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About Us

Who We Are The Human Rights Data Analysis Group is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that applies rigorous science to the analysis of human rights violations around the world. We are a team with expertise in mathematical statistics, computer science, demography, and social science. We are non-partisan—we do not take sides in political or military conflicts, nor do we advocate any particular political party or government policy. However, we are not neutral: we are always in favor of human rights. We support the protections established in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and ...

Quantitative Research at the AHPN Guatemala

In early 2006 I joined the Historical Archive of the National Police (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, or AHPN) without knowing the impact it would have on my future. I started with cleaning, organizing and classifying documents—and learning, with other colleagues, what a historical archive is and how it works. By April of that year, parallel to these learning processes, I was selected along with 20 other people to begin work on the challenging Quantitative Research project. I started as a "coder," transferring key content from documents into a database. (more…)

Sri Lanka

Ten years after the war ended in Sri Lanka, we still don’t know to the nearest ten thousand how many people perished. The estimates for the death toll for the last five months of the war alone vary between 7000 and 147,000. In 2011, the UN said it thought approximately 40,000 civilians had died; then in 2012 an internal UN report estimated it was at least 70,000. Population data from World Bank and UN sources indicated that more than 100,000 Tamils living in the conflict areas in the north have not returned home after the war. HRDAG has provided technical assistance to a broad range of non-governmental human rights organizations in Sri ...

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.

Violence in Blue: The 2020 Update

HRDAG has refreshed a 2016 Granta article about homicides committed by police in the United States.

Tech Corner

The HRDAG Tech Corner is where we collect the deeper and geekier content that we create for the website. Click the accordion blocks below to reveal each of the Tech Corner entries. Sifting Massive Datasets with Machine Learning Principled Data Processing  

Talks & Discussions

2021 Rafto Prize Videos .ugb-8203b62 .ugb-video-popup__wrapper{height:460px !important;background-color:#000000;background-image:url(https://hrdag.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Screen-Shot-2022-12-09-at-3.41.30-PM.png)}.ugb-8203b62 .ugb-video-popup__wrapper:before{background-color:#000000;opacity:0.3}.ugb-8203b62 .ugb-video-popup__wrapper:hover:before{opacity:0.6}.ugb-8203b62 .ugb-block-title{color:#ffffff}.ugb-8203b62 .ugb-block-description{color:#ffffff}@media screen and (max-width:768px){.ugb-8203b62 .ugb-video-popup__wrapper{height:208px !important}}The Rafto Prize 2021 | Rafto Foundation Rafto Foundation | HRDAG team | 2021 | 4 min bl...

How many people disappeared on 17–19 May 2009 in Sri Lanka?

Patrick Ball and Frances Harrison (2018). How many people disappeared on 17–19 May 2009 in Sri Lanka? Human Rights Data Analysis Group. 12 December 2018.© 2018 HRDAG. Creative Commons.

Patrick Ball and Frances Harrison (2018). How many people disappeared on 17–19 May 2009 in Sri Lanka? Human Rights Data Analysis Group. 12 December 2018.© 2018 HRDAG. Creative Commons.


String matching for governorate information in unstructured text

code{white-space: pre;} pre:not([class]) { background-color: white; } h1 { font-size: 34px; } h1.title { font-size: 38px; } h2 { font-size: 30px; } h3 { font-size: 24px; } h4 { font-size: 18px; } h5 { font-size: 16px; } h6 { font-size: 12px; } .table th:not([align]) { text-align: left; } .main-container { max-width: 940px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; } code { color: inherit; background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.04); } img { max-width:100%; height: auto; } .tabbed-pane { padding-top: 12px; } .html-widget { margin-bottom: 20px; } button.code-foldin...

How Review of Police Data Verified Neglect of Missing Black Women

Sloppy recordkeeping by Chicago police has compromised missing persons cases. HRDAG is working with Pulitzer Prize-winning Invisible Institute to find justice for the missing.

Data on Kosovo Migration

[popup citation="For migrations: Ball, Patrick. (2000). AAAS/ Human Rights Data Analysis Group database of migrations in Albania and Kosovo. For killings: Patrick Ball, Wendy Betts, Fritz Scheuren, Jana Dudukovich, and Jana Asher. (2002). AAAS/ABA-CEELI/Human Rights Data Analysis Group database of killings in Kosovo. For other data: Human Rights Data Analysis Group. (2002). Database of NATO airstrikes, geographic coding, and KLA activity in Kosovo."] The data on migration from Kosovo are in seven files. All of the files are comma-delimited ASCII. The fields in each file are described below. For more information, see Policy or Panic, section A1, pp. ...

“Surmortalité carcérale” sous Habré

Le statisticien américain Patrick Ball, expert au procès de Hissène Habré, a déclaré vendredi que le taux de mortalité d’opposants tchadiens présumés dans les prisons du régime Habré était encore pire que celui des prisonniers de guerre américains dans les camps japonais.


Herb Spirer, 1925 – 2018

Herb led and mentored a generation of statisticians working in human rights.

When Data Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

This blog is a part of International Justice Monitor’s technology for truth series, which focuses on the use of technology for evidence and features views from key proponents in the field. As highlighted by other posts in this series, emerging technology is increasing the amount and type of information available, in some contexts, to criminal and other investigations. Much of what is produced by these emerging technologies (Facebook posts, tweets, YouTube videos, text messages) falls in the category we refer to as “found” data. By “found” data we mean data not generated for a specific investigation, but instead, that is generated for ...

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...

How to Become a Data Scientist: My Lessons at HRDAG

I will use the skills and culture I learned from HRDAG’s team to understand how the conflict has affected the people in my country.

The AHPN: Home of Stories Old and New

Access to the records contained in archives is a concern shared by many. Archives support memory and free access to them strengthens democratic processes. Everyone should be allowed to see first-hand the records contained in an archive and be free to interpret them as needed. Access to archives can increase knowledge on various topics and opens opportunities for different fields of knowledge. (more…)

Patrick Ball Honored with Degree at Claremont Graduate University

We’re happy to announce that our executive director, Patrick Ball, has been presented an honorary degree from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. University President Deborah Freund presented the degree to Patrick at the university’s 88th annual commencement ceremony on Saturday, May 16, 2015. The degree conferred was Doctor of Science honoris causa. “We at CGU are thrilled that Patrick Ball accepted our Honorary Degree invitation and joined us for commencement,” said Thomas Horan, CGU Professor and Director, Center for Information Systems and Technology. “Patrick’s work stands as a model for conducting first-r...

Mortality in the DDS Prisons in Chad, 1985–1988

Patrick Ball (2014). Human Rights Data Analysis Group. August 22, 2014. © 2014 HRDAG. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.


Our Story

Dec 10, 1991 HRDAG is born when Patrick Ball begins database design at the Human Rights Office of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church. The work soon moves to the non-governmental Human Rights Commission (CDHES). The database analysis identified the 100 worst officers in the Salvadoran military — who were forced to resign as part of the peace process. 1994 Patrick publishes A Definit...

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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