Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ICTs have transformed the capacity of the
worldwide human rights movement to highlight
human rights abuse and to advocate for causes
and victims of oppression. They make it easier
to share and to access information; they facilitate
human rights data aggregation and analysis; they
offer new tactical approaches to campaigning; and
they precipitate real-world activities ranging from
local demonstrations to intergovernmental agency
lobbying. They also enable global participation,
and give local actors and previously invisible
groups international visibility.
Accurate and timely information is an in-
dispensable tool for human rights work, and an
essential precondition for effective responsive ac-
tion and the promotion of human rights - whether
by organizations, individuals, governments or
international institutions (Metzl, 1996). The
benefits of ICTs lie not only in the range of their
functionality but in the variety and versatility of
their application, according to Selian (2002). She
says the use of ICTs in human rights work can
be broken down broadly into four main realms
whose level and quality of interaction (amongst
themselves and with one another) has been vastly
improved. According to Selian, individuals, non-
governmental organizations (NGOs), national
governments and supranational institutions have
all been empowered insofar as they 'have the
means to effectively communicate their stories,
agendas, laws and agreements, respectively and
with maximum input' (Selian, 2002, p.19).
In particular, human rights NGOs and activ-
ists benefit greatly from ICTs as they record and
report human rights violations. Organizations and
individuals around the world have been making
good use of email to report and disseminate details
of human rights abuses since the early 1990's.
Back then, the development of structures such
BurmaNet and the China News Digest created
issue-based networks acting on specific human
rights violations and informing the world of such
abuses (Halpin & Fisher, 1998). Nowadays blog-
ging has become an important tool for grassroots
organizations and activists who want to tell their
stories to a global audience. These are assisted
by international human rights NGOs like Hu-
man Rights Watch who serve as 'alternative wire
services for people interested in places and issues
rarely covered by mainstream media' (Zucker-
man, 2004).
Mobile phones are also becoming more
widely used for human rights activism and re-
porting. They are convenient, relatively reliable,
inexpensive, coverage is improving all the time
(Currion, 2007), and in most parts of the world
their use is much higher than that of computers.
With a mobile phone, a witness can report an
incident anonymously by sending text messages
using pre-paid SIM cards (Verclas, 2007). Mobile
phones and digital cameras are also used to shoot
footage that can be instrumental in quickly alert-
ing the international community to human rights
violations. They can also result in human rights
perpetrators being brought to justice; a video
recording of Egyptian police brutality that made
its way to international bloggers and Youtube
helped bring about the arrest and conviction of
two police officers in November 2007, for example
(BBC News, 2007).
With the widespread dissemination of mobile
video there are potential privacy and security
implications in exposing the victim as well as
the reporter. Nonetheless it is often felt that the
benefits of uncovering the abuse outweigh the
potential negatives (Verclas, 2007).
Twitter, which is a web-based tool that allows
users to create a network of friends and to post a
small update from their mobile phone by sending
a text message, is another example of how new
technologies are being appropriated successfully
by the human rights movement. It is ideal for hu-
man rights activists as it is free and anonymous,
and it enables them to provide live updates and
to notify hundreds of contacts simultaneously
with one message. One of its most valuable uses
therefore is in situations during campaigns and
demonstrations where there might be danger of
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