MAKING THE CASE
Investigating Large Scale Human Rights Violations Using Information Systems and Data Analysis

Author Biographies

Patrick Ball, Ph.D., is Deputy Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Human Rights Program. Since 1991, he has designed information management systems and conducted quantitative analysis for large-scale human rights data projects for truth commissions, non-governmental organizations, tribunals and United Nations missions in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, South Africa, and Kosovo. His 1997 Ph.D. dissertation "Liberal Hypocrisy and Totalitarian Sincerity" examined the roots of the non-governmental human rights movements in Ethiopia, Pakistan and El Salvador. AAAS has published three previous books by Dr. Ball: Policy or Panic? The Flight of Ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, March-May 1999 (2000), Who Did What to Whom? Planning and Implementing a Large Scale Human Rights Data Project (1996), and State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: a Quantitative Reflection (1999, with Paul Kobrak and Herbert F. Spirer).

Herbert F. Spirer, Ph.D., is Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at Columbia University, Professor Emeritus of Operations and Information Management of the University of Connecticut, and consultant to the AAAS Science and Human Rights Program. He has been a consultant to many NGOs on data analysis for human rights, and is a past Chair of the American Statistical Association's Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights, and a former Vice President of the Institute for the Study of Genocide. He is co-author of the AAAS publication Data Analysis for Monitoring Human Rights. He was made a Fellow of the American Statistical Association in recognition of his achievements in applying statistics to human rights.

Louise Spirer is an independent scholar, editor, and author in the field of human rights. Co-author of articles on human rights, she is the editor of newsletter of the American Statistical Association's Committee on Scientific Freedom and Human Rights, a member of the Board of Directors and Treasurer of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, and a co-author of the AAAS publication Data Analysis for Monitoring Human Rights.

Sonia L. Zambrano Gómez is a Colombian anthropologist and lawyer. She has worked in this country as human rights researcher, and she has written publications about this subject. She also worked for the Historical Clarification Commission of Guatemala, as Director of the Database.

Themba Kubheka is Deputy Director in the Information Technology of the Department of Land Affairs in the South African Government. His main function is to empower regional management to participate in the broader Information Technology plan. Themba has worked for Macro International Inc – a US based multinational funded by USAID - as their Management Information System Specialist. From April 1996 to February 1998, Themba worked for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as its Information Coordinator. Later he also served in the position of the Documentation Officer. In his 15 years in IT, Themba has conceptualized, designed and written numerous computer applications. In his most recent experience with the TRC, he assisted in the development of the database and the processing of the Human Rights Violations statements.

Lic. Oliver Mazariegos was the programmer and systems administrator for Guatemalan Archbishop’s Human Rights Office "Proyecto Interdiocesano Recuperación de la memoria Histórica" (REMHI).

Rocio Mezquita, B.A., has worked on human rights projects as a data processing professional REMHI as well as in the Guatemalan Truth Commission. She was previously an intern with Amnesty International/USA and worked as an election observer in the former Yugoslavia with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). She is presently working as a researcher in Guatemala, in a human rights project at the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights (CALDH).

Gerald O'Sullivan was the National Information Systems Manager for the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has been in the IT industry since 1981, working primarily on financial and management information systems in South Africa and abroad as an exiled war resister. He is currently the Director of Information Systems in the Department of Land Affairs, implementing GIS technology to facilitate the redistribution of land.

Humberto Sequeira, is the senior software programmer and database designer at Solo Software Development in Panamá where specializing in Point of Sale software for Hospitality environments. The most challenging and rewarding job he has been part of is the Truth Commission (CEH) in Guatemala. He is very interested in how new technologies in software, communications and database development will fill the technical gap between data and Human Rights researchers.

Eva Scheibreithner, as a student of international economics in Austria went to Guatemala in 1996 and started working as a volunteer human rights worker with national NGOs and communities of returnees. In 1997 she joined the CIIDH project in Guatemala working as a data processor and analyst. The Guatemalan Truth Commission (CEH) in 1998 was her second human rights data project, she worked on statistics there.

Ken Ward, B.S., is a computer database consultant. He has designed Human Rights Violations database systems for the United Nations Mission in Guatemala and various non-governmental organizations in Cambodia. He has designed several systems related to the Central American Peace Process in El Salvador and Guatemala and has also worked as a Human Rights investigator in Guatemala.

Science and Human Rights Program

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