The CRL Global Resources Network is currently engaged in a two-year project supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to examine how human rights organizations use digital technology to document human rights abuses.

Sponsored by the foundation’s Human Rights and International Justice program, the GRN project analyzes technologies used by human rights monitoring and activist groups in three world regions with the goal of identifying ways by which electronically or digitally produced documentation is maintained and protected for long-term use. GRN is working with a number of human rights organizations and archiving groups in the U.S. and abroad on this project. 

A key piece of the The Human Rights Electronic Evidence Study is a focus on electronically generated documentation collected and created by organizations in three countries:  Mexico, the Russian Federation, and Rwanda. The purpose here is to examine how organizations and institutions in those countries collect and handle documentation and evidence. The study will determine how the practices of such organizations coincide with the purposes of investigators, prosecutors, courts, international NGOs, scholars, and archives. This research also seeks to identify practical measures, tools, and standards for improving practice and ensuring greater integrity and durability for electronic evidence. 

For more information, please contact svandeusen [at] crl [dot] edu (Sarah Van Deusen Phillips), Project Coordinator.

Profiles and Reports

Human Rights Resources Profile: Web Ecology Project

Human Rights Resources Profile: WITNESS

Human Rights Electronic Evidence Study - Interim Report (November 2010)

Human Rights Resources Profile: Ushahidi

Human Rights Resource Profile: Amnesty International--ADAM & AIDAN

Thomson Report: Admissability of electronic documentation as evidence in U.S. Courts

Rapoport Center Report: New problems in the use of electronic evidence in Human Rights investigations and prosecutions