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Celebrating our First Anniversary and Welcoming Our Newest Board Member
One year ago, HRDAG cast out on its own as an independent nonprofit—and this first year has been busy, productive, and exciting. We’re indebted to our Advisory Board for their valuable contributions and to our funders for their generosity and participation in our mission. Highlights of the past year include contributing testimony to three court cases, publishing two reports on conflict-casualties in Syria, presenting over a dozen talks (many of which are available on our talks page), traveling to over half a dozen countries to testify, collaborate with partners, and participate in conferences/workshops, hiring a new technical lead, and bringing in ...
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
Big Data Predictive Analytics Comes to Academic and Nonprofit Institutions to Fuel Innovation
"Revolution Analytics will allow HRDAG to handle bigger data sets and leverage the power of R to accomplish this goal and uncover the truth." Director of Research Megan Price is quoted.
REVOLUTION ANALYTICS
Press release
February 4, 2014
Link to press release
Back to Press Room
HRDAG at Strata Conference 2014
Last Thursday, HRDAG co-founder and director of research Megan Price presented at Strata, the conference for data scientists and people who work with "big data." In her talk, she addressed the question of how we can know the actual number of conflict casualties in Syrian. Her short answer was, "We don't know." The longer answer was that we have a very good idea of how many conflict casualties have been reported, by several documentation groups, and that we're working on analyzing (more…)
Improving the estimate of U.S. police killings
Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing writes about HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball and his contribution to Carl Bialik's article about the recently released Bureau of Justice Statistics report on the number of annual police killings, both reported and unreported, in 538 Politics. Doctorow writes:
Patrick Ball and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group applied the same statistical rigor that he uses in estimating the scale of atrocities and genocides for Truth and Reconciliation panels in countries like Syria and Guatemala to the problem of estimating killing by US cops, and came up with horrific conclusions.
Ball was responding to a set of new estima...
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 ...
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.
Big Data Predictive Analytics Comes to Academic and Nonprofit Institutions to Fuel Innovation
“Revolution Analytics will allow HRDAG to handle bigger data sets and leverage the power of R to accomplish this goal and uncover the truth.” Director of Research Megan Price is quoted
HRDAG – 25 Years and Counting
Today is a very special day for all of us at HRDAG. This is, of course, the 68th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—but this day also marks our 25th year of using statistical science to support the advancement of human rights.
It started 25 years ago, in December 1991, in San Salvador, when Patrick Ball was invited to work with the Salvadoran Lutheran Church to design a database to keep track of human rights abuses committed by the military in El Salvador. That work soon migrated to the NGO Human Rights Commission (CDHES). Fueled by thin beer and pupusas, Patrick dove into the deep world of data from human rights testimonies, ...
Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Friends,
This has been quite a year, and I don’t just mean the recent political events in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
Thanks to your ongoing support, HRDAG has a number of accomplishments to be proud of this year:
Patrick’s testimony in the trial of Hissene Habré for crimes against humanity was cited by the judges three times in their determination of guilt.
We launched a book describing ten years of collaborative work with the Historic Archive of the National Police in Guatemala.
We contributed quantitative analyses to Amnesty International’s report on deaths in Syrian custody, and published an ...
HRDAG Report on Disappeared Tamils in Army Custody in Sri Lanka
HRDAG has published a report about the 500 Tamils who disappeared while in Army custody in Sri Lanka in 2009.
Using statistics to estimate the true scope of the secret killings at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war
In the last three days of the Sri Lankan civil war, as thousands of people surrendered to government authorities, hundreds of people were put on buses driven by Army officers. Many were never seen again.
In a report released today (see here), the International Truth and Justice Project for Sri Lanka and the Human Rights Data Analysis Group showed that over 500 people were disappeared on only three days — 17, 18, and 19 May.
New report published on 500 Tamils missing while in Army custody
The International Truth and Justice Project and HRDAG have published a report on 500 Tamils who disappeared while in Army custody in Sri Lanka in 2009.
The report is titled “How many people disappeared on 17-19 May 2009 in Sri Lanka?” and Patrick Ball, director of research at HRDAG, is the lead author.
Counting the Dead in Sri Lanka
ITJP and HRDAG are urging groups inside and outside Sri Lanka to share existing casualty lists.
Las cifras de la CVR en el 2019
Las estimaciones se estratificaron por ubicación y perpetrador.
Outreach at Toronto TamilFest for Counting the Dead
Michelle spent a weekend in Toronto, Canada, reaching out to the community at TamilFest, where she and a colleague invited people to sit down and talk.
HRDAG’s Year in Review: 2020
In 2020, HRDAG provided clarity on issues related to the pandemic, police misconduct, and more.
HRDAG Wins the Rafto Prize
The Rafto Foundation, an international human rights organization, has bestowed the 2021 Rafto Prize to HRDAG for its distinguished work defending human rights and democracy.
Annual reports
2024
AI and what is true - download
2023
Community, data, hope - download
2022
Truth before reconciliation - download
2021
Partnering for justice - download
2020
Beyond statistics: readiness in the face of uncertainty - download
2019
How we measure when we do not know
2018
Justice and impunity in Guatemala, algorithmic fairness in the US criminal justice system, and methodological advances
Millions of Pages of Police Use-of-Force Files Available through New Searchable Database
A new, public database will bring more oversight to police abuses in California—and may serve as a model for police accountability for other states across the country.
HRDAG was part of a coalition behind the recently-launched Police Records Access Project. The new searchable database includes ...