288 results for search: truth commissions/feed/content/colombia/privacy
The Art and Science of Coding AHPN Documents
The coding, from my perspective, is the heart of the project. I say this, because the coding team has the responsibility of selecting documents according to the random sample, recording the documents’ contents, and applying the criteria to convert that content into an entry in a quantitative database. Not to mention the fact that this team has the privilege of being in direct contact with the documents.
At present, because of advanced organizational processes, not everyone has a chance to hold an original document in their hands. The quantitative study had many advantages in this regard; since we started work in parallel with the archival ...
Learning Day by Day: Quantitative Research at the AHPN
Working at the Historic Archive of the National Police (AHPN) of Guatemala, there are many skills I learned on the job. My many years of work on the team that studies the recovered documents have been like a custom-made course in how to do quantitative research.
The Archive documents I study are the result of 36 years of creation during civil war (1960 to 1996). Many of these documents are simply administrative—but we are able to use them to understand patterns that occurred during the conflict, to get a sense of what mattered to the National Police and what didn’t. Our quantitative research shows us the Police behavior in broad strokes. ...
Celebrating Ten Years of Data from the AHPN
Ten years ago, in July 2005, human rights officers stumbled upon a nondescript warehouse in a commercial zone of Guatemala City and changed history. They had discovered an archive–its existence kept secret–belonging to the Guatemalan National Police, whose officers committed human rights atrocities on behalf of the government during the civil war.
Inside the building was the bureaucratic detritus typical of a large government agency: 80 million pages detailing shifts worked, tasks assigned, assignments fulfilled, workers’ whereabouts, and who was supervising whom. The documents, which were found stacked on dirty floors, shoved into bags, ...
Tech Corner
The HRDAG Tech Corner is where we collect the deeper and geekier content that we create for the website. Click the accordion blocks below to reveal each of the Tech Corner entries.
Sifting Massive Datasets with Machine Learning
Principled Data Processing
Using Cemetery Information in the Search for the Disappeared: Lessons from a Pilot Study in Rionegro, Antioquia
Tamy Guberek, Daniel Guzmán, and Beatriz Vejarano. “Using Cemetery Information in the Search for the Disappeared: Lessons from a Pilot Study in Rionegro, Antioquia.” In Methodological Proposals for Documenting and Searching for Missing Persons in Colombia. (Available in Spanish) © 2010 EQUITAS. All rights reserved.
Reflections: Pivotal Moments in Freetown
The summer of 2002 in Washington, DC, was steamy and hot, which is how I remember my introduction to HRDAG. I had begun working with them, while they were still at AAAS, in the late spring, learning all about their core concepts: duplicate reporting and MSE, controlled vocabularies, inter-rater reliability, data models and more. The days were long, with a second shift more often than not running late into the evening. In addition to all the learning, I also helped with matching for the Chad project – that is, identifying multiple records of the same violation – back when matching was done by hand. But it was not long after I arrived in Washington ...
Sierra Leone
Following a brutal 11-year civil war, the Parliament of Sierra Leone called for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to create "an impartial, historical record of the conflict", and "address impunity; respond to the needs of victims; promote healing and reconciliation; and prevent a repetition of the violations and abuses suffered." The full text of the TRC report is available on the Sierra Leone Web.
HRDAG assisted the TRC to build a systematic data coding system, electronic database, and secure data analysis process to manage the thousands of statements given to them in the course of their work. Dr. Ball visited Freetown twice, and HRDAG ...
HRDAG Analysis Supports Efforts to Hold Salvadoran Commanders Accountable for 1989 Jesuit Massacre
Almost a quarter century ago, on November 16, 1989, six Jesuit scholars, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were massacred inside the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. Their chief target was the rector of the country’s leading university. The murders were carried out by members of the elite Atlacatl Battalion, acting on the direct orders of the highest-ranking members of the Salvadoran military. The United Nations–sponsored Truth Commission for El Salvador found that members of the Salvadoran military's high command “gave...the order to kill Father Ignacio Ellacuría and to leave no witnesses.” ...
Sierra Leone TRC Data and Statistical Appendix
HRDAG assisted the Sierra Leone Truth and Reconciliation Commission in building a systematic data coding system, electronic database, and secure data analysis process to manage the thousands of statements given to them in the course of their work. HRDAG executive director Patrick Ball and HRDAG field consultant Richard Conibere worked at the TRC full-time for approximately eighteen months starting in March 2003.
HRDAG worked with TRC researchers to help them incorporate quantitative findings to support the qualitative findings in their writing for the other chapters of the TRC report. In addition, HRDAG produced a Statistical Appendix to present ...
Testimonials
HRDAG is honored to work with a diverse set of partners. These organizations and the individuals that operate them are critical to our success, and our goal is to be critical to theirs. Here are a few quotes from our colleagues.
"Over the last two years, Dr Patrick Ball has spoken several times to relevant AI staff on the use (and mis-use) of quantitative data in human rights work. Each time, people rave about it afterwards commenting on Patrick's inimical skills to convey the complexity of statistical science in an accessible, relevant and fun way. This year, we also organised small meetings with individual teams who have to crunch 'big data' ...
Locating Hidden Graves in Mexico
For more than 10 years, and with regularity, Mexican authorities have been discovering mass graves, known as fosas clandestinas, in which hundreds of bodies and piles of bones have been found. The casualties are attributed broadly to the country’s “drug war,” although the motivations and perpetrators behind the mass murders are often unknown.
Recently, HRDAG collaborated with two partners in Mexico—Data Cívica and Programa de Derechos Humanos of the Universidad Iberoamericana—to model the probability of identifying a hidden grave in each county (municipio). The model uses an set of independent variables and data about graves from 2013 ...
Our Thoughts on #metoo
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.
Reflections: Minding the Gap
How might we learn what we don’t know? HRDAG associate Christine Grillo hits the wayback machine and recalls her first exposure to People Against Bad Things, ideas about bias and correlation versus causation, and truth.
Lessons at HRDAG: Making More Syrian Records Usable
If we could glean key missing information from those fields, we would be able to use more records.
Without Encryption, My Work Wouldn’t Be Possible
Structural Zero Issue 03
August 24, 2025
Part Three of Our Three-Part “Gathering the Data” Series. Read part one and part two.
In computer security, “security” is always relative to something. What are we actually defending against, and how are we doing it? This is our “threat model.”
My colleagues and I have been using scientific tools to analyze evidence of human rights abuses, including using statistics to uncover mass graves in Mexico and analyzing under-reported police homicides in the United States.
Our work isn’t always popular. It can infuriate those in power who want to cover up incriminating truths about the ...
El problema del asesinato a líderes es más grave de lo que se piensa
Una investigación de Dejusticia y Human Rights Data Analysis Group asegura que en Colombia hay un subregistro de los asesinatos de líderes sociales que se han perpetrado en Colombia. Al analizar las diferentes cifras de homicidios que han publicado diversas organizaciones desde 2016, se llegó a la conclusión que la problemática es mayor de lo que se cree.
Focus on Good Science, not Scientists
We recently learned about an article by Dr Nafeez Ahmed that criticizes the methods and conclusions of the Iraq Body Count (IBC) and the work of Professor Michael Spagat. Dr Ahmed cites our work extensively in support of his arguments, so we think it’s useful for us to reply.
We welcome Dr Ahmed’s summary of various points of scientific debate about mortality due to violence, specifically in Iraq and Colombia. We think these are very important questions for the analysis of data about violent conflict, and indeed, about data analysis more generally. We appreciate his exploration of the technical nuances of this difficult field.
Unfortunately, ...
MEDIA MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE CAVR REPORT
Press release from the Technical Secretariat of the Commission for Reception, Truth, and Reconciliation (CAVR)
MEDIA MISREPRESENTATIONS OF THE CAVR REPORT
Although not yet officially released, the 2500 page CAVR Report 'Chega!' has been the subject of several prominent reports in the media based on leaked versions of the Executive Summary and particularly its section on Recommendations. Stories on the Report have been carried by AFP, AP, the Japan Times, the Singapore Straits Times, Sydney Morning Herald, Lusa,Timor-Leste press and Bali Times - to name some.
Regrettably some of these stories contained serious misrepresentations of the Report which ...
Sierra Leone Statistical Appendix
Richard Conibere, Jana Asher, Kristen Cibella, Jana Dudukovic, Rafe Kaplan, and Patrick Ball. Sierra Leone Statistical Appendix, A Report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group and the American Bar Association Central European and Eurasian Law Initiative to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. October 5, 2004.
The Profile of Human Rights Violations in Timor-Leste, 1974-1999
Romesh Silva and Patrick Ball. “The Profile of Human Rights Violations in Timor-Leste, 1974-1999″, a Report by the Benetech Human Rights Data Analysis Group to the Commission on Reception, Truth and Reconciliation. 9 February 2006.