[1] See the DIANA page at http://www.law.uc.edu/Diana/.[Return to text]

[2] For a more detailed discussion of different kinds of information and databases for human rights work, watch for the AAAS handbook Types of Databases for Human Rights Applications, due in late 1997.[Return to text]

[3] Truth commissions, in particular, face terrific time pressure. Time given to complete reports usually ranges from 6 to 12 months. This incredibly short period includes the time needed to find personnel, procure computers, vehicles, etc., in addition to actually doing the work. [Return to text]

[4] Two early readers -- both very experienced human rights workers -- suggested to me that the answer to the rape-torture definition presented here is completely obvious. They suggested quite different and incompatible resolutions. Both answers could be "right" in the sense that there are very good legal or social scientific arguments in favor. An organization building an information management system needs to uncover these kinds of definitional differences and resolve them. [Return to text}

[5] Let me distinguish between international criminal tribunals and organizations whose primary function is human rights monitoring or the recovery of human rights history. Tribunals are different from NGOs, truth commissions, or governmental human rights commissions because a) tribunals focus on perpetrators, not on victims, and b) tribunals are building prosecutorial cases, not reports on patterns or case anecdotes. Tribunals, therefore, may not focus on the restoration of victims' dignity in the same way that truth commissions, NGOs, or government human rights commissions do. In terms of their orgranizational purpose, organizational design, and information management systems, tribunals are very different from other kinds of human rights organizations.[Return to text]

[6] Many useful controlled vocabularies can also be found in Dueck and Noval, et al. (1993b). [Return to text]

[7] For examples of field definitions for human rights work, see Dueck et al. (1993a). [Return to text]

[8] A technical paper from the AAAS is now available on this topic. See Ball et al., 1994, in the bibliography. [Return to text]

[9] The fundamental concepts necessary to do human rights statistical work can be found in Spirer and Spirer (1993). [Return to text]

[10] Both lists and counts are statistics. [Return to text]

[12] Usually people in Spanish Latin America have two given names and two family names. [Return to text]

[13] These data are used by explicit, written permission of the CNVJ. [Return to text]

[14] See, for example, Spirer, Herbert F., and Louise Spirer (1993) Data Analysis for Monitoring Human Rights. Washington, D.C.: AAAS. I have found Spirer and Spirer's discussion of the principles of good graphical presentation especially useful (pp. 103-111). [Return to text]