Ouster of Guatemala’s Attorney General

We were surprised and disappointed to learn that our colleague Claudia Paz y Paz has had her term as Guatemala’s attorney general cut short. The nation’s Constitutional Court ruled on 6 February that her four-year term will end this May, instead of in December. (She was appointed in December 2010, replacing an attorney general who was appointed in May 2010.) During her term, she put four generals from Guatemala’s civil war on the stand for charges of crimes against humanity and genocide, including General José Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled from 1982 to 1983. We were fortunate to work with her on that trial and to witness the handing down of a ...

Statistics

Patrick Ball (2004). “Statistics,” in Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. ed. by Dinah L. Shelton, Howard Adelman, Frank Chalk, Alexandre Kiss & William A. Schabas. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.

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

HRDAG's work in Kosovo and in the Guatemalan trial of General José Efraín Ríos Montt is discussed in this article. Megan Price, HRDAG's director of research, is quoted. “There is a wide variety of things that could be considered data,” she says. From the story: Price’s main data analysis tool requires fitting a model to the data that ends up in her lap. That way, she can see whether there are gaps in the data and what more needs to be included. The method, called multiple systems estimation analysis, lets Price look at patterns across lists of data, for example, lists of victims. The resulting model reveals how much data is missing, to a ...

The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.

Audrey Chapman and Patrick Ball. “The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.” Human Rights Quarterly. 23(4):1-42. 2001

Learning the Hard Way at the ICTY: Statistical Evidence of Human Rights Violations in an Adversarial Information Environment.

Amelia Hoover Green. In Collective Violence and International Criminal Justice: An Interdisciplinary Approach, ed. Alette Smeulers, Antwerp, Belgium. © 2010 Intersentia. All rights reserved. [Link coming soon]

Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977-1996.

Christian Davenport and Patrick Ball. “Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977-1996.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46(3): 427-450. 2002.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Perú, Final Report – General Conclusions.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Perú, Final Report – General Conclusions. Comisión de la verdad y reconciliación, 2003.

Human freedom and free software: Why choices about technology matter to human rights advocates.

Patrick Ball and Miguel Cruz (2003). “Human freedom and free software: Why choices about technology matter to human rights advocates.”

On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations.

Patrick Ball. “On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations.” in Repression and Mobilization, ed. by Christian Davenport, Hank Johnston, and Carol Mueller. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P. 2005.

Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March–May, 1999.

Patrick Ball. Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March–May, 1999. © 2000 American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science and Human Rights Program. [pdf – English][html – English][html – shqip (Albanian)] [html – srpski (Serbian)]

Technical work at the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES-ng)

On the Use of Sample Surveys and Multiple Systems Estimations in Assessing Large-Scale Human Rights Violations: Recent Experiences from Timor-Leste.

Romesh Silva and Patrick Ball. “On the Use of Sample Surveys and Multiple Systems Estimations in Assessing Large-Scale Human Rights Violations: Recent Experiences from Timor-Leste.” Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section – Joint Statistical Meetings. New York, (USA). August, 2005.

Free Software

Patrick Ball (2005). “Free Software,” in The Encyclopedia of Science, Technology, and Ethics. ed. by Carl Mitcham. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale.

HRDAG Welcomes New Data Science Fellow

Alanna Flores joins HRDAG for the summer as a Data Science Fellow.

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Introducing Structural Zero: a New Monthly Newsletter

A monthly newsletter exploring how math and science help us understand the world. Hi, I’m Patrick Ball. I’m a statistician, which is a type of scientist that uses mathematical analysis to try to figure out what we do and don’t know about data sets. I’m also a human rights advocate; I work with groups all over the world to help survivors in post-conflict countries understand what really happened and bring justice and accountability. It’s incredible work, and I feel grateful to do it. I want to invite you to check out a new newsletter, Structural Zero. It’s written by me and my colleagues Megan Price, Bailey Passmore, Tarak Shah, and ...

Scanning Documents to Uncover Police Violence

Administrative paperwork generated by police departments can hold evidence of police violence, but can present unique challenges for data processing.

Data Mining on the Side of the Angels

"Data, by itself, isn’t truth." How HRDAG uses data analysis and statistical methods to shed light on mass human rights abuses. Executive director Patrick Ball is quoted from his speech at the Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. WIRED | THREAT LEVEL John Borland December 29, 2013 Link to story in WIRED

Uncovering Police Violence in Chicago: A collaboration between HRDAG and Invisible Institute

In 2014 and again in 2020, the Invisible Institute, a Chicago grassroots organization, won lawsuits that granted them access to decades of complaints of misconduct by Chicago police officers. The collection contains hundreds of thousands of pages of allegation forms, memos, various police administrative forms, interviews and testimonies, pictures, and even embedded audio files. The Institute published scanned images on the Citizens Police Data Project, and is using them for a project with HRDAG known as Beneath the Surface, which is a detailed investigation into gender-based violence by Chicago Police. Image: David Peters Often, gender-b...

New UN report counts 191,369 Syrian-war deaths — but the truth is probably much, much worse

Amanda Taub of Vox has interviewed HRDAG executive director about 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: Patrick Ball, Executive Director of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group and one of the report's authors, explained to me that this new report is not a statistical estimate of the number of people killed in the conflict so far. Rather, it's an actual list of specific victims who have been identified by name, date, and location of death. (The report only tracked violent killings, not "excess mortality" deaths from from disease or ...

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Ouster of Guatemala’s Attorney General

Statistics

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

The Truth of Truth Commissions: Comparative Lessons from Haiti, South Africa, and Guatemala.

Learning the Hard Way at the ICTY: Statistical Evidence of Human Rights Violations in an Adversarial Information Environment.

Views to a Kill: Exploring the Implications of Source Selection in the Case of Guatemalan State Terror, 1977-1996.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Perú, Final Report – General Conclusions.

Human freedom and free software: Why choices about technology matter to human rights advocates.

On the Quantification of Horror: Field Notes on Statistical Analysis of Human Rights Violations.

Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March–May, 1999.

Technical work at the non-governmental Human Rights Commission of El Salvador (CDHES-ng)

On the Use of Sample Surveys and Multiple Systems Estimations in Assessing Large-Scale Human Rights Violations: Recent Experiences from Timor-Leste.

Free Software

HRDAG Welcomes New Data Science Fellow

Introducing Structural Zero: a New Monthly Newsletter

Scanning Documents to Uncover Police Violence

Data Mining on the Side of the Angels

Uncovering Police Violence in Chicago: A collaboration between HRDAG and Invisible Institute

New UN report counts 191,369 Syrian-war deaths — but the truth is probably much, much worse

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