Tech Corner

The HRDAG Tech Corner is where we collect the deeper and geekier content that we create for the website. You can browse by Category or scroll to view find all articles listed.

Guatemala Memory of Silence: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification Conclusions and Recommendations

Welcoming Our New Statistician

Maria Gargiulo has joined HRDAG as a Statistician.

That Higher Count Of Police Killings May Still Be 25 Percent Too Low.

Carl Bialik of 538 Politics reports on a new HRDAG study authored by Kristian Lum and Patrick Ball regarding the Bureau of Justice Statistics report about the number of annual police killings, which was issued a few weeks ago. As Bialik writes, the HRDAG scientists extrapolated from their work in five other countries (Colombia, Guatemala, Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Syria) to estimate that the BJS study missed approximately one quarter of the total number of killings by police.

A geeky deep-dive: database deduplication to identify victims of human rights violations

In our work, we merge many databases to figure out how many people have been killed in violent conflict. Merging is a lot harder than you might think. Many of the database records refer to the same people--the records are duplicated. We want to identify and link all the records that refer to the same victims so that each victim is counted only once, and so that we can use the structure of overlapping records to do multiple systems estimation. Merging records that refer to the same person is called entity resolution, database deduplication, or record linkage. For definitive overviews of the field, see Scheuren, Herzog, and Winkler, Data Quality ...

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 ...

HRDAG and the Digital Commons

One of the three main goals of HRDAG is education and outreach, and to that end we use Creative Commons licenses for all of our blogposts and, whenever possible, for our publications. Using a Creative Commons license makes it clear that educators are free to use HRDAG's publications, in their entirety, and with the peace of mind that they are doing so with our blessing. Also, the use of the Creative Commons license allows us to participate in and encourage the creation of a digital commons, which we feel helps to advance another one of our goals, the creation of knowledge. We feel that it’s important to offer up our publications for use and reuse ...

Multiple Systems Estimation: Collection, Cleaning and Canonicalization of Data

<< Previous post: MSE: The Basics Q3. What are the steps in an MSE analysis? Q4. What does data collection look like in the human rights context? What kind of data do you collect? Q5. [In depth] Do you include unnamed or anonymous victims in the matching process? Q6. What do you mean by "cleaning" and "canonicalization?" Q7. [In depth] What are some of the challenges of canonicalization? (more…)

South America

Colombia Perú

Existe la posibilidad de que no se estén documentando todos los asesinatos contra líderes sociales

En ocasiones, las discusiones sobre ese fenómeno se centran más sobre cuál es la cifra real, mientras que el diagnóstico es el mismo: en las regiones la violencia no cede y no se avizoran políticas efectivas para ponerle fin. En medio de este complejo panorama, el Centro de Estudios de Derecho, Justicia y Sociedad (Dejusticia) y el Human Rights Data Analysis Group, publicaron este miércoles la investigación Asesinatos de líderes sociales en Colombia en 2016–2017: una estimación del universo.

Condenan a 40 años de cárcel a dos ex policías

Guatemala Struggles to Find War Crimes Justice

Humanitarian Statistics

In late 2006, a statistical study of deaths that occurred after the invasion of Iraq ignited a storm of controversy. This Lancet study estimated that more than 650,000 additional Iraqis died during the invasion than would have at pre-invasion death rates, a vastly higher estimate than any previous. But in January, a World Health Organization study placed the number at about 150,000.

How Do We Know the Death Toll in Syria Is Accurate?

Contabilidad el número de víctimas de la guerra de Siria

The Death Toll in Syria

Why Collecting Data In Conflict Zones Is Invaluable—And Nearly Impossible

Syrian civil war death toll exceeds 190,000, U.N. reports

Ayan Sheikh of PBS News Hour reports on the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Right’s release of HRDAG’s third report on reported killings in the Syrian conflict.
From the article:
The latest death toll figure covers the period from March 2011 to April of this year, came from the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and is the third study of its kind on Syria. The analysis group identified 191,269 deaths. Data was collected from five different sources to exclude inaccuracies and repetitions.

Guatemala Police Archive Yields Clues to ‘Dirty War’

The Forensic Humanitarian

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Tech Corner

Guatemala Memory of Silence: Report of the Commission for Historical Clarification Conclusions and Recommendations

Welcoming Our New Statistician

That Higher Count Of Police Killings May Still Be 25 Percent Too Low.

A geeky deep-dive: database deduplication to identify victims of human rights violations

When Data Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story

HRDAG and the Digital Commons

Multiple Systems Estimation: Collection, Cleaning and Canonicalization of Data

South America

Existe la posibilidad de que no se estén documentando todos los asesinatos contra líderes sociales

Condenan a 40 años de cárcel a dos ex policías

Guatemala Struggles to Find War Crimes Justice

Humanitarian Statistics

How Do We Know the Death Toll in Syria Is Accurate?

Contabilidad el número de víctimas de la guerra de Siria

The Death Toll in Syria

Why Collecting Data In Conflict Zones Is Invaluable—And Nearly Impossible

Syrian civil war death toll exceeds 190,000, U.N. reports

Guatemala Police Archive Yields Clues to ‘Dirty War’

The Forensic Humanitarian

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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HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

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

HRDAG

Selected projects

Stay informed about our work

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