The Role of Information and Communications Technologies in Human Rights Monitoring and Advocacy - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 198

than Martus. HURIDOCS believe, however, that
the training is necessary to ensure that NGOs do
not over simplify human rights monitoring and
reporting. The data richness supported by WinEv-
Sys is necessary, they say, and leads to successful
and reliable routine monitoring instead of waiting
until a situation has exploded.
HURIDOCS say that human rights informa-
tion should be accessible, meaning the right
information should reach the right people when
and where they need it. It should also be usable,
meaning it should be presented in such as way
as to facilitate analysis and decision-making,
and it should be compatible, in order to increase
levels of sharing and improve communication
and collaboration (HURIDOCS, 2007). All these
contribute to making it actionable, which is the
most important characteristic of any information
collected by human rights organizations.
WinEvsys has been in use for over a decade,
and is currently used by human rights organizations
in Bangladesh, Mexico, the Philipines, Zimbabwe
and elsewhere. In response to feedback, HURI-
DOCS have decided to update it while keeping the
same controlled vocabularies. The new system,
which will be called OpenEvsys will be a web-
based application capable of being deployed as
a standalone application, over a local network
or over the Internet. According to HURIDOCS
this will help organizations to work together
more easily on documentation of human rights
violations, and will strengthen collaborations to
underpin success at the United Nations Human
Rights Council's periodic review of states' human
rights practices.

in the human rights regime would not take place
without these, and as a result the promotion and
protection of human rights would be greatly
diminished.
Systems are now being deployed with greater
speed to provide solutions that are usable, secure
and relevant to the needs of the human rights
movement. Individuals are being empowered
to report and comment on the human rights
situation in their own community as the ex-
plosion of mobile phone applications, online
video sharing and other tools makes it easy to
share information about human rights violations
with global audiences. Citizen journalists, con-
nected into the communities they report on, can
provide an immediacy of reporting that is not
possible with mainstream media. Eye witness
accounts of human rights violations can be
uploaded and used as irrefutable evidence of
what is happening under a repressive regime.
And human rights defenders that are at risk of
intimidation or attack can keep in touch with
their network of supporters, just to tell them
they are still alive and free.
From a human rights perspective, the lack of
attention to detail and concerns over the verac-
ity of what is reported can reduce the value of
the information being gathered. Human rights
work depends on reliable evidence and on the
efforts of grassroots organizations to gather and
record information that will bring perpetrators of
abuse to justice. These efforts are strengthened
as organizations' access to ICTs improves and
their capacity to use technology-based tools is
enhanced. Tools that strengthen the information
management capabilities of human rights organi-
zations provide new opportunities for the human
rights movement. Furthermore, the pooling of
information from a number of sources enables
international watchdogs and agencies to build
a more complete picture of what is happening
in any part of the world, and thus set in motion
processes leading to censure and accountability
for human rights abuse.

concluDing remarkS

The gathering, storage, analysis and dissemination
of human rights information is greatly enhanced
by the use of ICTs and by the development and
deployment of ICT-based information systems.
Many of the information flows between actors