656 results for search: %7B%EC%95%A0%EC%9D%B8%EB%A7%8C%EB%93%A4%EA%B8%B0%7D%20WWW%E2%80%B8TADA%E2%80%B8PW%20%20%EC%B2%9C%EA%B5%B0%EB%8F%99%EC%83%81%ED%99%A9%EA%B7%B9%20%EC%B2%9C%EA%B5%B0%EB%8F%99%EC%84%B1%EC%83%81%EB%8B%B4%D0%B2%EC%B2%9C%EA%B5%B0%EB%8F%99%EC%84%B1%EC%9D%B8%E2%86%95%EC%B2%9C%EA%B5%B0%EB%8F%99%EC%84%B1%EC%9D%B8%EC%89%BC%ED%84%B0%E3%88%A6%E3%81%B6%E6%A3%BCtranscend/feed/content/colombia/dcede2009-28 (1).pdf


HRDAG Names New Board Members Julie Broome and Frank Schulenburg

We are pleased to announce that HRDAG will be supported by two additions to our Advisory Board, Julie Broome and Frank Schulenburg. We’ve worked with Julie for many years, getting to know her when she was Director of Programmes at The Sigrid Rausing Trust. She is now the Director of London-based Ariadne, a network of European funders and philanthropists. She worked at the Trust for seven years, most notably Head of Human Rights, before becoming Director of Programmes in 2014. Before joining the Trust she was Programme Director at the CEELI Institute in Prague, where she was responsible for conducting rule of law-related trainings for judges and ...

Get Involved/Donate

Donating to HRDAG Thank you for your interest in making a donation to the Human Rights Data Analysis Group to help us use science to support our partners in the human rights world. You can make a donation by credit card on the Community Partners® Network for Good page. HRDAG is a "project of Community Partners," and right below  the section on payment information, you'll be able to select "Human Rights Data Analysis Group" from a drop-down menu. (On most browsers, if you use this link, HRDAG will be pre-selected on the drop-down menu.) This transaction will appear on your credit card statement as "Network for Good." If you donate by check, ...

How We Choose Projects

For more than 20 years, HRDAG has been carving out a niche in the international human rights movement. We know what we’re good at and what we’re not qualified to do. We know what quantitative questions we think are important for the community, and we know what we like to do. These preferences guide us as we consider whether to take on a project. We’re scientists, so our priorities will come as no surprise. We like to stick to science (not ideology), avoid advocacy, answer quantifiable questions, and increase our scientific understanding. While we have no hard-and-fast rules about what projects to take on, we organize our deliberation ...

Liberia 2009 – Coding Testimony to Determine Accountability for War Crimes

In July 2009, HRDAG concluded a three-year project with the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to help clarify Liberia’s violent history and hold perpetrators accountable. A military coup in 1979 sparked 24 years of civil war in Liberia where warring factions subjected civilians to severe human rights abuses. The TRC sought to determine whether these violations represented a systematic pattern or policy. This chapter describes how HRDAG developed a statistical analysis of the more than 17,000 victim and witness statements collected by the TRC and applied Ball’s “Who Did What To Whom?” methodology. HRDAG scientist Kristen ...

Coming soon: HRDAG 2019 Year-End Review

The online version of the 2019 Year-End Review will appear in January 2020.            

Syria 2012 – Modeling Multiple Datasets in an Ongoing Conflict

The struggle between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and opposition forces has generated extensive global press coverage, but few accurate estimates of casualties. In January 2013, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) released a report on the number of conflict-related killings in Syria. The UN report is based on statistical analysis conducted by HRDAG scientists Megan Price, Jeff Klingner and Patrick Ball. This chapter examines HRDAG’s findings which compared information from a database collected by the Syrian government with six databases compiled by Syrian human rights activists and citizen ...

Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India: A Preliminary Quantitative Analysis

Romesh Silva, Jasmine Marwaha and Jeff Klingner. “Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India: A Preliminary Quantitative Analysis,” A Joint Report by Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group & Ensaaf, Inc. January, 2009.


How many people are going to die from COVID-19?

Patrick Ball, Kristian Lum, Tarak Shah and Megan Price (2020). How many people are going to die from COVID-19? Granta. 14 March 2020. © Granta Publications 2020.

Patrick Ball, Kristian Lum, Tarak Shah and Megan Price (2020). How many people are going to die from COVID-19? Granta. 14 March 2020. © Granta Publications 2020.


Measuring Elusive Populations with Bayesian Model Averaging for Multiple Systems Estimation: A Case Study on Lethal Violations in Casanare, 1998-2007

Kristian Lum, Megan Price, Tamy Guberek, and Patrick Ball. “Measuring Elusive Populations with Bayesian Model Averaging for Multiple Systems Estimation: A Case Study on Lethal Violations in Casanare, 1998-2007,” Statistics, Politics, and Policy. 1(1) 2010. All rights reserved.


How do epidemiologists know how many people will get Covid-19?

Patrick Ball (2020). How do epidemiologists know how many people will get Covid-19? Significance. 09 April 2020. © 2020 The Royal Statistical Society.

Patrick Ball (2020). How do epidemiologists know how many people will get Covid-19? Significance. 09 April 2020. © 2020 The Royal Statistical Society.


How much faith can we place in coronavirus antibody tests?

Megan Price, Morgan Agnew, and David Peters (2020). How much faith can we place in coronavirus antibody tests? Granta. 28 April 2020. © Granta Publications 2020.

Megan Price, Morgan Agnew, and David Peters (2020). How much faith can we place in coronavirus antibody tests? Granta. 28 April 2020. © Granta Publications 2020.


Why Just Counting the Dead in Syria Won’t Bring Them Justice

Patrick Ball (2016). Why Just Counting the Dead in Syria Won’t Bring Them Justice. Foreign Policy. October 19, 2016. © 2016 Foreign Policy. 

Patrick Ball (2016). Why Just Counting the Dead in Syria Won’t Bring Them Justice. Foreign Policy. October 19, 2016. © 2016 Foreign Policy


Archivists Can Be At the Heart of Accountability and Justice


The Death Toll in Syria


Data-driven development needs both social and computer scientists

Excerpt:

Data scientists are programmers who ignore probability but like pretty graphs, said Patrick Ball, a statistician and human rights advocate who cofounded the Human Rights Data Analysis Group.

“Data is broken,” Ball said. “Anyone who thinks they’re going to use big data to solve a problem is already on the path to fantasy land.”


Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulses

“If you’re not careful, you risk automating the exact same biases these programs are supposed to eliminate,” says Kristian Lum, the lead statistician at the San Francisco-based, non-profit Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Last year, Lum and a co-author showed that PredPol, a program for police departments that predicts hotspots where future crime might occur, could potentially get stuck in a feedback loop of over-policing majority black and brown neighbourhoods. The program was “learning” from previous crime reports. For Samuel Sinyangwe, a justice activist and policy researcher, this kind of approach is “especially nefarious” because police can say: “We’re not being biased, we’re just doing what the math tells us.” And the public perception might be that the algorithms are impartial.


Estimating Deaths in Timor-Leste


Primer to Inform Discussions about Bail Reform

The primer addresses what pretrial risk assessment is and what the research supports.

Learning a Modular, Auditable and Reproducible Workflow

The modular nature of the workflow and use of Git allowed us to work on different parts of the project from across the country.

Hunting for Mexico’s mass graves with machine learning

“The model uses obvious predictor variables, Ball says, such as whether or not a drug lab has been busted in that county, or if the county borders the United States, or the ocean, but also includes less-obvious predictor variables such as the percentage of the county that is mountainous, the presence of highways, and the academic results of primary and secondary school students in the county.”


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.

Donate