Data and human rights

What sources and methods? How reliable and helpful?

The global human rights community has access to more data, from a wider range of sources, than ever before. However, it is not always clear how reliable and helpful these data are, and how to best use them in human rights work. In this series, OpenGlobalRights authors explore the types, sources and uses of human rights data. To obtain the fullest possible picture, we recommend reading articles in other openGlobalRights series, including, public opinion and human rightsevaluation and impact assessment in human rights, social science experiments and more.

 

Democratizing data is key for addressing inequalities during COVID-19

By: Francesca Feruglio & Maria Silvia Emanuelli & Imogen Richmond-Bishop & Brian Omala
Español | Français | العربية

Exclusion in data—which often reflects society’s values and biases about who and what counts—means exclusion in reality when it comes to crises and public policy.

Our post-COVID future should be as much about welfare as it is about tech

By: Beatriz Botero Arcila
Español

Surveillance thrives in unequal environments, and the pandemic has increased inequality. We need a welfare state for our digital information economy.

Budgets are political documents: can they help control the pandemic and fight for justice?

By: Ana Cernov & Iara Pietricovsky & Nathalie Beghin
Português | Español

Budgetary decisions are always political, and these documents are a crucial tool for civil society to protect rights and demand justice.

Can an online platform increase state accountability on women’s rights?

By: Ramona Vijeyarasa
Español | Français | العربية

Quantitative approaches such as the Gender Legislative Index offer advantages compared to using resource-intensive qualitative approaches alone.

Systemic bias in data models is a human rights issue

By: Isabel Laura Ebert & Thorsten Busch
Español | Français

The tech industry must engage with those affected by data errors and embedded discrimination to avoid systemic bias in data models.

How data is improving justice for gender-based violence in Fiji

By: Erin Thomas
Español | Na Vosa Vakaviti

To advance equity for girls and to improve faith in the justice system, combatting biases that privilege the interests of perpetrators of gender-based violence ...

Global Rule of Law Index reveals worrying trends for human rights protection

By: Elizabeth Andersen & Alicia Evangelides
Español

The rule of law is the foundation for human rights, and a global index shows respect for this fundamental principle is declining worldwide—a persistent trend evident ...

Can mapping human rights help in the global fight for equality?

By: Ilia Savelev
Español | Français

Human rights mapping has been key to global advocacy for LGBT+ and can be used elsewhere to flag issues of concern and provide empirical data on rights violations.

Better data can counteract soft repression

By: Katrin Kinzelbach & Janika Spannagel
Español | Français

Changing the way we document human rights abuses—such as paying more attention to soft repression—could correct our understanding of what is really happening.

Advocacy, meet academia: connecting disciplines to improve human rights research

By: Molly Land & Theresa Harris
Español

Human rights researchers are seeking new ways to establish facts, creating new opportunities for collaboration between researchers, scientists, and academics.

Measuring what matters: a new database to track human rights performance

By: Anne-Marie Brook & K. Chad Clay & Susan Randolph

The launch of the Human Rights Measurement Initiative dataset promises to provide comprehensive overviews of how countries are performing on human rights commitments.

Community participation in the face of gatekeeping: lessons from Kenya

By: Collins Liko
Español

Cartels in Kenya are controlling public resources and access to information, but community mobilization is starting to change this power dynamic.

Collecting, preserving, and verifying online evidence of human rights violations

By: Enrique Piracés
Español

The amount of digital information available online presents human rights practitioners with a valuable opportunity to document abuses and address a broad scope ...

Methodological choices in human rights research are political, not just technical

By: Allison Corkery 
Español | العربية

The methods human rights researchers and advocates use determine what injustices we see and prioritize, making methodology far more than just a technical choice.

Scientists and activists collaborate to bring hard data into advocacy

By: César Rodríguez-Garavito
Español

A new collaboration in Colombia is bringing together activists, scientists, physicians and other experts to collect hard evidence on the human rights impacts of ...

Measuring globally, surveying locally: A new global effort to measure civil and political rights

By: K. Chad Clay

Help nominate countries for a pilot study aiming to produce cross-national human rights data on a comprehensive list of internationally recognized human rights.

To strengthen digital security for human rights defenders, behavior matters

By: Michael Caster
简体中文 | Español

When approaching digital security for human rights defenders in hostile environments, we need to think more about practical behavior.

Discrimination in action: the value of experiments in human rights

By: Ana Bracic

A video game experiment in Slovenia reveals discriminatory practices against the Roma—what else might experiments teach us about human rights?

The human rights lab: using experiments to craft effective messaging

By: Michele Leiby & Matthew Krain
Español

Framing issues in different ways can undermine or bolster support of human rights, and experiments can help to explain why.

Using experiments to improve women’s rights in Pakistan

By: Gulnaz Anjum & Adam Chilton

Experiments on support for women’s rights in Pakistan could improve the implementation and enforcement of UN treaties.

How new data can—and can’t—support academic research

By: Merrill Sovner

Human rights practitioners and researchers often ask very different questions when collecting data—how can we bridge these gaps?

Human rights datasets are pointless without methodological rigour

By: Lawrence Saez

Existing datasets on human rights have methodological weaknesses that can make them useless for any meaningful statistical analysis.

Ethics, technology and human rights: navigating new roads

By: Danna Ingleton

When we incorporate new technologies into human rights work, we need to be acutely aware of agency, participation and consent.

The fine print: seeing beyond the hype in technology for human rights

By: Zara Rahman

With all the hype about new technologies for human rights, activists must think critically and strategically.

Cohesion in the chaos: uniting human rights methodologies

By: Katie Kraska

With the range of options available to document and analyze human rights, it’s important to help researchers and advocates use data responsibly and appropriately.

Missing torture amongst the poor

By: Steffen Jensen & Tobias Kelly
Español | Français

Documenting torture has always been problematic, but the experiences of the poor are continually left out of the picture.

No single dataset is sufficient for understanding human rights, nor should it be

By: K. Chad Clay

Yes, cross-national datasets are inappropriate for understanding the lived experience of those suffering from human rights abuse, but that’s not why we need them.

Yes, human rights scholars conceal social wrongs—when they miss the point

By: Todd Landman 

To suggest that relying on cross-national analyses perpetuates human rights abuses is simply fallacious.

How human rights scholars conceal social wrongs

By: Neve Gordon & Nitza Berkovitch

Using cross-national data in human rights research helps perpetuate social wrongs.

No data, no accountability: solving racial violence in the United States

By: Samuel L. Myers Jr.
Português

Without adequate data, the US racial divide remains a matter of perception, rather than of careful empirical analysis.

Human rights data used the wrong way can be misleading

By: Meg Satterthwaite

While data is important for human rights advocacy, the risks of misleading people are also very real and advocates must insist on rigor.

Quantitative data in human rights: what do the numbers really mean?

By: Will H. Moore

Everyone loves numbers, but when we use them in human rights, how often are we misrepresenting the data?

Using budget analysis to confront governments: what practitioners need to know

By: Ian Allen & Megan Manion & Thandi Matthews & Robert Ralston

Millions of dollars that could address socio-economic disparities are lost through illicit financial flows, but budget analysis could help.

Running the numbers on ICC deterrence: when does it actually work?

By: Hyeran Jo & Beth A. Simmons
Español

Systematic assessments reveal that the ICC can deter intentional civilian killing, but only under the right conditions.

Violence data: what practitioners need to know

By: Amelia Hoover Green
Español

The demand for numerical data on human rights has never been higher, but no data can be taken at face value.

Doubling down on human rights data

By: Sarah E. Mendelson
Español | Français | Русский

NGOs have often resisted social science methods, but random sampling and public opinion survey data can help us understand what people actually think and want.

Data-driven optimism for global rights activists

By: James Ron & Shannon Golden & David Crow & Archana Pandya
Español | Français | العربية

Opinion polls across four world regions suggest that human rights activists can be cautiously optimistic—the public likes and trusts them.

When evaluating human rights progress, focus also on the journey

By: Emma Naughton & Kevin Kelpin
Español | Français | العربية

Yes, human rights work must be measured, but we need to focus on the small steps as well as the “big picture.”

Where’s the evidence? Moving from ideology to data in economic and social rights

By: Octavio Luiz Motta Ferraz
Español | Português

To advance the polarized openGlobalRights debate on economic and social rights, we need more empirical research, and less ideology.

Open budgets, open politics?

By: Dan Berliner
Español | Français

Budget transparency has the potential to make governments more accountable, but research shows that it occurs most often where it is least needed.

Winners and losers: how budgeting for human rights can help the poor

By: Helena Hofbauer
Español | Bahasa | Français | 简体中文

Recent research reveals the impact that international covenants could have on government taxation and expenditures. Based on civil society organization (CSO) campaigns ...

The state of global human rights philanthropy

By: Christen Dobson & Lucía Carrasco Scherer & Emilienne de León
Español | Français | العربية | Português

Using the first-ever data-driven effort to track global human rights funding, representatives from two major global funding networks based in the U.S. and Mexico ...

Universal values, foreign money: local human rights organizations in the Global South

By: James Ron & Archana Pandya
Türkçe | Español | Français | Português | العربية | עברית

Despite enjoying a fair bit of local support, local human rights organizations (LHROs) in the Global South are still largely dependent on foreign funds. To better ...

The struggle for a truly grassroots human rights movement

By: James Ron & David Crow & Shannon Golden
Español | Français | العربية | Português | Türkçe

Using cutting-edge human rights perception polls, the authors explore links between social class and domestic human rights movements in Mexico, Colombia, Morocco, ...

 
Stay connected! Join our weekly newsletter to stay up-to-date on our newest content.  SUBSCRIBE