Initiative contributed to the CAVR findings and released a separate statistical report (PDF) establishing that at least 102,800 (+/- 11,000) Timorese died as a result of human rights violations in Timor-Leste ...
Round-up
Benetech's Human Rights Data Analysis Group Publishes 2010 Analysis of Human Rights Violations in Five Countries
Analysis of Uncovered Government Data from Guatemala and Chad Clarifies History and Supports Criminal Prosecutions
By Ann Harrison
The past year of research by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) has supported criminal prosecutions and uncovered the truth about political violence in Guatemala, Iran, Colombia, Chad and Liberia. On today's celebration of the 62nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, HRDAG invites the international community to engage scientifically defensible methodologies that ...
All is Not Lost with Incomplete Datasets
Structural Zero 10: What is a "structural zero"
I’m Maria Gargiulo. I started with HRDAG as an intern in 2018 and I’ve worked with the team as a statistician since 2020. I’m currently earning my doctoral degree from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where my thesis explores the very statistical methods HRDAG uses to study and understand complex human rights violations around the world.
Recently, we wrote about the challenge of statistical bias: the data that is collected is seldom complete and may not be representative of the population we are trying to study. There are many types of statistical biases that can occur. We ...
Truth and Myth in Sierra Leone: An Empirical Analysis of the Conflict, 1991–2000
Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, Romesh Silva, Kristen Cibelli, Jana Asher, Scott Weikart, Patrick Ball, and Wendy Grossman. “Truth and Myth in Sierra Leone: An Empirical Analysis of the Conflict, 1991–2000″ (pdf). A report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the American Bar Association. March 28, 2006.
Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Kristen Cibelli, Amelia Hoover, and Jule Krüger (2009). “Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” a Report by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group at Benetech and Annex to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. Palo Alto, California. Benetech.
Timor-Leste 2006 – Combining Found Data and Innovative Surveys To Uncover the Truth
Large-scale human rights violations in Timor-Leste began in 1975 when the Indonesian government invaded the small island and continued until Timorese independence in 1999. Disappearances, torture, forced displacement and extra-judicial killings took place during the Indonesian occupation compounded by a severe famine. Estimates of deaths ranged from 50,000 to 200,000, but individual sources reflected only a fraction of total fatalities. The Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation in East Timor (CAVR) asked HRDAG to investigate abuses during the conflict. This chapter describes how Ball and HRDAG scientists Romesh Silva and Scott Weikart ...
Reality and risk: A refutation of S. Rendón’s analysis of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s conflict mortality study
Daniel Manrique-Vallier and Patrick Ball (2019). Reality and risk: A refutation of S. Rendón’s analysis of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s conflict mortality study. Research & Politics, 22 March 2019. © Sage Journals. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168019835628
Daniel Manrique-Vallier and Patrick Ball (2019). Reality and risk: A refutation of S. Rendón’s analysis of the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s conflict mortality study. Research & Politics, 22 March 2019. © Sage Journals. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053168019835628
Beautiful game, ugly truth?
Megan Price (2022). Beautiful game, ugly truth? Significance, 19: 18-21. December 2022. © The Royal Statistical Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/1740-9713.01702
Megan Price (2022). Beautiful game, ugly truth? Significance, 19: 18-21. December 2022. © The Royal Statistical Society. https://doi.org/10.1111/1740-9713.01702
HRDAG’s Year in Review: 2022
This past year at HRDAG has been about continuing efforts to uncover the truth.
The Technology Freedom Cooperative Offers Civil Society New Independence from Big Tech
We are building shared technology infrastructure: distributed storage and computing capacity to preserve, process, and analyze critical human rights files.