The Data Base Project: a means to accomplish CIIDH’s objectives

The first project undertaken by CIIDH, launched the year it was founded, was the creation of a computerized data base containing information about acts of political violence. The decision to create this data base was made after determining that, to date, there had been no comprehensive effort to process systematically existing information about human rights violations in general or specific cases of political violence -- murders, kidnapping, disappearances, massacres, and so forth.

After reviewing information from different bibliographical sources, certain factors were identified that became the basis for designing an initial work strategy. The most important of these were:

1. Different organizations and research centers inside and outside the country maintain their own files in which they have been compiling information about human rights violations, each using a different format. An initial activity would be to begin standardizing the format used for all of this information.
   
   
2. The information found is limited to specific time periods and regions of the country. As a result, many acts of violence which occurred in the course of the armed conflict are not recorded in any available file. For this reason, it was necessary to consider reviewing other bibliographical and journalistic sources such as newspapers and magazines, and the publications of grassroots organizations, in search of information about cases not documented in the files of institutions and research centers.
   
   
3. Most acts of political violence that occurred in Guatemala were never denounced or reported in the press; this is especially true for those that occurred in remote, rural areas of the country during the worst periods of conflict and government repression. Consequently, it was decided that the only way to obtain information about such cases was through interviews with witnesses or survivors of acts of violence.

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