Projects by country

A parent category for grouping together blogposts on work in specific countries


Analizando los patrones de violencia en Colombia con más de 100 bases de datos

El objetivo de esta institución temporal es conocer la verdad de lo ocurrido en el  marco del conflicto armado.

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Killings of Social Movement Leaders in Colombia

Using multiple system estimation, we estimate the total population of social movement leaders killed in Colombia during 2018.

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Outreach at Toronto TamilFest for Counting the Dead

Michelle spent a weekend in Toronto, Canada, reaching out to the community at TamilFest, where she and a colleague invited people to sit down and talk.

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Drug-Related Killings in the Philippines

HRDAG analysis shows that the government figures are a gross underestimation of the drug-related killings in the Philippines.

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La estadística de mortalidad del conflicto en Perú

En ese artículo respondemos a una crítica del estudio de mortalidad que realizamos para la Comisión de la Verdad y Reconciliación en 2003.

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The Statistics of Mortality Due to Conflict in Peru

A key point is that human rights data collection prior to the TRC largely ignored violence by the Shining Path.

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Update on Work in Guatemala and the AHPN

HRDAG has sampled and analyzed documents at Guatemala's AHPN and has testified against war criminals based on that analysis.

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Las cifras de la CVR en el 2019

Las estimaciones se estratificaron por ubicación y perpetrador.

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Reality and Risk in Our Mortality Study of the Peruvian TRC

HRDAG researchers and analysts at Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) estimated conflict mortality due to violence using Capture-Recapture methods.

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Counting the Dead in Sri Lanka

Counting Dead Sri Lanka
ITJP and HRDAG are urging groups inside and outside Sri Lanka to share existing casualty lists.

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HRDAG Report on Disappeared Tamils in Army Custody in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka civil war bus and passengers
HRDAG has published a report about the 500 Tamils who disappeared while in Army custody in Sri Lanka in 2009.

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How many social movement leaders have been killed in Colombia? An estimate and analysis

As the war between the guerrillas, the Army, and paramilitary groups in Colombia winds down, violence against social movement leaders has intensified. Using data from six organizations, this report estimates the total number of social movement leaders killed in 2016 and 2017. The perpetrators of the killings are not reported in the data or in the report. In the report, we observe that together, the monitoring organizations documented 160 killings in 2016, and we estimate a total population of 166 deaths.[1] In 2017, there were 172 documented killings, and we estimate a ...

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HRDAG Testimony in Guatemala Retrials

HRDAG analysis presented by Patrick found that 5 percent of the indigenous Maya Ixil population was killed in a 15-month period.

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Reflections: A Love Letter to HRDAG

Alejandra García and Doña Amelia García
On the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, HRDAG executive director Megan Price tells us why she loves her work, and why she feels hopeful about the future.

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Reflections: The People Who Make the Data

Daniel Cruz, Guatemala
HRDAG associate Miguel Cruz has an epiphany. All those data he’s drowning in? Each datapoint is a personal tragedy, a story both dark and urgent, and he’s privileged to have access.

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New results for the identification of municipalities with clandestine graves in Mexico

Municipalities with highest probability of having clandestine graves in 2015
The goal of this project is identify Mexican municipalities with a high probability of having clandestine graves. Knowing where to search will help to create better public programs regarding missing persons in Mexico.

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Reflections: The G in HRDAG is the Real Fuel

It took me a while to realize I had become part of the HRDAG incubator—at least that’s what it felt like to me—for young data analysts who wanted to use statistical knowledge to make a real impact on human rights debates.

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Reflections: Challenging Tasks and Meticulous Defenders

I have made it my personal objective to amplify HRDAG's message of being extra careful and scientifically rigorous with human rights data.

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Reflections: A Meaningful Partnership between HRDAG and Benetech

Benetech Martus team: Ivo Pletikosic, Anna Berns, Patrick Ball, Lewis Tecson, Dave Offen, Kevin Smith, Marc Levine, Scott Weikart, Charles LaPierre
I joined the Benetech Human Rights Program at essentially the same time that HRDAG did, coming to Benetech from years of analyzing data for large companies in the transportation, hospitality and retail industries. But the data that HRDAG dealt with was not like the data I was familiar with, and I was fascinated to learn about how they used the data to determine "who did what to whom." Although some of the methodologies were similar to what I had experience with in the for-profit sector, the goals and beneficiaries of the analyses were very different. At Benetech, I ...

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Reflections: Pivotal Moments in Freetown

The summer of 2002 in Washington, DC, was steamy and hot, which is how I remember my introduction to HRDAG. I had begun working with them, while they were still at AAAS, in the late spring, learning all about their core concepts: duplicate reporting and MSE, controlled vocabularies, inter-rater reliability, data models and more. The days were long, with a second shift more often than not running late into the evening. In addition to all the learning, I also helped with matching for the Chad project – that is, identifying multiple records of the same violation – back ...

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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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