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 illuminate all human rights violations – including those that cannot be directly observed. 2011 will mark the 20th year that HRDAG researchers have analyzed the patterns and magnitude of human rights violations in political conflicts to determine how many of the killed and disappeared have never been accounted for – and who is most responsible.
Violence against women in all its forms is a human rights violation. Most of our HRDAG colleagues are women, and for us, unfortunately, recent campaigns such as #metoo are unsurprising.
On March 16, Kristen Yawitz joined the HRDAG team in the role of Foundation Relations and Strategy Lead.
Maria Gargiulo has joined HRDAG as a Statistician.
Chad
Liberia
Sierra Leone
South Africa
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HRDAG’s analysis and expertise continues to deepen the national conversation about police violence and criminal legal reform in the United States. In 2015 we began by considering undocumented victims of police violence, relying on the same methodological approach we’ve tested internationally for ...
HRDAG and our partners Data Cívica and the Iberoamericana University created a machine-learning model to predict which counties (municipios) in Mexico have the highest probability of unreported hidden graves. The predictions help advocates to bring public attention and government resources to search for the disappeared in the places where they are most likely to be found.
Context
For more than ten years, Mexican authorities have been discovering hidden graves (fosas clandestinas). The casualties are attributed broadly—and sometimes inaccurately—to the country’s “drug war,” but the motivations and perpetrators behind the mass murders ...
HRDAG researchers and analysts at Peru's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) estimated conflict mortality due to violence using Capture-Recapture methods.
In this
Granta article, HRDAG explains that neither the infectiousness nor the deadliness of the disease is set in stone.
2025
24 August 2025 - Structural Zero 03: Without Encryption, My Work Wouldn’t Be Possible
17 July 2025 - Structural Zero 02: Scatter and keep working
3 June 2025 - Structural Zero 01: Dictatorships create a lot of data
24 June, 2025 - Breaking through the noise with evidence
19 May 2025 - Structural Zero 00: Introducing Structural Zero
20 March, 2025 - Focus on HRDAG’s US-based projects
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