297 results for search: truth commissions/feed/content/colombia/privacy

Colombian Key in Guatemala Forced Disappearance Case

Herb Spirer, 1925 – 2018

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

Comments to the article ‘Is Violence Against Union Members in Colombia Systematic and Targeted?

Megan Price and Daniel Guzmán. “Comments to the article ‘Is Violence Against Union Members in Colombia Systematic and Targeted?’” 28 May 2010. (Available in Spanish) © 2010 Benetech. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Using Quantitative Data to Assess Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Colombia: Challenges and Opportunities.

Françoise Roth, Tamy Guberek, and Amelia Hoover Green. “Using Quantitative Data to Assess Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Colombia: Challenges and Opportunities.” A report by the Benetech Human Rights Program and Corporación Punto de Vista. 22 March 2011. (Spanish.) © 2011 Benetech. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

Unobserved Union Violence: Statistical Estimates of the Total Number of Trade Unionists Killed in Colombia,1999-2008

Daniel Guzmán, Tamy Guberek, and Megan Price. Unobserved Union Violence: Statistical Estimates of the Total Number of Trade Unionists Killed in Colombia,1999-2008, The Benetech Human Rights Program, 8 April 2012. (Available in Spanish) © 2012 Benetech. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

The killings of social movement leaders and human rights defenders in Colombia 2018 – 2023: an estimate of the universe.

HRDAG + Dejusticia

In 2018, Dejusticia and HRDAG published our first report estimating the total number of social leaders killed in Colombia during 2016-2017. Additionally, we demonstrated that a statistical method known as “capture-recapture” could be used to estimate the underreporting of murdered social leaders. Moreover, our estimate closely matched the total documented by the organizations collectively. A year later, we released a second report, updating the data to include 2018. Five years later, we revisited this exercise to cover the period from 2019 to 2023, focusing on three of the original six organizations.

Creative Commons International license 4.0.

Valentina Rozo Ángel and Patrick Ball (2024). Asesinatos de líderes sociales y defensores de derechos en Colombia: en estimación del universo actualización 2019 – 2023. Human Rights Data Analysis Group. 18 December 2024. © HRDAG 2024. 

Colombia 2010-2012 – Advancing Methods to Count Deaths and Missing People

From 2010 to 2012, a series of reports by HRDAG researchers applied new statistical methodologies to investigate deaths and missing people in Colombia. A 2010 report released by HRDAG scientists Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, Megan Price, Kristian Lum, and Patrick Ball documented patterns of violence in the Colombian state of Casanare. HRDAG researchers used MSE to analyze killings and disappearances recorded in 15 datasets provided by judicial, government, security, forensic and civil society organizations. Matching cases that appeared in more than one dataset, HRDAG statisticians modeled the process by which violations were recorded and estimated the ...

How many police homicides in the US? A reconsideration

(This post is co-authored by Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum.) In early March, the Bureau of Justice Statistics published a report that estimated that in the period 2003-2009 and 2011, there were approximately 7427 homicides committed by police in the US. We responded that the method the analysts used, capture-recapture with two databases, is vulnerable to underestimation if the databases exhibit positive dependence. We conduct a thorough sensitivity analysis on the original independence model as applied to the police homicides databases. We used information from several other countries where our partners created multiple databases of homicides. We ...

The Day We Fight Back

Today, February 11, is the day of national protests against the National Security Administration. The critical threat is mass surveillance. In the words of The Day We Fight Back, “Together we will push back against powers that seek to observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action. Together, we will make it clear that such behavior is not compatible with democratic governance. Together, if we persist, we will win this fight.” (more…)

Liberian TRC Data and Data Dictionary

The files linked on this page contain the data used in the calculations presented in Benetech's report to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission entitled "Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission." In accordance with Benetech's Memorandum of Understanding with the TRC, these data are published on the Internet so that others can use the material to replicate our findings and continue research on past human rights violations in Liberia. In order to protect the privacy of the people who suffered, the information in the files below contains no personal identifying information about the victims or ...

Police Violence in Puerto Rico: Flooded with Data

Kilómetro Cero is making a comparison of police killings in Puerto Rico and police killings in the non-territorial United States, and HRDAG is helping to organize the data.

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…)

Pulling Back the Curtain on LLMs & Policing Data

Structural Zero Issue 04 September 30, 2025 Artificial intelligence is transforming how we work with information. At HRDAG, that changes how I do my job every day. My most recent project was using LLMs to explore and parse vast quantities of data about police abuses in California. In this newsletter, I’ll pull back the curtain on that work. I’ll describe how a diverse coalition gathered more than a million pages of documents about police misconduct in California and how LLMs helped us make sense of them in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before the advent of this technology. In addition to understanding my work, I hope that this ...

Benetech Human Rights Program and Corporación Punto de Vista Issues Report on Sexual Violence in Colombia

Truth and Myth in Sierra Leone: An Empirical Analysis of the Conflict, 1991–2000

Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, Romesh Silva, Kristen Cibelli, Jana Asher, Scott Weikart, Patrick Ball, and Wendy Grossman. “Truth and Myth in Sierra Leone: An Empirical Analysis of the Conflict, 1991–2000″ (pdf). A report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the American Bar Association. March 28, 2006.

Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Kristen Cibelli, Amelia Hoover, and Jule Krüger (2009). “Descriptive Statistics From Statements to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” a Report by the Human Rights Data Analysis Group at Benetech and Annex to the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia. Palo Alto, California. Benetech.

HRDAG’s Year in Review: 2022

This past year at HRDAG has been about continuing efforts to uncover the truth.

Human Rights and the Decentralized Web

Our partners were eager to learn and talk about emerging decentralized technology.

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.

Timor-Leste

During the violence in Timor-Leste in June 2006, armed gangs broke into the offices of the Commission for Reception, Truth and Reconciliation (CAVR) in Dili and stole their motorbikes. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group, then at Benetech®, and other human rights observers wondered whether the mobs would soon return to loot the irreplaceable paper records used by the CAVR to compile their definitive report entitled "Chega!" The Benetech Initiative contributed to the CAVR findings and released a separate statistical report (PDF) establishing that at least 102,800 (+/- 11,000) Timorese died as a result of human rights violations in Timor-Leste ...

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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