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

Preface

In May 1999, the American Association for the Advancement of Science convened a weeklong meeting of ten information system experts in Washington, DC. These experts had all worked on creating and using information systems to document large-scale human rights violations in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and South Africa from 1992-1999. The combined experience included three truth commissions, a United Nations mission, and three non-governmental organizations.

During this meeting, they shared their experiences by presenting papers that were then jointly analyzed in detail, discussing the nature of the lessons learned, and developing recommendations for future work.

There were two purposes for investing the time and effort to achieve this free and open exchange. The first was to provide all attendees with a clear understanding of the issues and raise the group level of expertise. The second was to make available to those who will follow them their considerable experience and findings about information systems methodology for documenting large-scale human rights violations.

In presenting these papers, we hope to provide a history of the development of the technological and managerial processes used in our organizations. Our anecdotes and lessons learned may guide others who will want to build on these methods. Accordingly, we have edited them for uniformity and readability to make the proceedings a manual of how to determine who did what to whom (see Ball 1996). The reader can learn how to collect testimonies from a wide range of deponents, standardize concepts and vocabularies to create common categories across thousands of testimonies, design the computer data entry screens, structure the data into relational databases, and then how to adapt a database to meet the changing criteria imposed by changing circumstances. There are discussions about how to create statistical tables and charts and innovative methods to make supportable inferences about the magnitude of violence and its characteristics in time and space. The development of thesauri of vocabulary for use in reducing narrative information to coded form is discussed in several contexts. The appendixes provide sample pages from the working documents used on several projects.

Every paper includes or references a section on "Lessons Learned," discussing problems, solutions, and recommendations for others. The Lessons Learned sections and the cited resources provide a guide to running large-scale databases with a high level of effectiveness and efficiency.

The experts who came together for that week in May 1999 are Patrick Ball, Themba Kubheka, Oliver Mazariegos, Rocío Mezquita, Gerald O’Sullivan, Eva Scheibrethner, Humberto Sequiera, Herbert Spirer, Ken Ward, and Sonia Zambrano.

The editors would like to acknowledge the assistance of the following people: Priscilla Hayner, Neil Kritz, Brinton Lykes, Fritz Scheuren, and Audrey Chapman for sharing their time and insights; and Elisa Muñoz, Gretchen Richter, Eric Wallace, Matthew Zimmerman, and Margaret Weigers for helping with organizational matters. The editors are indebted to David Banks and Julie Carlson for their painstaking reviews of the final manuscript.

The AAAS Science and Human Rights Program would like to express its gratitude to the donors that have made this work possible: the Institute for Civil Society and by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Finally, we would like to acknowledge the United Nations missions, truth commissions and non-governmental organizations with whom we have worked: in El Salvador, the non-governmental Human Rights Commission (CDHES); in Guatemala, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), the International Center for Human Rights Research (CIIDH), the UN Verification Mission for Guatemala (MINUGUA), and the Catholic Church’s Interdiocesan Project for the Recuperation of Historical Memory (REMHI); in Haiti, the National Commission for Truth and Justice (CNVJ); and in South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). On behalf of the experts, we would like to say that we have felt honored to have had the opportunity to contribute to these projects, and we wish our future colleagues in human rights information management all the best.

Patrick Ball, Herbert F. Spirer, and Louise Spirer, editors
June 2000, Washington DC and Stamford CT.

Science and Human Rights Program

Copyright © 2000